Government Apathy Turning ‘Golden’ Harvest Into Dirty Brown In Odisha’s Tribal Belt: Ground Report From Nabarangpur

Of the nine colours that collectively gave the name of this southwestern district of Odisha that is surrounded by Chhattisgarh on three sides, one is on its way to becoming history. 

Krishna Dev, a local king, was so mesmerised by the beauty and fertility of the land here that he named it ‘Nabarangpur’, or the land of nine colours. One of the colours was golden--the hue of the paddy crops that the fertile land here yielded in abundance. 

While the major crop here was paddy during Krishna Dev’s time, it has been maize over the last three decades or so. Nabarangpur is the largest producer of maize--about eight lakh tonnes a year--in Odisha. 

But both these crops--paddy and maize--are facing a bleak future. Absence of irrigation facilities, low procurement prices, declining yields and sharply rising input costs, deteriorating soil fertility and vagaries of weather have pushed paddy and maize farmers into a deep crisis in this tribal-dominated district.

Crop failures, as in this year, are common. That had pushed tens of thousands of farmers into debt, penury and lifelong bonded labour.

The Naveen Patnaik government in the state has done precious little for the farmers, who have been left to fend for themselves. Most of the farmlands are rainfed and farmers, thus, grow only one crop a year. 

Unlike many other states, the BJD government here does not offer crop insurance cover to farmers. The state government’s procurement prices are low and farmers don’t even make minimal profits for their backbreaking labour. 

Also, lack of institutional support has resulted in most farmers becoming heavily indebted to moneylenders, called ‘sahukars’ locally. Tribal farmers are mostly sharecroppers and their indebtedness is often exploited by their creditors to force them into bonded labourers, quite frequently for life.  

Most of the farmers who grow paddy and maize, which has made the district famous, belong to Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) communities.

As a result of government apathy, say people of Nabarangpur, this land will soon lose one of its primary colours--golden. The golden hue of the once-bountiful harvests is fast changing into a dirty shade of brown, thanks to repeated crop failures and resultant farm distress. 

To get a first-hand account of the plight of farmers whose produce gave the land (Nabarangpur) its name, I travelled to Umerkote, about 65 kilometres northwest of Nabrangpur town, the headquarters of the eponymous district. Umerkote, located in the southwestern extremity of Odisha, is just 18 kilometres (20 minutes) from Chhattisgarh and a 13-hour journey (540 kilometres) by road from Bhubaneshwar. 

According to official statistics, about 1.5 lakh farmers cultivate maize in about 70,000 hectares of land in Nabarangpur.

Narsingh Harijan, 40, a resident of Daragaguda village in the outskirts of Umerkote town, is a broken man. He owns a one acre plot of land where he cultivates maize. 

His farmland, like that of many others in the area, depends on rains and a nearby reservoir from which water flows through canals for irrigation. Accumulation of silt and waste in the reservoir has sharply reduced its storage capacity and lack of rains has resulted in the reservoir drying up completely this year. 

“There was no water and so the yield (of maize) declined drastically from about 30 quintals an acre to just 12 quintals this year,” Narsingh told Swarajya. He has just harvested his crop and says that the middlemen who purchase corn will take advantage of his distress and offer him a low price. 

“The government does not purchase corn and we have to take whatever the middlemen offer us. We are desperate to sell our produce and get whatever we can to repay the loans we have taken from the ‘sahukars’ to purchase seeds, fertilisers and pesticides. The prevailing rate now is Rs 2,000 per quintal, but I can make a very small profit only if I get at least Rs 2300 a quintal,” Narsingh, who is a Dalit, told Swarajya. 

Had a cold storage existed, he adds, farmers could have stored their produce and waited for prices to go up. And the absence of a mandi where buyers place competitive bids would have ensured remunerative prices of farm produce. 

“We receive zero support from the state government. We’ve heard about some schemes for farmers initiated by Modi sarkar (the Union Government), but they haven’t been implemented here. Our crops fail occasionally and that brings untold misery,” said Narsingh who has three school-going children. 

Since he won’t even fully recover the input costs from selling his maize crop this year, Narsingh says he will have to work as a labourer to feed his family. “My wife will also have to work as a labourer, or else we will starve,” he says. 

