Eluru: The Godavari delta region, comprising East and West Godavari districts with an ayacut of 10.5 lakh acres, is likely to witness a crop holiday in the current kharif season after a gap of five years.
A group of peasants in the Konaseema region created history by abandoning kharif in one lakh acres in 2011 which made the central and state governments sit up and take note of the sorry state of agrarian conditions.
The growers from Anathavaram of Mummidivaram mandal, Relligadda, Thurpulanka, Godi and Allavaram of Allavaram mandal in the Konaseema region have decided not to go for the kharif as a protest against alleged apathy of the government in addressing the maladies confronting paddy cultivation. Around 5,000 acres in these five villages will go off cultivation as per their decision.
According to Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS) state secretary B Kumara Swamy, peasant leaders from the Godavari delta region will be meeting at Amalapuram in East Godavari district on June 30 to extend the crop holiday to other parts of the delta. "The movement sparked in a small patch of the Godavari delta in 2011 was snuffed out. This time we do not want to let it happen", he says.
The problems being highlighted by the Godavari farmers include upswing of wage cost in paddy cultivation as an offshoot of the hike in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the government's alleged failure to implement the Mohan Khanda's recommendation with respect to release of canal water in time and that of Swaminadhan Commission with regard to fixation of remunerative prices for paddy etc. "Incidentally, these were the issues that propelled crop holiday in 2011 but there appeared no tangible efforts from the government agencies to address them in the last five years", commented Andhra Pradesh Rytanga Samakhya president Yerneni Nagendranath who went on an indefinite fast in defence of the cause of the Konaseema farmers at that time.
Uppala Bhaskara Rao, a farmer from Upthalaguptham mandal who spearheaded the 2011 protest, told TOI that the steep increase of wages under the NREGA made it impossible for the farmers to continue with the cultivation. The daily wage for 3-4 hour work under NREGA has gone up from Rs 123 to Rs 184 in the last two years. This obviously has a bearing on agriculture in the form of increase of farm wages up to 300-500 per head. Kumara Swamy observed that the hike in the minimum support price (Rs 35 per 75 kg bag) is strikingly not in match with the increase in the wage cost. Peddirddy Chengal Reddy, founder chairman of Consortium of Indian Farmers Association (CIFA), a New Delhi-based peasant organisation, said the meagre hike in the MSP left the farmers in the negative balance.
Quoting a study undertaken by the CIFA in Telangana, Chengal Reddy said the Telangana farmers suffered a loss of Rs 9,300cr during the khariff in 2011 in view of the mismatch between the MSP and the production cost. In Andhra Pradesh, it could be around Rs 5,000 crore in five lakh acres. When the production cost has been estimated at Rs 2,035 per quintal, the government has fixed the MSP at Rs 1,470 leaving the growers in the negative balance of Rs 530 per quintal, he said.
When the government has agreed to ensure water release from the canals from the mid-may so that the fields downstream receive the water by June 1 to facilitate raising of seedbeds, nothing happened so for. The delay in water release results in late transplantation and increase of exposure to floods. The failure of the delta modernisation works to take off within the deadline expose farm fields to flooding due to bad condition of drains and canals. Studies reveal that more than 35 per cent of farmers have been diversifying into non-agricultural activity for want of viability. Kumara Swamy wanted the alarming situation to be an eye-opener for the government.