IN today’s Odisha, hardly a day passes without a report of farmer suicide. The total number of farmers committing distressed suicide has crossed 70 in the past three months. However, state ministers and ruling party spokespersons, barring a few exceptions, are engaged in refuting and ridiculing such reports. Collectors of the districts, where farmer suicides have occurred, too have joined their political masters to reject such reports. They claim in official reports that “domestic  disturbances” are the root causes of such suicides, brushing off pleas of members of the bereaved families that debt burden and ensuing crop loss due to drought are causes of such suicides. The drought relief package, announced by the state government, has failed to give any relief to farmers and check distressed suicide. There are two primary reasons for this. Firstly, the compensation for crop loss announced is scanty and secondly, the package does not cover the sharecroppers, because provisions of the Relief Code and Norms of State Disaster Response Fund does not cover the sharecroppers for relief entitlement.

The Odisha government has announced relief assistance of Rs 6,800 and Rs 16,000 per hectare for non-irrigated and irrigated lands, respectively. But the peasants normally spend Rs 25,000 per hectare on non-irrigated land and nearly Rs 40,000 per hectare on irrigated lands. In true sense, the government does not provide any relief, it only throws coins to begging bowls. As agriculture is a subject under Concurrent List of the Constitution, both the state and the central governments have to share responsibility. But the central government is yet to come to the rescue of the peasants of Odisha. Its response is limited to sending a central team followed by “no package”. The crop loan has not yet been waived.

The crisis of sharecroppers is acute and in Odisha, more than 70 per cent of land is cultivated through sharecropping. As on today, the sharecropping has no legal sanctity and the system continues with informal arrangements. Finding agriculture non-remunerative, the landowners opt for replacing self-farming by sharecropping. The sharecroppers are either landless or owner of marginal cultivable landed property. They were earning livelihood as agricultural workers. Finding it more income generating and dignified, they responded to the offer of landowners. Majority of the sharecroppers belong to Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities.

There are two categories of payment of rent to the landowners by the sharecroppers. The first category is the payment in kind through a share from the produce that varies considering the responsibility the landowner shares in the investment of inputs. The second category is cash payment as per the lease or contract either for all crops of the year or for each crop separately. In the first category, the payment of rent made after the harvest of the crop whereas in the second category, the cash payment of the rent is made well in advance at the time of the contract. In case of the latter, the sharecroppers suffer a big loss, may be a total loss as the payment of rent is delinked from the fate of the crop.

The sharecroppers in Odisha are deprived of four benefits that a peasant is entitled to. They are denied institutional credit, subsidy on agricultural inputs and implements, minimum support price (MSP) and benefits of compensation paid against the damage of the crop caused by natural calamities.

The sharecroppers being landless or marginal land owners, besides their family labour, invest money on account of purchase of fertiliser, seeds, pesticides and hiring tractors, power tillers and harvesters etc. Denied crop loan by cooperative institutions and banks, they borrow from money lenders, input traders, microfinance institutions and village self-help groups. The rate of interest is 60 per cent per annum (five paisa per month for one rupee). If they borrow  from  paddy traders then they enter into a contract to sell their paddy at Rs 500 or Rs 600 per quintal, 50 per cent less than the minimum support price. The absence of institutional credit for the sharecropper thus ends in forward trading.

The only avenue which exists for providing crop loan to sharecroppers is through the Joint liability Groups (JLG).  Answering a question put by CPI(M) MLA Laxman Munda, the Co-operative Minister said in the last monsoon session of Odisha Assembly that out of the target of 18,487 JLGs, only 363 were provided crop loan in the year 2014-15 by public sector banks. State Bank of India and 12 nationalised banks have not paid a single pie to JLGs. Among the private sector banks, other than HDFC Bank no one has provided crop loan.

It may be recalled that Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, in his budget speech for 2014-15, announced that as a “number of landless farmers are unable to provide land title as guarantee, institutional finance is denied to them and they become vulnerable to money lenders’ usurious lending. I propose to provide finance to 5 lakh joint farming groups of ‘Bhoomiheen Kisan’ through NABARD in the current Financial year.” (Para 80 of Budget Speech)

What remedy the Union government and its Finance Minister have provided when banks belonging to public or private sectors refuses to grant loans to sharecroppers?

Besides borrowing at high rate of interest, the sharecroppers purchase inputs like fertiliser, pesticide and seeds at market price. They are denied access to government procurement centre because they can’t register their names for sale of their paddy there as they have no ownership over land. Last year they were compelled to sell their produce to paddy traders at Rs 900 or Rs 1,000, who in turn sold the same at the procurement centre at Rs 1,360 a quintal, the MSP. Thus the MSP due to be the claim of the sharecroppers was pick-pocketed by the paddy traders. The woes of the sharecroppers compound in the calamity years when the loss of crop is never compensated by any relief measures of the government.

The agricultural workers who with the hope to earn more and lead a dignified life became sharecroppers now finds sharecropping non-remunerative and opts for becoming migrant  labourer. If the sharecropper gives up agriculture, the land shall remain barren. It will have an adverse impact on agricultural production and ultimately affect the food security.

Besides this phenomenon, another development is taking place. A new type of sharecroppers are entering the field. They are corporate sharecroppers. Our traditional sharecroppers primarily were investing their labour, but the corporate sharecroppers invest capital, who make agriculture totally mechanised where the role of the labour is minimised. Once the land goes to the corporate sharecroppers, the landowner, big or small or medium, shall become a bonded landlord having no alternative but to remain at the former’s mercy.

To save agriculture, it is essential to save the sharecroppers. To save the sharecroppers, they are to be provided with institutional credit, government subsidy on inputs and implements, benefits of compensation and crop insurance in case of failure of crop due to natural calamities, MSP through their access to procurement centres opened by government agencies, storage facility in government or co-pvt. managed godowns and cold storages.

The government of Odisha made an announcement a couple of years ago that sharecroppers shall be entitled to all benefits made for farmers if they enter into an agreement with the landowner in presence of the tehsildar. But the landowners are afraid of losing the land in future if they enter into such an agreement. Hence  they opt for informal arrangements with sharecroppers.

The remedy lies in the legalisation of sharecropping through enactment. The people who own land below the ceiling limit should be provided with protection of their property and the livelihood of sharecroppers should also be protected by law. Till the enactment of such law, the sharecroppers should be identified in Palli sabhas and issued with an identity card. Using this identity card, they can enjoy access to the above benefits. (END)