Anantapur farmers angry over empty vows, want change

Anantapur: In the drought-prone areas of the Anantapur Parliamentary constituency, resentment is brewing among farmers who are determined to cast their votes for parties that offer tangible solutions to their long-standing water woes and agrarian challenges.

The drought-stricken cultivators, who have battled nature’s wrath year after year, now find themselves at the crossroads of political reckoning. Disillusioned by empty promises and inadequate measures, they are rallying behind a clarion call for change.

The Anantapur parliamentary constituency comprises seven Assembly segments, where drinking and irrigation water is a major concern for farmers. Most of them rely on borewells dug as deep as 900 feet in this region due to poor rainfall and lack of irrigation facilities.

Groundnut, the main crop of this area, has seen a significant decline in cultivation due to lack of rainfall, forcing farmers to give up farming and migrate to cities for their livelihood. T Rajendra (44), a farmer from Itukapalli village of Anantapur mandal, said, “There has been insufficient rainfall in the last eight years, and the water table has dropped sharply. Even borewells are not working properly. I have dug 40 borewells, but only four were successful.”

The subsidy on drip irrigation, which farmers received during the TDP tenure until 2019, was altogether stopped by the incumbent YSRCP government, exacerbating the farmers' problems, he said.

"Had the state government continued the subsidy on drip irrigation, the situation would have been different. I will vote for change this time,” he said.

Rythu Sangham district secretary Chandrashekar said for nearly two decades, farmers in drought prone Anantapur believed groundnut was the sole crop resilient enough to withstand erratic rainfall patterns.

This ingrained belief led to a massive surge in groundnut cultivation area-from 1,94,840 hectares in 1961-62 to a staggering 8,11,156 hectares by 2005-06. By 2006-07, Anantapur district alone accounted for a whopping 50 per cent of the total groundnut cultivation area in the entire state of Andhra Pradesh, he said.

“However, this crop cultivation brought immense misery to the district's farmers. After 1998, more than 10,000 groundnut farmers committed suicide,” he claimed. At least one lakh agricultural laborers have been migrating every year, he added.

The main reasons for this situation were lack of timely rains leading to crop failure, getting trapped in debt due to excessive borrowing for crop protection through bore wells, lack of remunerative prices from the government despite increased input costs, new pests, and reduced yields. To rescue the farming community of the district, governments appointed several committees.

The experts in those committees made valuable recommendations to the governments, but none of them was implemented, he said and hoped the next government whichever party forms will take serious note of this.

As per the official data, irrigation facilities in Anantapur district are available for only 3.04 per cent of the total cultivated area of 14.85 lakh acre. The 1972 National Irrigation Commission had suggested providing irrigation facilities to at least 30 per cent of the land area for agriculture to sustain in this district. Commissions like Jayathi Ghosh in 2004, Swaminathan Foundation report in 2009 and the New Delhi Committee report in 2012 all recommended diverting river waters to overcome droughts in Anantapur district.

“While expert recommendations gathered dust, works on projects initiated decades ago are still incomplete,” Chandrashekar said, adding that farmers are not able to go for expensive drip irrigation as the YSRCP government has scrapped the subsidy on it," the Rythu Sangham leader said.

Many farmers are upset with the YSRCP government for not addressing their issues. The state government has announced only one scheme Rythu Barosa, under which Rs 5,500 per annum was given to the farmers, which has allegedly not been implemented properly. “I am getting Rs 6,000 per annum under the Central scheme PM-KISAN and not the state government’s Rythu Barosa' scheme benefits,” farmer Balu Bojjaiah (50) from the same village said.

Farming has become difficult due to increased cost of production. For instance, the labour cost has increased to Rs 350-500 for six hours of work compared to eight hours a day earlier. The tractor cost has risen from Rs 500 per hour to Rs 1,500 per hour, excluding diesel expenses, he said.

Lakshmi Narayana (64), a farmer who also works as a battery vehicle operator at Sri Krishnadevaraya University, lamented that farming has become a loss-making business. “I invest my entire salary in maintaining my farm, yet I get nothing substantial in return.

Narayana, who grows groundnut, cotton and paddy on 10 acres of land, said. "Suppose if I spend Rs 2,000 on my farm, I get only half of it in return. I have a debt of Rs 40 lakh.”

In the Anantapur Parliamentary constituency, 33 candidates are contesting, with a straight fight between TDP's G Lakshminarayana and YSRCP’s M Sankara Narayana, although Congress' Mallikarjuna Vajjala is also in the fray.

TDP candidate Lakshminarayana blamed the incumbent government for neglecting Anantapur and promised to develop the region if voted to power. “The main problem is water. There are several reservoirs and irrigation projects which are either neglected or remained non-starter -- all these will be taken up if voted to power.”