Compounded Crises... It's one thing after another!

It's been one thing after another...compounding the crises for debt-burdened village families.

In third week October, just as farmers were feeling relieved about getting their paddy to the market, heavy, unseasonal rain drenched the fields of Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh. Ploughing had to wait for the fields to dry out. Wheat can be sown right up to mid-November, but....

....now DAP (preferred fertilizer)  is in short supply and what little is in the market is being sold at black market prices. In the newspapers we read two explanations for the crisis... government leaders say it's because of rising global prices and supply-chain constraints; opposition political leaders say the Modi government has engineered the shortage to punish farmers for their year-long protest against the new farm laws.The fertiliser crisis means agri-input cost has taken another dangerous jump.

What about suicide-affected families? Some of them had land at one time but by the time their husbands / fathers / sons committed suicide, family land had been sold off to pay debts... so now they have no land to sow. Those who were not labourers before, have become labourers now. In normal sowing times, farmers hire labourers and this means earning for widows and grown children.

But, this year, nothing is normal.

With the big jump in agri-inputs, what can the farmers do?

• The farmers can sow the same acreage they sowed last year with the same amount of fertiliser, but they will have to take out a bigger loan. The heavy debt increases. OR
• The farmers can sow the same acreage but cut back on input cost by using less fertiliser. This means lower yield and lower income.  OR
• The farmers can sow less acreage. Again, lower yield, lower income.

And crops are always at the mercy of poor rains/bad weather...

When the farmer is in trouble, the laborerer is in trouble. It's an old adage ... When the kisan (farmer) is in pain, the seeri (laborer) is at death's door.

Baba Nanak Education Society fears there is no chance of a decline in the number of rural suicides. Who will step forward and assist village families, already deeply vulnerable and pained, now facing one crisis over another?!