Karnataka - Bidar   

A season of despair for sugarcane farmers

Rishikesh Bahadur Desai

HARD TIMES: Lakshman (right) with two other farmers in Talmadgi village.

Bidar: Any stranger arriving in Talmadgi village is led to the house of Prabhu Manikappa Vanakeri, the 60-year-old farmer who committed suicide recently. The people of the village seem to know intuitively that visitors arriving these days want to meet the grieving family.

On the day of his death, the residents of the village in Humnabad taluk staged a six-hour rasta roko on the Mumbai-Hyderabad National Highway. They dispersed only after the police promised to take action against officials of the Naranja Sahakari Sakkare Karakhane (NSSK), whom they held responsible for the farmer's suicide, one among 40 so far in the district.

Vanakeri had three acres of land on which he had grown sugarcane. He had taken a loan of Rs. 1.5 lakh from the District Central Cooperative Bank and moneylenders. He was a shareholder of the NSSK.

His crop was ready for harvest in December, but the sugar factory officials did not agree to buy his sugarcane till April 26. The factory officials agreed to buy his sugarcane on the condition that he paid the harvesting and transport charges, which came to nearly Rs. 15,000. Labourers sent by the factory came to his fields on May 1 and harvested the crop. They, however, carried away only one truckload of sugarcane weighing around ten tonnes. The remaining 70 tonnes that had been harvested was left in the fields. He neither got money from the factory nor was he eligible for compensation announced by the Government for sugarcane that had not yet been harvested.

Vanakeri went to the factory every day for four days, begging them to transport the sugarcane from his fields, says his son, Lakshman. But the officials ignored his pleas. "On the fourth day, he was almost in tears when he told us that a factory official had abused him and asked him to get out of his chambers. He went back to his fields and never returned," says Lakshman.

Angered by the insult to his father, Lakshman filed a complaint asking the police to charge the factory officials with abetment to suicide.

This led to a serious crisis. NSSK chairman and former Minister Gurupadappa Nagamarapalli felt the State Government was using the district administration and the police to harass him by filing a case. Therefore, he said, he had no option but to close down the factory. The Congress leader told presspersons that if more farmers committed suicide because of the factory closure, the Government should be responsible.

The police yielded to the pressure, and Additional Superintendent of Police G.M. Yatnur announced that the police would file a B report absolving the accused. The factory reopened the next day.

"I feel the police should not let the accused officials go free. They should be punished," says Lakshman.

Though many farmers in Talmadgi agree, they dare not say so publicly, because their sugarcane is yet to be bought by the factory.

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A season of despair for sugarcane farmers

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