Shahroz Afridi | Jun 8, 2018 | 6 min read
The early morning air was still a little crisp from the previous night’s drizzle, but Rajesh Kushwah, a farmer in Bhopal’s Berasia town, had beads of sweat lining his forehead. Kushwah reached the district’s biggest Karond mandi at 6 am to sell eight sacks of bottle gourd, containing 10 kg each, which were grown in his field in the adjoining town. The mandi is abuzz with hundreds of other farmers like him who have come from nearby places to sell off their produce to wholesale traders. The ‘competitive bidding’ starts and traders settle for a final price of Rs60 per sack for bottle gourds. Kushwah goes home with only Rs480, anxiety written large on his face.
“I had invested around Rs18,000
in bottle gourds this year. This is too less a price for my labour and investment,”
he said.
In another corner of the mandi,
the trader who bought Kushwah’s bottle gourds at Rs6 per kg began
negotiations with retailers. Within hours, he resold Kushwah’s produce at Rs12
per kg, earning at least Rs900. The same vegetables were again sold in the markets
in neighbouring towns for Rs30-35 per kg.
It has been a year since the clashes in Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh claimed the lives of of six farmers when police opened fire on protesters seeking fair crop prices. But brimming granaries and starving farmers continue to plague the state, which will witness Assembly elections in November. The problems of depressed agricultural commodity prices continue to soar even as a race among political parties to woo farmers has already begun. Addressing a gathering to mark the one-year anniversary of the Mandsaur agitation, Congress president Rahul Gandhi on June 6 announced that the party will waive farmers’ loan in 10 days if it comes to power and also take action against those responsible for the farmers’ deaths.
Tussle between farmers and traders
Mandi officials at Karond said 8,000-10,000
quintals of vegetables arrive here every day, throwing light on the huge earning
difference between traders and farmers of nearby areas. Farmers said their
profits are negligible even when there is a rise in vegetable prices since the
gain is mostly usurped by traders in connivance with government officials.
Kushwah grows soybean as the primary
crop and cultivates vegetables at other times of the year. But selling his
primary crop has been a distressing exercise. Four months after widespread
agrarian protests, the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government in the state had
launched the Bhavantar Bhugtan Yojana (BBY) in October – a scheme of paying
farmers the difference between minimum support price (MSP) and the average
wholesale price to mitigate losses. However, benefits of the scheme for soybean
closed in December and since then the rates in mandis have crossed the MSP of
Rs 3,050.
“I had sold soybean in October for
Rs2,650 per quintal and had also availed benefit of the price difference
between its MSP and wholesale rate through BBY. But soon after the scheme
closed, the price rose to Rs3,300 per quintal. This shows that traders deliberately
keep prices depressed while purchases under BBY are made so that the benefits do
not go to farmers,” said Kushwah.
Farmers pay around Rs4,000 per quintal when the crop is purchased by them in
seed form that further adds to their burden.
The situation is similar for most
farmers in the state who try to sell their crops and avail benefits of
government schemes. “Initially, we thought BBY was a good scheme because the
government would take care if our crops are sold below the MSP. But we make
numerous rounds of mandis to keep track of our payment that hardly comes on
time,” said Bheem Singh, another farmer.
State general secretary of the
Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU), Anil Yadav, said, “Garlic was brought under BBY. At
first, it sold at Rs8,000 per quintal and then dropped to as low as Rs200 per
quintal over the months. The cartel of traders had brought down the rate below its
MSP. One of the local farmers had invested Rs27,000 in buying garlic seeds and
another Rs8,000 for fertilizer and labour costs. But he got only Rs6,000 from
the mandi sale, suffering a loss of Rs29,000.”
Till around January, garlic was
being sold at Rs60-80 per kg. In Mandsaur, the prices later fell to as low as
Re1 per kg. “Many farmers threw their produce as it was not a viable option to
even carry it to the mandi. A similar trend was observed in the case of
tomatoes and onion. Why do rates of agricultural produce fall when farmers are
about to sell them but rise again later?” asked Yadav.
The scheme, which was introduced in
the wake of simmering discontent among farmers, has only left them fuming. “It
proved beneficial only to traders, who systemically controlled and lowered rates
during the Bhavantar period and later increased them to make huge gains,” said
another farmer, who did not wish to be named.
Traders under lens
Ajay Dubey, an RTI activist and member of Transparency International, an international NGO fighting corruption, said, “We had obtained a list of 400 suspicious Bhavantar transactions across the state that were compiled by the mandi board officials.”
Dubey said he has placed an
application with the income tax department to probe the matter and see why
some traders were found buying huge quantities of produce only from select
farmers. “It could be only the tip of an iceberg,” he said.
Explaining more about the modus
operandi of traders, BKU general secretary Yadav said, “Traders buy produce at
dirt cheap rates from local farmers and ask them to avail of the benefits of BBY
from the government authorities. Or, they themselves would buy the produce from
mandis of other states where the rates are low and make false entries on names
of farmers to avail of Bhavantar benefits.”
Yadav also gave the example of a
sting operation that was carried out by a media house last year, exposing the nexus between mandi officials and traders.
In a recent raid at the godown of
a trader, identified as Dayaram Sahu, in Lateri area of Vidisha district, officials
had seized unaccounted and unverified stocks of chana and masoor dal in large
quantities. The stocks found at his godown were more than what he had bought from
the mandi.
A food official who was part of
the raid said, “Sahu was found guilty of selling 320 quintals and 210 quintals
of chana dal at lower MSP rates, The produce was procured illegally from some
other place at cheaper prices, which is against government rules.”
In another instance, licence of 30
traders were cancelled in Shajapur area recently after they were found involved
in a BBY scam.
In an announcement made by chief minister Chouhan in March, it was decided that gram, lentils and mustard would be removed from the BBY scheme. The motive, according to government officials, was to encourage farmers to sell these crops at MSP in order to get the “right prices”.
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