Tenant farmers’ fate hangs in balance

saga of SUICIDEs

• A good number of tenant farmers committed suicide across the State
• Lack of awareness on Loan Eligibility Card hits the victims’ hard

Gajwel: Vallapu family, who hail from Dacharam, a village which lies close to Gajwel, had been haunted by suicides. A year has passed, but grief knows no bounds for the family. It has lost two bread-winners in the ever-increasing incidents of farmer suicides.

Vallapu Narasamma (35) consumed poison in her field on October 26 last year as he was depressed over the Rs 3 lakh debt she had accumulated over the years as a result of investing on cotton and maize farming. But the crops failed. She owned one-and-a-half acre of land and had taken 5 acres of land on lease. After her death, her family was denied any compensation by the government as the signatures on loan papers were that of her husband’s.

Just over a month later, on December 4, her brother-in-law, Vallapu Kishtaiah (35), committed suicide by hanging. He owned no land and had taken 10 acres of land on lease and cultivated cotton and maize. He too had accumulated debts up to Rs 4 lakh. He borrowed money from moneylenders. His wife Yadamma was told by the officials that her family could not be given compensation becaue her husband was a tenant farmer.

Families shattered by losses, young ones dropping out of schools and colleges and widows working as daily-wage labourers-- this is the situation prevailing in the families of tenant farmers who have committed suicides in Telangana State.

The worst-affected in the current agrarian crisis in Telangana State are tenant farmers, according to a recent study undertaken by Rythu Swarajya Vedika (RSV), where 145 families of the victims of farmer suicides from Adilabad, Karimnagar, Medak, Warangal and Mahbubnagar districts were surveyed.

It was found that 80 per cent of the farmers, as many as 122 farmers, who committed suicide, were in fact tenant farmers who both owned a few acres of land and took additional land on lease, or those who did not have any property but had been depending on taking land on lease.

In 2011, Licensed Cultivators Act was enacted by the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh government for providing Loan Eligibility Cards (LEC) to tenant farmers, which could be used for procuring loans from banks. After Telangana State was formed, the State Government has set targets to issue LECs to 4-5 lakh farmers identified as tenant farmers. The actual number of tenant farmers is believed to be around 10 lakh, according to farmers’ organisations.

Due to the lack of awareness among farmers, only 30,718 farmers applied for LEC across Telangana. Out of them, only 17,951 were approved for LEC. Only 123 families among them have been able to get loans with LEC. In Medak, Mahbubnagar, Nizamabad and Nalgonda districts, except one or two cases, none have got the LECs.

But despite RSV approaching the Minister for Agriculture, Chief Commissioner of Land Administration and submitting memorandum to all District Collectors, the Act is still not being implemented across the State.

“All tenant farmers need to be identified first by giving LECs and input subsidy and crop insurance needs to be extended to them. Seeds and fertilisers need to be provided to them at subsidised rates.

All the benefits available to regular farmers need to be made applicable to tenant farmers as well,” demanded B Kondala Reddy, a representative of RSV.

Though MROs have the discretion of compensating the families of tenant farmers in case of suicide, many applications are being rejected if the farmer didn’t have a LEC.

By Vivek Bhoomi