The Union Government had, incidentally, proposed the setting up of a plant to manufacture ethanol from corn in Nabarangpur a few years ago and was ready to sanction funds to start work on the project. But the state government has not acquired land for the project that would have provided relief to maize farmers. 

“Had the plant come up, we would have got good prices for our produce,” said Narsingh. He said that due to lack of irrigation, he grows only one crop a year. 

“I put in nine hours of hard labour every day for four to five months to grow maize. But if I can’t make a single Rupee from it, what is the point of toiling so much?” he wonders. 

Narsingh’s neighbour Puran Harijan, 65, cultivates paddy on a three-acre plot of land. He told Swarajya that normally, the yield is 25 quintals an acre. “But it didn’t rain this year and the yield is only 12 quintals an acre. I have to harvest the crop right now so that it does not wilt any more under the scorching sun,” he told Swarajya. 

But middlemen, he added, will take advantage of his urgency and offer him only Rs 1,950 a quintal for the paddy he will harvest. “This rate is too low. It should be a minimum of Rs 3,000 a quintal if we have to earn a minimal profit,” he said. 

He has heard of the BJP’s campaign pledge of fixing Rs 3,100 per quintal as the minimum support price for paddy. He’s also aware that the new BJP government in neighbouring Chhattisgarh has already implemented this MSP. 

“But we can’t hope for this as long as this (BJD) government is in power", he added. 

Puran has to support a family of six--his wife, a widowed daughter-in-law and three grandchildren. He had three sons--the one who was married died of snakebite a few years ago and the other two committed suicide after crop failures that made them heavily indebted to a local moneylender. 

“This year, I will incur heavy losses. I will have to work as a labourer, along with my wife and daughter-in-law, to ward off starvation. The free ration of 5 kilos of rice (per head a month) has been a great help,” he said. And no, he doesn’t know that the free ration comes from the Union Government; that’s because the state government supplies the rice bought with funds provided by the Union Government to beneficiaries in bags that bear the image of Naveen Patnaik. 

This is what Prime Minister Narendra Modi referred to while addressing a rally in Nabarangpur earlier this week. He had accused the Naveen Patnaik government of taking credit for welfare measures being funded by the Union Government. 

Puran Harijan, who is also a Dalit, had taken a loan of Rs 40,00 to buy seeds, fertilisers and pesticides. “I will incur heavy losses this year and will work as a labourer to pay off that debt,” he told Swarajya. 

In the tribal hamlet of the same village (Daragaguda), I met Subhadra Mali, 45, a tribal. She doesn’t own any farmland and had taken a 1.5 acre plot on lease to cultivate corn and paddy. 

“We didn’t get any rains this year and the reservoir is completely dry, so we had no water for our crops. I could harvest only 12 quintals of paddy and five quintals of corn from the land I had taken on lease. I will be able to sell the paddy at only Rs 1,950 a quintal and the corn for Rs 1,800 per quintal. That won’t be enough to cover even the input costs--the cost of seeds, pesticides, fertilisers and also the cost of hiring labourers--and so I’ll incur a huge loss,” she told Swarajya. 

Subhadra’s is a family of six and like other distressed farmers who have faced devastating crop failure this year, she also plans to work as a labourer to feed her family and pay off at least a portion of the Rs 25,000 loan she had taken (at 5 per cent interest a month). 

The total input cost for paddy cultivation is about Rs 40,000 an acre. Add to that the hours she and her family has put in to cultivate the crop. If those man-hours are monetised, the total input cost will go up to Rs 60,000 an acre. 

But she will get only Rs 23,400 for the 12 quintals of rice she has produced from the one acre plot she had taken on lease. To make matters worse, she will have to fulfil her lease obligations--one third of the total produce has to be given to the landowner. 

“The usual practice is to give a third of the crop to the owner of the land we take on lease. But when crops fail like this year, we cannot give the produce and have to pay in cash. I’ll have to work hard to pay the lessor,” she said. 

Subhadra’s husband Rainu works as a labourer at a construction site. Her son Jagannath, who had to drop out of high school to supplement the family income, also works as a labourer. “Now I plan to engage my daughter-in-law to sell vegetables in the local market while I will also work as a labourer. She (daughter-in-law) has two minor grandchildren to look after, but she will have to manage,” rued Subhadra. 

Purna Gouda, 40, a resident of the same village, owns half an acre of land and had taken two more acres to cultivate paddy. Due to the scorching sun, no rains and lack of water to irrigate his crop, he could harvest only 12 quintals of paddy. 

