The colourful rangoli patterns are missing, there is no smell of delicacies in their houses and the warmth and bonhomie which one sees on the eve of harvest festival are missing in villages resisting land-pooling.
For families, living on fertile lands, tilling them and selling the produce at Vijayawada and other towns has been a way of life for many years. With the notification for land pooling being given in most of the 29 villages, farmers have a lingering feeling that this could be the last harvest.
“We do not feel like celebrating as a sense of panic has crept in our villages. We are wary that the government will use force to make us sign on consent letters,” said a farmer at Penumaka.
A sense of anxiety gripped the family of M. Sivarami Reddy, who had done his M.Sc and M.Tech and worked for a few years as assistant professor in an engineering college, before chucking his job and donning the role of a farmer.
“I grow jasmine and marigold in a two-acre leased farm. I engage labourers to work throughout a year to pluck flowers and I made a profit of Rs. 2 lakh last year, sufficient to meet the needs of my young family. If the government takes away my land, where will I find work?” asked Mr. Reddy, a farmer from Nidamarru.
At some banana plantations at Penumaka and Undavalli, farmers fear that the worst times have set in.
“Ever since the incidents of fire took place in the last week of December, we are in a state of siege from police forces. They stop our vehicles, ask for papers and if we have any spare fuel, they spill it on the road. We are not allowed to go to our fields and our young men are often taken to police stations and kept for hours,” says Rammohan Reddy from Penumaka. Some like Bhimavarapu Sujatha feel piqued that the prices of land have nose dived after land-pooling began in those upland villages. “Fertile lands on the river basin have always commanded better prices. Now, an acre of land which used to be sold for Rs.3 crore, has come down to Rs.1.5 crore,” she said.
If the government takes away my land, where will I find work?
M. Sivarami Reddy
Jasmine, marigold farmer
