Karnataka - Belgaum   

When man is better than beast

— Photo: D.B. Patil

Delicate job: Bhujaballi Markal and his family weeding their fields.

Belgaum: In this age of increasing farm mechanisation, it is not unusual to see women, or men, pulling a plough across fields in several villages in Belgaum and Khanapur taluks.

One such family that prefers human power for ploughing, although they own a pair of bullocks, is that of 65-year-old Bhujaballi Markal of Halga, a village off the Pune-Bangalore National Highway, 10 km from Belgaum city. It is not that they are poverty stricken; they just prefer it that way.

Bhujaballi Markal, his wife, Gulabi (around 55), his son Sampath (32) and daughter-in-law Sheela (32) live off a marginal landholding of 30 guntas. They sow two crops every year: paddy as the kharif crop and masoor dal or jowar as the rabi crop.

The farmer says that though they use the bullocks to plough the fields initially before crops are sown, once the seeds sprout it is not advisable to let the bullocks into the fields. Because of the continuous rainfall in the kharif season, grass and weeds also grow in the fields, which have to be got rid of or ploughed back without damaging the seedlings. For this delicate operation they prefer to pull the plough themselves, taking turns.

Rich farmers employ labourers to do the job, and the not-so-rich do it themselves. It costs Rs. 150 a day to employ one labourer, and at least four labourers are needed to weed an acre of land. Weeding has to be done at least thrice till the crop is ready for harvest, for which the family would have to shell out at least Rs. 2,000 on labourers.

Since the Markal family is poor and has to make do with what they get for 12 to 13 quintals of paddy and about three quintals of masoor dal a year and wages earned for labour during the off season, they prefer to plough the fields under their own power.

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