BackMaharashtra farmers find a quick fix for poverty
Maharashtra farmers find a quick fix for poverty
PremiumCrop of woes: A policeman with the confiscated poppy crop at Shirola, a village in Sangli district of Maharashtra. Photo: Abhijit Bhatlekar/Mint.
Sangli, Beed/Maharashtra: Sixteen-year-old Kumar Patil from Natoli village in Sangli, a district in Maharashtra, is worried about his future and the fate of his father Sanjay Patil who was jailed last month for illegally growing poppy on his 2.5-acre farm.
Kumar’s father is one of the 75 or so people, including 10 traders, arrested and jailed in connection with illegal poppy cultivation, following raids in Sangli, Satara and Pune in late February. The first illegal poppy fields were discovered on 24 February in Parali taluka of Beed district.
Police have discovered poppy cultivation on around 70 acres. “Stray cases of farmers growing poppy on one or two gunthas (one guntha is around 1,000 sq. ft) used to get reported occasionally but this was for the first time that poppy cultivation was reported on such a large scale in Maharashtra," said Yashowardhan Wange, western region director, Narcotics Control Bureau.
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Helpless farmers and barren fields remain after the Maharashtra police arrested a number of farmers due to illegal cultivation of poppy, in their largest crack down since February.
Police have destroyed poppy cultivated on 40 acres in Moha village in Parali taluka of Beed district. The farmers cultivated them as an inter-crop (grown in patches that surround the main crop). Now there are only barren fields where cotton once stood.
The scene is similar in the Natoli village of Sangli district, where sugarcane was grown. Now, there is just empty land.
While farmers in these regions say poverty had driven them to illegally cultivate poppy, the police blamed it on greed. Kumar and the relatives of the 21 farmers arrested from Natoli village allege that the police are vilifying them in the media.
In Maharashtra the average per acre yield of sugarcane is 25-30 tonnes, according to Maharashtra State Co-operative Sugar Factories Federation. Farmers get a net income of ₹ 7,000-Rs 10,000 from an acre of sugarcane. The average cotton yield on land dependent on the monsoon for irrigation is four-five quintals and a farmer earns a net income of around ₹ 4,000-5,000 per acre. Poppy pods can yield an average income of ₹ 50,000 per acre, according to estimates by the police.
Socio-economic conditions vary across the districts. Farmers of Natoli enjoy relative prosperity due to irrigation while farmers in Moha are dependent on dry land farming. While Sangli is part of relatively prosperous western Maharashtra, Beed falls in the Marthawada region—the poorest region of the state.
According to state economic survey for fiscal 2012, the per capita income of Sangli is ₹ 71,196 per year, for Beed it is ₹ 52,177, below the national average of ₹ 53,331. Beed lags behind Sangli on various human development index indicators. The literacy rate as per the 2011 census in Sangli is 82.68%; it is 73.53% in Beed.
Santosh Patil, whose father Rajaram Patil was among those arrested for growing poppy on his two acres of land, said, “We had planted poppy only on one or two gunthas, and that too as an inter-crop in the sugarcane field. In the rest of our field, we had sowed crops like onions, garlic, chana, etc. We had cultivated poppy only for khas khas, also known as poshto (poppy seeds, used in cooking). We were not aware that poppy is used to make opium and you barely get 10-15kg of poppy seeds from our fields, for which we never got more than ₹ 400 per kg."
Farmers in Moha, where poppy was grown on at least 40 acres, had similar things to say. Phulchand Chate, whose brother Vasant is among those arrested, said, “It is sad that our village, once famous in this area as a village of freedom fighters who struggled against the oppressive regime of the Nizam of Hyderabad, has now acquired notoriety as a ‘mini-Afghanistan’."
Amol Deshmukh, whose father also was arrested for poppy cultivation, pointed out that their farm lies along the state highway connecting Ambejogai and Sholapur. “If we knew it was illegal to grow poppy, would my father have dared to plant the poppy so openly? My father owes more than ₹ 1 lakh to the bank. If we were making money from poppy cultivation, why would my father be in debt?" he asked.
Digambar Pradhan heads the special investigation team set up by the state government to investigate the poppy cultivation.
“Farmers earned anywhere between ₹ 2,000 and ₹ 4,000 per kg for dry poppy pods but it is difficult to ascertain, since the entire operation was illegal and the value of the transaction depended solely on the need of the farmer and the trader," Pradhan said. His team is also investigating the role of revenue department officials.
There was awareness of demand for the product, according to Pradeep Apte, agricultural economist and professor of economics at Pune’s Fergusson College.
“It doesn’t matter whether you are an affluent farmer or one in distress, everyone knows there is demand for such a product and some of them tried to take advantage to make a quick buck," he said. “The demand centre for such a product also existed in the neighbouring state of Goa, which is (visited) by a large number of foreign tourists."
The Maharashtra operation appears to be a local one, Pradhan said.
“In our investigations, we have not found any links of Maharashtra poppy farmers or traders with international drug cartels or terrorist organizations of any kind."
That’s in alleged contrast with similar fields in Himachal Pradesh and other parts of India, where the cultivation of narcotics is controlled by international drug cartels and run in a professional manner.
Wange of Narcotic Control Bureau corroborated: “Investigations so far made by Maharashtra police show it is not a professional operation. If you want to maximise your yield, you need to pluck the pods very carefully and process it with sophistication but in this case, the poppy pod was just dried up and sold."
Most of the poppy crop, according to the police, were purchased by some local traders and sold to dhabawalls (roadside restaurants) for sale to truck drivers. The truck drivers consume opium pellets known as “afeem ki goli" as it gives them a high and allows them to drive for 12 hours or more without a break, they said. In some cases, traders from Nanded bought the poppy to supply it to large farmers in Punjab who, in turn, gave it to migrant labourers working in their fields, the officials said.
The International Narcotics Control Board, an organization that works under the aegis of the United Nations, in its 2011 World drug report said 7,500 hectares of land in various parts of India were found to be under illegal poppy cultivation and the entire domestic requirement for opium is fulfilled from local sources.
Shetkari Sanghatna leader Sharad Joshi and Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatna president and Lok Sabha MP Raju Shetty are demanding that farmers in Maharashtra be given a licence to cultivate opium like their counterparts in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.
Others like Kishore Tiwari of the Vidarbha Janandolan Samiti, which has been highlighting the issue of suicides of cotton farmers, say this would be “a sure recipe for social chaos in the state".
makarand.g@livemint.com
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