First, the water in their fields disappeared, and now, the cash in the market.
For Rajaiah of Boovanahalli in Hassan district, the cash crunch following demonetisation has seen his yet-to-be harvested maize shrouded in uncertainty. “There are no merchants to purchase as they have no cash,” he said. There is desperation, however, as his entire produce may be wiped out in just a spell of rain if he lets them standing for too long.
The lack of demand for maize has seen the prices fall in the meanwhile. Before demonetisation, the rate per quintal was Rs. 1,700. Now, it has crashed by nearly a fifth, to Rs. 1,350.
Stories of distress, following a year of drought and now demonetisation, reverberate through the State. As farming remains in flux, the effects of demonetisation have cascaded to farm labourers who are unable to find work.
Cannot spend the cash
Farmers, who have marketed their kharif harvest cannot spend the cash they earned to prepare the ground for rabi cultivation.
S. Sangashetty, a farmer from Bhalki in Bidar district, said he had to repay Rs. 1.2 lakh annual crop loan in a co-operative bank by mid-December and the only currency notes he has after selling red gram and soya are in the denomination of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000.
“The agriculture commission agent is not giving us new currency notes. And bank officials are non committal about whether the last date for repayment will be extended,” he told The Hindu . In the coming days, he has to buy seeds and fertilizer on credit, while thinking of ways to pay labourers without using the demonetised notes.
With no cash to pay labours, Thankachan Andrews, an integrated farmer at Ripponpet village in Shivamogga district, said he had postponed the work of harvesting arecanut and ginger, and tapping the trees at his rubber plantation.
Hit by restrictions
The restrictions imposed on cash withdrawals have affected many farmers. Nagaraju of Melehalli in Tumakuru district told The Hindu , “I need at least Rs. 10,000 a day to cut paddy crop that is ready for harvesting, but I can’t withdraw so much from the bank and hence I am unable to employ as many farm labourers I need for the harvesting work.” He added, “I will incur huge losses as paddy grains will fall off if harvesting is not done on time.”
Some of the labourers are working in the fields as farmers promised to pay them after 15 days or a month.
Bearing the brunt of this are labourers such as Amrut Lal and Jumpa Bai from Seva Lal tanda near Bidar. “No farmer or their agent from these villages have called us for work this month,” said Mr. Amrut Lal. November is when early cultivators start cutting sugarcane and the demand for labour is high.
“We worked in the fields of various farmers for one week. But, nobody paid us as they too are facing shortage of valid currency notes. Our dues are rising in grocery shops. Then, we had to accept Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 notes which we got exchanged at a bank standing in the queue, skipping a day’s work,” said Satyappa, an agricultural labourer from Bapur village in Raichur district.
Migrant labourers form a large part of the farming cycle in the coastal districts — where labour shortage is acute.
Pullikar, a labourer hailing from Assam and working in a farmland in Belthangady in Dakshina Kannada, sent nearly Rs. 6,000 in the form of money order to her family in Assam last month. Though the money has reached, the family members at the other end have not been able to encash it, said a distraught Ms. Pullikar.
(With inputs from Sathish G.T. in Hassan, Rishikesh Bahadur Desai in Bidar, Veerendra P.M. in Shivamogga, S. Bhuvaneshwari in Tumakuru, Kumar Buradikatti in Raichur, and Raghava M. in Mangaluru)
