Five months after debts and poor price for his garlic crop led farmer Hukum Chand Meena to his death in May, his family is in deep distress. After the garlic price crashed to ₹5 a kg this year, Meena, 28, lost all hopes of repaying his ₹25-lakh debts.
Meena produced 2,500 tonnes of garlic on 20 bighas of land, which included rented fields, near Brij Nagar village, 30 km from Kota. The bumper crop created a glut, leading to the price crash.
After his death, the eldest of his four daughters was sent to her aunt’s house for completing her education. Others face an uncertain future. His mother, Ramnathi Bai, 60, hopes that Meena’s two brothers would take care of the family.
The younger brother Anirudh told The Hindu that ₹18 lakh of the loans was taken through the Kisan Credit Card. A private bank was sending notices on the ₹5-lakh tractor loan. The lenders will start knocking on the family’s door after winter.
Mr. Anirudh said Meena had got himself registered under the market intervention scheme of the Rajasthan State Cooperative Marketing Federation, but his turn to sell the produce was taking a long time. He sold some of the harvest at the local market to pay off labourers, but it only added to the huge losses.
The federation procured garlic at the fixed market intervention price of ₹3,257 for 100 kg for a month-and-a-half.
Meena is among the five farmers who died in the Hadoti region of south-east Rajasthan this year following the heavy losses incurred after growing garlic. The agrarian distress has equally affected the producers of onion, mustard, soya bean, urad and moong in Kota, Baran, Jhalawar and Bundi districts.
The police and the government have denied that the farmers’ deaths were due to debt burden or crop losses. The farmers are particular angry with Sangod MLA Heeralal Nagar, who reportedly said the deaths were being projected as suicides to claim compensation.
Mr. Anirudh alleged that Mr. Nagar had wrongly claimed that he had visited their family to condole with them.Mr. Nagar has been fielded once again as the BJP candidate from Sangod in the party’s list released on Sunday.
With very few farmers qualifying for the State government’s loan waiver scheme applicable only for debt from cooperative banks, the farmers’ problems defy a solution. The Congress has alleged that 92 farmers died from suicide across the State since the BJP came to power in 2013. Three of the four who so died in the Hadoti region were from Baran district.
Chauth Mal Nagar, a farmer-activist from Bachera village, pointed out despite 83% of the Hadoti region's land being irrigated, the farmers were suffering because of their inability to get remunerative prices for their produce, though the input costs were constantly increasing. “There is no scarcity of water here. Every year, the Chambal river and its tributaries, Kalisindh, Parvati and Chakan, are in spate.”
Mr. Nagar said while the farmers had consistently failed to get right prices in the open market, the State government had no clear policy on procurement of crops on the minimum support price and had shut down institutions such as Tilam Sangh and Keshoraipatan’s sugar mill. In the absence of any hand-holding support because of the “flawed policies”, the farmers would continue to be at the receiving end, he said.