Karnataka   

Did fear of scarcity lead to violence in Haveri?

Calm and peaceful: Normality returned to Haveri on Thursday after two days of violent protests over shortage of fertilizers.

HAVERI: The violence in Haveri could have been averted had the officials in the Agriculture Department planned to procure the required amount of fertilizers in advance and taken steps to distribute it properly.

Several people have put forward this argument after the police firing in Haveri claimed the life of a farmer.

However, a closer look at the developments preceding the incident reveals that there are many issues, which finally led to the violence over shortage of fertilizers.

There are about 200 fertilizer dealers in the seven taluks of Haveri and consignments of fertilizers arrive in the district from February.

By June, the railways would have provided four to five wagons for transporting DAP fertilizer to the district.

However, this year the district started receiving fertilizer consignments in May and till date only a single wagon load of DAP fertilizer was provided to the district. The reason cited was that the fertilizer companies have slowed down the production of DAP reportedly to due to non-release of subsidy to them.

“When we used to receive fertilizer consignments from February, we used to have a good stock of fertilizers by the time the farmers came to purchase them. However, we started receiving the consignment by road this time that too late,” Jagadish Tuppad, a fertilizer dealer from Haveri said.

According to him, there were several other variants of complex fertilizers that were equally effective like the DAP, but the farmers were not aware of them as no steps were taken to create awareness about them.

Farmer Durugappa Lamani of Haveri had an altogether different opinion on the whole issue.

“It is the scarcity scare rather than the actual scarcity that led to panic among the farmers. The development naturally resulted in heavy rush for the DAP, as everybody wanted to stock it as a precautionary measure,” he said.

According to him, the fertilizer dealers alerted some regular customers on the possible scarcity and as a result, at least 25 per cent of them purchased more than the required quantity of DAP and stocked them.

“This only added to the problem,” he said.

Another farmer, Murugappa Mailar, said it was “the package system” which enraged the farmers.

“It has been a usual practice that the fertilizer companies ask the dealers to sell their other products along with DAP so that they could make up their loss in revenue. And those who sell more of these products are released more quantity of fertilizers. As a result, the dealers pressure farmers to buy these products”, he said. “At a time when the farmers had money only for DAP, the dealers wanted them to buy these other products also. And those who did not want the package had to cough up extra money for DAP,” Mr. Mailar said.

However, officials in the Agriculture Department feigned ignorance about this package system.

They maintained that they had not come across cases of dealers charging more for fertilizers. The system continues as the farmers fail to report it because of fear of not getting the fertilizers.

According to Hanumantappa Chalavadi, a farmer, it was the fear of having a low yield if sowing did not take place at the right time, which made many to flock the fertilizer shops. “And when they found out that the officials just kept promising that they would get the fertilizer “the next day,” the farmers got enraged and started staging protests”, he said.

According to the farmers, whom this correspondent spoke to, last week, the farmers had frequented the taluk headquarters at least four times in anticipation of getting DAP.

Finally, they were promised of it on Monday and the distribution did not take place at all.

Although there was some stock of DAP fertilizer in the district, the dealers did not take the risk of selling it as compared to the huge demand there were only few tonnes of DAP available with them.

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