Ravendra singh’s plight of being a tenant farmer has been well

known yet least addressed issue of our country. The tenant farmers
are the most under represented community in popular media and
even ongoing farm protest has not done any justice to them either.
The article highlights the inaccessible institutional credit, absence of
insurance support and total denial of compensation to this segment
of farming community. The void is fulfilled by private loan sharks
who charge heavy interest thereby leaving the individual with no
profit at the end of farming season. In spite of back breaking work in
heat and dust, rain and cold tenant farmers barely avoid starvation.
The manual farm work is incredibly hard and the worst part being
the absence of any break. It’s around the year vocation without any
retirement. Tenancy farming is a vicious trap as stated in MR Singh’s
words (vada khilafi). He can not leave his village for better pasture in
urban areas as he has taken loan too. The total absence of state
support and non-sympathetic and uncompromising land owner turn
life of these folks a never-ending ordeal of unfathomable proportion.
The ever-falling crop productivity and cataclysmic climate change
have added to their woes substantially. The former leaves farm
worker with no other options but to increase the use of pesticides
and purchase high yielding variety of seeds. Both of which enhances
the input cost significantly thereby eating into the already
pathetically low profit margin. The latter simply destroys the crop.
The climate change is visible in long spells of dry and hot weather
followed by short yet intense burst of rain, a marked increase in the
occurrence of cyclone, thunderstorm, flash floods, severe cold wave
and hailstorms.
This is global phenomena and in other responsible countries state
steps in to compensate for the crop failure due to vagaries of
weather. In India this compensation however low is wholly
appropriated by land owner despite his investment being half. This
brutal tradition is well covered in the article and makes for gut
wrenching read. All the assurance and government circular has failed
to do the rightful thing. The absence of any formal contract and
hesitation on the part of tenant farmers to claim their share from
land owners further aggravates the problem. The hesitation must
also be seen in the context of prevalent caste matrices and political
disempowerment of tenant farmers. This all factors when combined
together makes the investment both in money and sweat of tenant
farmers fall at mercy of land owner. According to NSSO-2013 tenant
farmers make up for 80% percent of all farmer suicides in the
country. The NABARD All India rural financial inclusion survey also
paints a very grim picture. The tendency is growing all over India to
lease land and has reached to 12% of all cultivable land till 2016.
There is urgent need of intervention to stem the tide of this plight
otherwise more Ravindra would are likely to suffer at the hands of
land owners.
SAURAV ANAND
M.A(DEVELOPMENT STUDIES_039