Other States - Rajasthan   

Farmers forced to work as daily wagers

JAIPUR: Unsustainable agricultural practices and growing costs of farm inputs are forcing a large number of small and marginal farmers in Rajasthan to work as daily wage earners. The children of those living on income from agriculture alone till now have abandoned their land in the absence of water and prohibitive input costs, it is pointed out.

An interaction with small and marginal farmers from Jaipur, Tonk and Sikar districts with a group of experts led by noted economist V. S. Vyas at the Kumarappa Institute of Gram Swaraj (KIGS) here recently brought to light the grim crisis on the farm front. Many of the farmers expressed their willingness to go back to traditional agricultural practices but felt supporting even a pair of bullocks would be a challenge these days in the wake of shrinking grazing land in villages.

“When it comes to farmers, it is always the big farmer who gets a hearing. The small and marginal farmers have no voice,” said Prof. Vyas, also the director of KIGS, in his opening remarks.

“None of my two grown-up sons is willing to do farming. They feel daily wage jobs in the capital city, which fetch them Rs.1,200 a month are better,” said Prabhudayal Bairwa of Chaksu tehsil in Jaipur district. Obviously Bairwa cannot convince his sons as he earns a meagre Rs.10,000 a year from their one-hectare piece of land after investing almost that much. “But for the fodder, which comes as profit, there is no margin in agriculture any more,” he lamented.

Bhagirath Gujjar of Niwai tehsil in Tonk district, who was recently jailed in connection with the Gujjar agitation for Scheduled Tribe status, said he preferred manual labour to farming. His fellow farmers from Dotana village in the tehsil said out of the 100-odd families in the village 60 have given up farming.

Biharilal of Burhanpura in Sikar district said the depletion of ground water level in the area made farming unviable. From two crop seasons, farming has come down to single cropping at most of the places but that too is unviable, the farmers pointed out. Most of the able-bodied young men in Tonk district now go for loading sand into trucks from the dry bed of the Banas river. With the reduction in the number of crops and the absence of common land for grazing the number of cattle, too, has come down drastically.

Yet most of the farmers complained of the menace from stray cattle and the wild animal, Bluebull, commonly referred to as Neelgai. Prabhudayal ‘Sevak’, a farmer from Naharwala Dhani in Chaksu in Jaipur district, said even after keeping nightlong vigils for many days one night’s absence often resulted in decimation of the whole season’s yield by marauding cattle and Neelgais.

Amid gloom there were success stories as well. Jagdish Pareek, a progressive farmer from Ajitgarh in Sikar, who is known for producing giant-sized cabbages in his farm, said vertical farming (on raised platforms, in plastic bags, empty tyres hung on trees) the farmers with limited land size too could survive. Owner of 16 bighas of land, he has been growing cabbages in 50 per cent of the area and tomatoes in the remaining. “Don’t let inferiority complex affect you mind,” he told the farmers.

Talking of best farm practices, Prof. Vyas and Awadh Prasad, director of KIGS, said the small farmers were not aware of many of the facilities offered to them by the Government agencies.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

More villages brought under Gram Yojana plan
Army, police called upon to play a positive role
Farmers forced to work as daily wagers
Raje Govt. concedes demand of Gujjars

Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu