By Patricia Mukhim
I begin this article with a disclaimer. It’s written with malice towards none but seeks to call out attempts at obfuscating the tangible and often cruel plight of farmers.
Farmers’ Parliament
in luxury locales
A farmer’s parliament in the plush state convention centre is an oxymoron. The very world ‘parliament’ is misleading but merely because some high-flying consultant came up with this word, it has now become common currency. That’s how devoid of thinking we have become here in Meghalaya. By default, a farmers’ conference should have been held closer to the farmers’ field in the rural outback where farmers are in their elements and can demonstrate their problems in real time. Also in that case only real farmers and not their ‘representative/s’ would be the attendants; not the well-heeled townsfolk who “represent” farmers. Calling a rural farmer who lives a hand to mouth existence to the State Convention Centre where the lunch prepared was of 5-star quality is an insult to genuine farmers who continue to live at subsistence level. There is an unbridgeable chasm between what is discussed in the Farmers’ Parliament and the realities on the ground.
Politics of Representation
In Meghalaya the ‘politics of representation has become a stinking reality, People whose hands have never touched the soil; people with manicured nails and dainty hands remorselessly claim to be farmers. Its true that they have the wealth to acquire farmland and have become absentee farmers whose farms are looked after by underpaid hirelings. But that does not make them farmers because they don’t suffer the pangs of losing crops to the vagaries of weather, especially now with climate change being a stark reality.
The politics of representation is the contested space between the subject, the representation of the subject and self-representation. This conceptualisation leads us to ask: is there a right way to do representation? And most importantly, who gets to decide what is ‘right’? What is being discussed in the farmers’ parliament? Is it the correct depiction and a true representation of the situation on the ground? Are there case studies and evidence of the statistics presented by government officials who took the stand one after the other to make their case that they have done a phenomenal job of addressing farmers’ issues? This “representation” is dangerous because it is aimed at justifying government spending. It is the farmers who know what it means to lose their crops for one of many reasons and the absence of crop insurance schemes because most rural folks still don’t have an Aadhar card or a bank account
Farmers as pawns
in the electoral game
Last year around this time farmers were wooed to vote for the ruling party at the time – the NPP, UDP, PDF combine by paying Rs 5000 per farmer with the distant dream that the farmers would pool the amount and do something as a collective. That never happened. The Rs 5000 was used for consumer goods because no one from the Government is really monitoring how the farmers have utilised the amount. In simple language that money became a dole. I am not so sure that they will get a similar dole this year since there is no general election but perhaps they might get something before the Lok Sabha polls in May 2024.
That’s what farmers are reduced to not just in this state but across the country. But whereas farmers in other parts of India have a loud and strong voice and can bring any government to its knees, here farmers are “Re-presented” by ‘high level’ representatives, some with claims of being in several international organisations who are here for a flying visit and who need the ‘Farmers’ Parliament’ to buttress up their CVs, just so they climb further up the ladder of personal achievement by riding piggy back on the poor farmers of Meghalaya who actually don’t know they are being led up the garden path. Sadly, there are no critical voices to call out these pretentious self-seekers. One wonders why governments buy these schemes and plans which ultimately turn into incubators of disillusionment.
Who is sitting at the
high table?
The presence of the India representative of AstraZeneca while it can give the “Parliament” a leg-up and some credibility, this is an international bio-pharmaceutical research company. One can understand the company’s interest in medicinal plants but what is its interest in discussions on agriculture or horticulture or animal husbandry and veterinary? If AstraZeneca was here on a conference organised by the Forest Department jointly with the ADCs under whose watch the forests and medicinal plants are then one can understand the connection but their presence in a farmer’s parliament defies logic unless farmers abandon their traditional farming practices and switch over to growing medicinal herbs. I hope the Organisers of the Parliament would deign to explain this disconnected piece of puzzle.
What’s there to celebrate about being a farmer in Meghalaya?
Other than the GI tag for Lakadong turmeric that was recently procured after much effort and due credit must be given to the movers and shakers of this achievement, there’s nothing really to celebrate for the small and marginal farmers who are left to lick their wounds after a natural calamity such as unseasonal rain. Since the first Parliament what has been the outcome? What are the success stories on the ground? Is there an orange farmer who has been able to turn the tide of fungal or mould and mildew attacks besides a host of diseases that destroys his whole tree? We see a whole tree dying when we visit the orange orchards in Laitkynsew etc. But other than spraying dangerous chemical pesticides there is as yet no known organic pesticide to heal the trees.
In the third year of the Farmers’ Parliament, what has changed since the first one? Are farmers getting their returns for their blood sweat and tears? Is the Government looking after the marketing aspects – the gaps between production and marketing? Should the pineapple farmer also have to process and market the processed product? Where are the marketing agencies? Please don’t tell us that MECOFED is a marketing agency. It does that on a very small scale. Most farmers growing tomatoes are under pressure to sell it below the rate at which they would break even. We are buying tomatoes at Rs 80 a Kg from the market. Ask the farmer at what rate he is selling it and then try to bring this challenge to the Farmers’ Parliament.
Need for a dedicated Farmers’ Market
When we talk of farmers we are not talking of just the successful turmeric farmers who have received adequate assistance from the state and are now well placed to brand and market their products. We are talking of the voiceless farmers that grow radish, cauliflower, cabbage, potatoes and rice and the myriad problems they encounter. Let these farmers have their say and not be “Re-presented” by someone else who does not grow anything other than his/her personal career.
There are challenges galore staring at the farming community in Meghalaya. Have those been listed out? What are the action-plans that Government has in its armoury? Why can’t Meghalaya think of creating space for a Farmer’s Market in all the district headquarters so that the middle-man who takes away the bulk of the profit is eliminated? In western countries, farmers, especially those growing organic vegetables get a good price for their products.
Dependence on chemical fertilisers & pesticides
In Meghalaya farmers have been tutored that growing anything without chemical fertilisers is non-productive. What we have not looked at is the deep connection between politicians and the chemical fertiliser companies. Such deep-seated corruption in the system where the Agriculture Ministers in the past are known to negotiate deals with companies dealing in chemical fertilisers and pesticides are the bane of this state. But there is none to raise their voice on this! The farmer wants a quick profit from using heavy doses of fertilisers at the cost of the soil. The politician looks for his cut. At the end of the day the soil quality has depreciated so badly that the farmer must rely heavily on fertilisers even while water bodies are poisoned.
Loss of biodiversity and indigenous rice species
And let’s look at indigenous rice species. On speaking to the farmers of Ri Bhoi one learnt that we have already lost a lot of indigenous rice seeds by becoming dependent on high-yielding variety of rice seeds provided by Government. These high-yielding varieties of seeds are, however vulnerable to climate change. Some species of the Joha rice which used to be grown in that district are no longer available. They are lost forever. Indigenous species of seeds as found by agricultural researchers are much more resilient and can withstand pests and climatic uncertainties. Does our State Government even care enough to create seed banks for indigenous species of seeds? Was this a talking point at the Farmers Parliament?
We want answers to the above questions.