People's Democracy

PUNJAB

Peasantry under Rs 35,000 Crore Debt Duress

Charanjeet Saluja

NOBODY had ever thought that a peasant of Punjab, the land of five rivers, would commit suicide because of the ever growing burden of debt upon his head. Because of the groundwater level increasingly going down, indiscriminate felling of trees without any planning whatsoever, and unlimited use of pesticides and chemical fertilisers, the productive capacity of the soil has gone down here and the entire environment has become severely polluted. On top of all this comes the power crisis and some other adverse developments.

These problems were highlighted by a seminar organised in the Punjab Bhavan, Ludhiana, on May 15, with special efforts put in by Dr Sukhchain Singh, a scientist at the Punjab Agricultural University (PAU).

According to the data presented at the seminar by Dr Sukhpal Singh of the Department of Economics in PAU, the peasants of Punjab are today bearing a debt burden of 35,000 crore rupees. Out of this amount, debts worth Rs 11,700 crore are due to the moneylenders while the public and private banks account for the rest. Some time ago, the government constituted a committee to study as to why peasants are committing suicide in the state, with representatives of the PAU as well as other universities as members of the committee. According to a survey conducted by this committee in Bathinda and Sangrur areas, the number of suicide deaths was 2,890 there, while about 15 thousand peasants committed suicide in the state in a decade. (The said survey later came to a halt because of the non-allocation of fund for the purpose.) According to Dr Sukhpal Singh, the main cause of the suicides is that the prices the Punjab peasants are getting for their produce is not commensurate with the input costs, and this is leading to a mounting of their debt burden. Indiscriminate and ostentatious expenditure on occasions like a marriage may be regarded as a contributory factor.

It was said on the occasion that, on the Haryana pattern, there must be issued “health cards” for the peasants of Punjab. Whenever a peasant prepares the soil for a new crop after harvesting the earlier one, there must be an intensive test of the “health” (productive capacity) of his plot. Group farming and modern technology must be adopted in agriculture.

Punjab Kisan Sabha leader Bhupinder Sambhav and scientists Dr Kuldeep Singh, Parminder Singh, Dr S S Banga, Dr M P Kaushal and Dr G S Heera     

also stressed that strengthening the cooperative department could go a long way in addressing the problems facing the agriculture sector in the state. While the peasants are ready for adopting the practice of crop diversification, obstacles from the government side remain. For example, in rabi season, the government is not prepared to purchase any other crop except wheat and not giving any remunerative prices for the crop it purchases. There are crops that require less amounts of water but they are not being cultivated, with the result that the groundwater level is seriously going down.

The seminar’s participants also demanded that the rate of interest on the loans for agricultural purposes must be 1 to 2 per cent; not that one should be free to extort from a peasant as much as one likes.

At the seminar, scientists, agriculture experts and other intellectuals shared their experiences. Differences among them came to the fore on the issue of GM crops, as some were opposing and some others favouring the latter.

On the theme of environmental pollution, experts said the use of fertilisers or pesticides in agriculture or horticulture is not so much polluting the environment as the industrial units are doing by discharging their poisonous effluents into various rivers.

Engineer Jaswant Singh Zafar, secretary of the Punjab State Electricity Board Engineers Association, emphatically said successive governments of the state are also responsible for this problem of growing pollution. Neither the erstwhile Amrinder Singh government produced a single additional unit of power nor has the incumbent Prakash Singh Badal government done so to date. The thermal power plants which the private companies are setting up in the state, are not likely to start production for many more years, as their work is only in the initial stage.

Zafar also disclosed that after these power plants start production, the job of the PowerCom will come down to only 17 per cent of what it is today and that the private companies would sell power at the rates they like. He said Punjab is the only state in the country where the entire power sector is set to be handed over to big corporate houses. About power cuts, he said its frequency and duration will depend on the weather conditions. If the monsoons are not good and the temperature goes up to unbearable limits, power cuts may cross all limits.

At the seminar, Harish Rai Dhanda expressed concern over the increasingly worsening situation of Punjab, adding that neither the political leadership is serious about these problems nor bureaucracy is. Food security is going down to alarming levels. Suicides by peasants, declining groundwater levels and the fast worsening situation of pollution are serious issues. Milk production, too, is fast declining, indicating that even a prosperous state like Punjab may have to approach some other state for milk supply. Dhanda also pointed out some of the complexities and shortcomings in several of the central schemes.