Potato fields line both sides of the dusty, kutcha road leading to the house of Guddu Murmu, a sharecropper from West Bengal’s Bardhaman district who allegedly committed suicide early this week.
Sacks of potatoes are stacked out in the open. The distress caused by the abundant yield this year is evident, as farmers who used to sell potatoes directly from the fields are now forced to take the produce home. The bumper crop, coupled with weak demand from other States, has led to a free-fall in prices in West Bengal.
Murmu, who was in his late fifties, had taken a loan of Rs. 50,000 from local moneylenders to cultivate potato in about five bighas (around two acres) of land as a sharecropper. He was shattered when the prices crashed and he killed himself by consuming pesticide on Monday.
Buddhadeb Ansh, a local farm trader and money lender from the adjoining Ramchandrapur village, arrived at Murmu’s house on Wednesday and said the farmer had borrowed Rs 5,000 from him also.
“Last year the farmers sold potatoes at Rs. 350 to Rs. 400 per sack of 50 kilograms. This year, the prices have dropped below Rs. 150. In many cases, there are no takers even at lower prices,” said Ansh,
Murmu had to support a family of ten that includes his wife, three sons, daughters-in-law and grand children. His wife Kalamani has locked herself inside the thatched house at Chatimdanga village and refuses to speak.
“All the potatoes are lying in the fields,” said Ram Murmu, Guddu Murmu’s son. “The store [cold storage] is not taking potatoes any more. We do not know how we will survive.”
A few hundred metres away from Murmu’s home, another farmer Mukul Singh is busy harvesting from his field. “Now we will also have to commit suicide,” he said. “Last year, I produced 150 sacks of potatoes in the two bighas of land that I cultivated and sold them at more than Rs. 350 per sack. This year the produce is higher but the prices are much lower,” he said.
Government denial
Senior government functionaries meanwhile claim that Murmu’s family owns several bighas of land in the village and that his sons are employed outside the State. However, according to the family members and neighbours, Murmu did not own any land and all his sons were farmers in the village.
State’s Agriculture Minister Purnendu Bose denied that the suicide had anything to do with the potato crisis but admitted there was distress selling by farmers. He said the government was buying potatoes for the mid-day meal and the ICDS projects and was in the process of lifting restrictions on sale to other States.
Potato production this year has increased from 90 lakh tonnes to 1.10 crore tonnes. The cold storages in the State can hold not more than 74 lakh tonnes.
‘The government is in the process of lifting restrictions on sale to other States’