That entire produce, however, will have to be given to the owner of the two acres of land he had taken on lease. “The lease condition was that I would give one-third of the produce to the landlord. That one-third was calculated at 12 quintals because one acre usually yields a minimum of 18 quintals of rice and the two acres would have produced 36 quintals of rice. One third of that is 12 quintals,” he explained. 

The input cost on the 2.5 acres of paddy he cultivated was Rs 80,000. Purna has an accumulated debt of Rs 60,000 that he had taken from a local ‘sahukar’. He will have to pay an interest of Rs 3,000 a month (5 per cent) to the ‘sahukar’. 

“I will have to work as a labourer to repay the debt. Thankfully, my son who is a graduate works as an assistant at a store in Umerkote town and his income will keep us alive. Otherwise we would have had to sell off our land to pay off my debt,” said Purna. 

His 35-year-old brother, Mukund, is more unfortunate. The standing crop of paddy that he cultivated on 1.5 acres that he took on lease has wilted due to the scorching sun and lack of water. 

“I have a debt of Rs 40,000. The cost of inputs was also high. I purchased three packets of seeds (Rs 850 a packet) for sowing and 7.5 quintals of fertilisers (Rs 3000 per quintal). I spent about Rs 2000 on pesticides and Rs 18,000 on engaging labourers for sowing, weeding and other tasks,” he said.

So the total cost he incurred for cultivating paddy on the 1.5 acres he had taken on lease was Rs 45,000. His farming would have been viable had the 1.5 acres yielded 30 quintals (20 quintals an acre) that he would have sold for Rs 3,000 a quintal. 

“But I will pay the landowner a rent of Rs 18,000 as per the lease agreement. If I am unable to pay him this year, this will be carried forward to next year. I’ll have to work as a labourer to pay him and feed my family. If things get tough, I’ll have to pull out my eldest son Amaresh from high school and ask him to work as a labourer to supplement my earnings,” Mukund told Swarajya. 

Maize farming was introduced in Nabarangpur by Bengali Hindu refugees from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) who fled horrific persecution in that Islamic country in the runup to the 1971 war. The refugees were resettled in parts of Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh by the Union government at that time. 

Many Bengali Hindu families stay in Nuaguda village near Umerkote town, and all are namasudras who are listed as Scheduled Castes (SCs). They are mostly into farming, and their plight is no different from the tribal farmers of the area. 

Their maize and paddy crops have also failed. I met Dinesh Sutar who wanted to diversify from paddy and maize farming. 

“I grew chillies on one acre of my farmland, I spent nearly Rs five lakh on preparing the land, fencing it, buying and installing sprinklers, organic fertilisers and pesticides and on hiring labourers. The yield would have been very good--about 75 quintals a week for the entire three-month season. By selling the produce at Rs 50 a quintal, I would have made a very good profit,” he told Swarajya. 

But a freak storm two weeks ago destroyed his entire crop. “I am ruined, I don’t know what to do. I’ll now have to sell off or mortgage my wife’s jewellery,” he cried. 

The state government, he added, does not have any crop insurance scheme. Yes, he has heard of such a scheme initiated by the Union Government. 

“But we are dependent on the state government. We cannot directly approach the Union Government. If the state government does not allow the implementation of such welfare measures of the Union Government, we can do nothing,” he said. 

That is why, said Balabhadra Majhi, the BJP’s nominee from Nabarangpur Lok Sabha seat, the Naveen Patnaik government in the state which has done nothing for farmers has to go. 

“Only after this corrupt, inefficient and anti-farmer government is replaced can farmers start smiling once again,” Majhi. 

The BJP has promised to implement a procurement price of Rs 3,100 per quintal of paddy, start irrigation schemes, construct borewells and install electric pumps for farmers to irrigate their farmlands with groundwater as an immediate measure, set up cold storages and mandis, and also provide institutional support to farmers to stop their dependence on the exploitative ‘sahukars’.  

Nabarangpur needs such measures to make farming viable once again and restore the golden hue to the region. 

This report is part of Swarajya's 50 Ground Stories Project - an attempt to throw light on themes and topics that are often overlooked or looked down. You can support this initiative by sponsoring as little as Rs 2,999/-. Click here for more details.