Cotton Farmer Commits Suicide at Nuapada, Orissa
Farmer suicide case is not a new word for Orissa. On 14th November 2008, Chaitanya Majhi, a 45 year old farmer committed suicide by hanging himself in his cotton field at Icchapur village in the district of Nuapada. While the district administration ascribes the suicide to domestic quarrels, a visit to the village reveals otherwise. He had devoted his five acre land to cotton cultivation this year responding to the growing acreage of the crop in his locality. From two acres in the year 2003, the farmers in the village were now growing the cash crop in 150 acres. Unfortunately this year the erratic rainfall led to fall in yield and also increase in disease and pests forcing Majhi to invest more on expensive fertilisers and pesticides. But all his attempts could not save the crops.
As his widow Mungi Majhi revealed amongst sobs, he had taken a loan of Rs.12, 000 from his relatives and friends to invest in chemical inputs. But this amount was not sufficient and he had pledged his eldest son to Dulav Biswal, a former district councillor (Ex-Zilla Parishada), for Rs. 9,000.
His 3 acre cotton Field
Tragically Chaitanya Majhi had been attracted to the crop to earn enough to marry his younger daughter who is engaged since the last two years. He was hopeful that the cash crop would bail him out of penury and help his daughter lead a blissful married life.
“In every evening he always crying in the home for on account of over loan and how to get daughter marriage” his wife added. When he saw the crop going to failed Chaitanya lost his mental balance. “He used to cry night and day worried about how he would refund the loans and also get his daughter married. On the fateful day he had gone to the cotton field in the evening never to return again. The villagers found his body hanging from the mango tree in his field.”
The death created ripples with the media linking it to the spate of cotton farmer suicides in other states.
The State Government went into the damage control mode. The suicide could not be contested as the police had recorded it as an unnatural death (case Sl.No (UD)-03/08) and the post mortem report had ascribed it to asphyxiation. The cause of the suicide became the bone of contention with the District Collector Bishnu Charan Dash refusing to associate it with the failure of the cotton crop. Majhi was disturbed on account of “family problems”, he said.
This cue was taken up by the other officials and political leaders. The local MLA and the District Agriculture Officer agreed with the Collector. The Deputy Director Agriculture (Cotton) went a step further and declared that as there has been a bumper crop of cotton this year, the farmer could not have committed suicide on account of crop failure.
Everyone seemed to know more on the issue than the sobbing widow who obviously was the best judge. She steadfastly and perhaps truthfully put the blame squarely on the dismal crop, the loans taken to invest in chemicals, the worries on account of he pledged son and the impending marriage of the daughter.
Chaitanya Majhi is not the only victim of a failed crop. Other farmers of the village namely Gajendra, Sankar Sahu, Kalesh Chandra Biswal and Ganesh Biswal point out that they too face the same predicament. Like Chaitanya they had been very hopeful of a good crop and invested heavily after taking loans up to Rs.40, 000 from the Komona branch of the State Bank of India . But this year they can hope for a yield of only one to one and a half quintals of cotton per acre against the previous year performance of seven to eight quintals.
The farmers in the village face a very uncertain future. There is no guarantee that there will be no more suicides, they say. “There is no way we can repay the loans”.
This incident of Chaitanya Majhi’s suicide could have served as a warning bell had the government taken heed. In district after district in the State more and more farmers are being advised by the administration and agriculture officials to take up the cultivation of cotton, ostensibly to ensure a higher income for the farmers. The entry of Bt Cotton seed sellers from the adjacent district of Andhra Pradesh and their false claims of high yields with less input costs have pushed many a farmer into a trap.
In the village of Icchapur Pratibha Shiltext, a seed marketing company from Indore had exhorted the farmers to abandon their traditional food crops like finger millet, maize, paddy etc and take to cotton cultivation. They had even promised to buy back the crop. Interestingly the farmers say that the seeds were very expensive, costing Rs. 556 per packet of 450gms.
A normal packet of hybrid seeds costs Rs. 350 per packet. The packet exhibited by them is NCS 999 Super Bunny of Nuziveedu Seeds. And more puzzling, the packet mentions “A Research Cotton (Subeez) hybrid of Nuziveedu Seeds”. Was it an unauthorised trial that was going on in this village?
