Saturday, May 3, 2008

Let me committ suicide.

To understand the plight of a poor farmer who is about to commit suicide, one has to come out of a farmer mother's womb. No one else can understand about his sufferings and his phase through which he is passing.

Farming in India is a loss making profession basically, but it is a traditional business, and if you do not work in your field and do not plough, entire village will talk about it and will say thu thu. hence, out of fear one has to farm. You get a good "fasal" i.e. yield after 4 to 5 months. Not only the farmer, but his entire family works hard in the field, and if he has larger field, then he will have to bring outside workforce on daily wages of Rs.70/- per person for man and Rs.35/- per woman. These costs, wages, seed cost, fertilizer cost, humus cost, pesticides, medicines etc. costs back breaking. Above these, consider the cost of electricity bill and water charges. at times, you have to order a water tanker to water your produce. Oh God.....

Now, after occurring all these costs, consider this, Many time you get duplicate seeds hence you are never sure about proper crop after putting in all those back and neck breaking efforts, whatever you get is God's blessings. and if there is unseasonal rain, then you are screwed. your entire effort will go down the drain, what will you call this? God's curse?
(We have lost all our wheat crop and green chana crop on the holi day this year, because of unseasonal rains in Satara, Maharashtra)

Now the second part,

if there is good crop you sell your produce in the open market, here starts your mis-fortune. You meet dalals i.e. agents of businessmen, hoarders or corrupt government officials who demand money in order to certify the quality of your crop. You never get proper value of your crop. and "Jagat ka Tat, Desh ka Annadata" remains a bagger and middle man and govt. officials make all the money. only if our agriculture minister pay attention to this facts and not cricket and cheer girls.

If a farmer has less land, then he works in his farm early in the morning and in night, and during the day time he works in other's field, earning 70/- per day, and his wife also works earning Rs.35/- per day, totalling 105/- per day, (NOT EVERY DAY) he has five to seven mouth to feed. two to three kids are school going. that expense is separate. if someone in the family falls ill in this condition, the medical bill will go upto 10 to 15000 rupees.

It is during such hard times, the farmer takes a loan from Shylock or moneylender. at only 5% to 6% interest, per month i.e. 60% to 72% per Annum. If he fails to generate such loan, he asks some close relative to stand as his guarantor.

The tragedy starts now,

In order to pay back the moneylender and in order to save his dignity and relation with the guarantor, he mortgages his house to some village financial institute or some small co-operative bank, and then in order to pay EMI, the dreaded EMI (early mrityu ka inam) every month, at a pre-determined date, he mortgages his "saat baara" his beloved field, his 7/12, to village credit society, because there he will get loan at a lesser interest rate, and may get government subsidy too if he is lucky, but if he does not belong to that particular political party which runs the patpedhi or credit society then it will be difficult for him to get desired loan. He will be given bogus reasons like, your land mass is too small, you will get only 3500 for it under the new reserve bank rule, etc. now he thinks that, for 3500 why should i lick the feet of these bastards, again he approaches one close friend or relative and takes loan of Rs.25000/- to 30000/- from some bigger co-operative bank. where he actually gets only Rs.22000 against 25000 loan after some un-explainable deductions, and bribe to the branch agent.

Again, at one point of time, he fails to pay the dreaded EMI, and lives in constant fear that the bank officials will come and grab his land, to overcome the situation he goes back and approaches the original money lander who is there, very much there, to help him and wait patiently for his meat.

The government tells him to not pay the money lenders, but here comes our culture, the person who is hardly educated, hardly studied up to 4th std. thinks that how can he do so, he must pay back what he has taken. and if I can not pay back then.......it is better to die.

..........and he becomes a small figure in state and central government statistics.

Has anybody got the solution.

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