From correspondents in India, 08:30 AM IST

Wardha (Maharashtra) - 'Uttam Sheti, Madhyam Vyapar, Kanishth Naukri (Agriculture is the best occupation, business comes next, employment is the most inferior) -- the aphorism reportedly originated from Maharashtra's Vidarbha region in central India about 100 years ago. Today, starving and debt-ridden farmers stretch out their begging bowls as the more desperate among them give up a losing battle for survival and take the escape route to death.

It's not a quirk of fate, though; but a slow drift from well being to penury.

With the region's fertile soil and assured rainfall, even the small farmers of western Vidarbha or Varhad (corrupted to Berar by the British) were a happy and contented lot. Indeed it was this reassuring state of agriculture to which the two famous traits of sons of the black cotton soil - magnanimity and indolence - were attributed.

Yet, an overwhelming majority of them, barring a few malguzars and a small percentage of medium-size farmers, were poor. But they had enough to eat, a hut to live in and a pair of dhotis to cover their bodies. Acute droughts, even famines were not unknown but they were few and far between.

Apart from foodgrains and vegetables for self consumption, the two main farm inputs - seeds and manure - were produced on-farm as was fodder for the cattle head. The currency to buy farm implements (from village artisans) and labour was mostly grain. Whatever money they needed to buy other necessities came from the sale of cotton and foodgrain. Life was simple and death came naturally, not from the can of insecticide.

All this changed with the much-hyped introduction of hybrid varieties of jowar and cotton and chemical fertiliser in the early 1960s. The high-response hybrid varieties did fulfil the promise of high yield but only when treated with chemical fertiliser whose prices kept spiraling.

Hybrid cultivation necessitated purchase of seeds because the seeds coming off the hybrid crops cannot be matured for germination. Hybrid jowar doesn't yield fodder either, which meant addition of yet another item in the farmer's shopping list. Prices of all the new market-induced, must-buy inputs went up steeply over the years while the prices of farm produce did not increase in that proportion.

As Vijay Jawandhia, a farmer leader and an expert in agrarian economics, recalls, prices of jowar increased from Re.1 a kg in 1970-71 to Rs.5 a kg in 2006. Cotton prices rose from Re.1 a kg in 1972 to Rs.20 a kg in 2006 -- a bumper increase indeed when viewed in isolation but not when compared to the corresponding increase in the price of diesel - from Rs.0.84 a litre to Rs.40 a litre now.

The monopoly cotton procurement scheme, meant to ensure remunerative prices for the cash crop and protect its cultivators from the wolves in the market, never really worked well and has since fizzled out.

The first casualty of the shift from food crops to cash crops in Vidarbha was jowar, whose cultivation cost increased but selling price remained stagnant. Farmers jettisoned it first in favour of cotton and then for soybean. This meant steep decrease in the availability of rural Vidarbha's staple food so much so that farmers, the producers of foodgrain, themselves had to buy foodgrain now. Equally seriously, it also meant disappearance of free fodder.

Complete shift to cotto

n from jowar also had an adverse effect on Vidarbha's soil health. Jawandhia explains how: Traditionally, the farmers used to alternate the two annual kharif crops on the same field. Jowar, with shallow roots, used to consume nutrition only from the superficial layer of soil. Next year, cotton crop with deeper roots would absorb nutrients from the lower layer allowing regeneration of nutrients in the upper layer through natural process and vice versa.

Cultivation of cost-and-water-intensive cotton crop every year resulted in non-stop consumption of soil nutrients and water mining. The need to buy fodder along with several other expensive buys often pushed the farmers into a cash crunch, forcing them to sell their cattle.

This led to paucity of manure whose conjunctive use with chemical fertiliser is mandatory for the maintenance of soil health. It also ruled out the development of dairy farming as a supplementary source of income.

Even as the government encouraged farmers to cultivate more and more cotton, it failed to make the necessary provision for irrigation. Dam projects, initiated late in Vidarbha in the first place, remained pending inordinately, first because of fund crunch and then because of the Forest Conservation Act (FCA) that forbids use of forestland for non-forest purposes. In western Maharashtra, on the other hand, several irrigation projects were completed much earlier benefiting the sugarcane-growers.

While Vidarbha's assured rainfall and soil fertility were often cited to put the region on a second-priority list for irrigation, the erratic nature of its rainfall pattern was conveniently ignored though long dry spells alternating with equally long wet spells in the season often led to crop failures.

While this happened, the farmers did not do what they could to save the situation - adopting small water conservation measures like check dams, percolation tanks and farm ponds that their counterparts in western Maharashtra did to the hilt. They were also reluctant to take two crops, adopt modern farming techniques and generate supplementary sources of income.

Now, of course, the clock cannot be turned backwards but some wrongs can be righted in the changed times to turn around the situation. Completing the long pending irrigation projects in three years as promised by the central and state governments, ensuring remunerative prices for farm produce through effective market intervention, boost for cultivation of food crops like jowar through subsidies and creation of a massive network of milk cooperatives are the major steps that must be taken. Loan waiver, of course, comes before all this and must be done at once instead of waiting for the election year.

The lotus eaters in Vidarbha must shrug off their wonted sloth and work diligently like the farmers in western Maharashtra to create a better future for themselves in a new world where there aren't going to be free lunches any more.

(Staff Writer, © IANS)