At 3 p.m. on Tuesday, the queue outside the small building that houses the Punjab National Bank at Satla village on the outskirts of Meerut only got longer with each passing minute.
Jasbeer Singh hopped on to his tractor in the hope of finally getting his hands on some cash from the nearest bank, located a kilometre away from his home at Bahadurpur village. When the 45-year-old finally reached the bank at 11 a.m., 40 other farmers were already in queue.
Tempers run high
In fact, some of them had been waiting long before the bank opened for the day. By the time the clock struck 2, tempers were running high and patience low. A fight broke out when someone tried to jump the queue. When Jasbeer’s turn came, he was given just Rs.5,000 instead of the Rs.24,000 he was expecting. This infuriated the sugarcane farmer, who recently got lakhs of rupees as purchase price for his crop. The money was transferred directly to his account by the mill.
It has been a month since the Narendra Modi government announced demonetisation and limited withdrawal of cash. Going by what the farmers in western Uttar Pradesh have to say, the situation looked distressing, to say the least.
“How do I survive on just Rs.5,000? How is Rs.5,000 enough for a farmer to run his family and do farming,” asked Jasbeer, who has a wife and three sons, while on the way back to his village. He added that his tractor alone drank fuel worth several thousands when used for ploughing. He went on to list the various problems faced by farmers due to demonetisation.
“Extremely frustrating”
“This is extremely frustrating. There is simply no cash in the bank. Every time we complain, the bank manager asks us to approach Modi ji . How are the farmers supposed to work when it is getting extremely difficult to run the house itself?”
Rambeer Singh, another farmer from his village, said sugarcane farmers needed to access the money transferred to their account by the sugar mills “as soon as possible”.
“The money is crucial for the next season, but farmers are unable to access it right now. Because we are unable to withdraw our money, which we got after selling the sugarcane to the local mill, it will adversely affect our ability to sow the next crop. This will affect the production of sugarcane as well,” said Rambeer.
Rambeer sold 600 quintal of sugarcane as per the State Advised Price of Rs.315 per quintal and got Rs.1.89 lakh in his account. Though unable to withdraw the money for the next season’s crop, he is still able to manage thanks to his sons, who work in the National Capital Region.
“My sons gave me some money, which I used to sow the next season’s crop after cutting sugarcane from the field. But not every farmer is as lucky as me,” he asserted, adding that there is no ATM in his village.
“One of the worst
steps for farmers”
“Thousands of villages in western Uttar Pradesh don’t have an ATM and people are forced to travel one to five km just to access their money. Even then, there is no guarantee that they will get the money,” says a visibly agitated Rambeer, who called demonetisation “one of the worst steps for the farmers”.
Far away from Satla, serpentine queues running into several kilometres can be seen outside a sugarcane mill in Baghpat.
Sugarcane farmers have been waiting to get the crop weighed and sell it to the mill. The crushing season started in November. The money was transferred to their account last month itself. However, they have been unable to withdraw the money.
“Farmers were
dying anyway”
“Demonetisation couldn’t have come at a worst time. Farmers were dying anyway. They can’t even get whatever little cash they had at their disposal, which has made their plight worse,” said 52-year-old Satveer Singh, who was waiting with a tractor full of sugarcane outside the mill.
“A farmer needs cash at every stage of farming. It is a tragedy if he can’t access the meagre amount he has at his disposal,” said Satveer, who is yet to start sowing the next season’s crop.
“Boon” for middlemen
“The delay in sowing the next season’s crop even by a day affects the final productivity. We have to do it by November 15. If we delay the sowing by a week, it decreases productivity by as much as 30 per cent. So you can understand how the cash crunch will affect the productivity of the next season’s crop,” he explained.
Adding to the farmers’ woes is the fact that cash crunch has come as a “boon” for middlemen and brokers, who have been doing their best to exploit sugarcane farmers and buy their crop at a much cheaper rate in cash.
“The cash crunch has made middlemen extremely prosperous, while the farmers are more vulnerable. The brokers have been offering a rate as low as Rs.225 per quintal in cash. Farmers who don’t want to stand in line and need money urgently had no choice but to sell their produce to the brokers,” he said.
