This Pongal may taste bitter sweet for the hapless farmers in the delta region that has lost the productive samba paddy crop capping a loss of five successive kuruvai crops over the past years. Adding to the gloom, one more farmer lost his life unable to withstand the burden of crop failure, taking the tally of deaths to more than 150 across the region.
“How can we celebrate Pongal, actually a farmers' festival, when we don't have anything to harvest? All that the farming community has harvested this season is unbearable loss, suicides and shock deaths. The delta economy is sinking and so are the stakeholders in the agriculture sector. Unless the governments take things seriously and try to find a lasting solution, food security is going to be a difficult proposition,” rued V. Jeevakumar, vice-president of Tamil Nadu Vivasaya Thozhilalar Sangam.
For the farmers, their crop and investment is gone, but for the landless agricultural workers have simply lost their livelihood. Previously they could find odd jobs. After demonetisation, even it had become a mirage, he said.
The number of farmers who have taken their lives or have lost theirs due to shock and pressure over mounting debts following successive crop failures has crossed the 150 mark. This despite the State government coming out with an announcement of relief package.
“The Central government must take full responsibility for the devastation of the delta,” said P.R. Pandian, coordinator of the All Farmers Associations of Tamil Nadu. The Centre failed to rein in a recalcitrant Karnataka that defied the Supreme Court orders to release water to Tamil Nadu and went one step further to legally rubbish the final award of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal which ordered constitution of the Cauvery Management Board.
The Centre must form the CMB, the Cauvery Water Regulation Committee, grant in whole the relief amount being sought by the Tamil Nadu government and facilitate disbursal of solatium without discrimination to all those who have ended their life or died of shock, Mr. Pandian said.
To highlight the plight of the delta farmers and to demand justice from the Centre, Mr. Pandian and members of his forum have planned to go one a hunger strike in Tiruvarur on Pongal day.
