Farm produce piles up in village without bank, ATM

AURANGABAD: A kuccha track meandering off the Aurangabad-Bidkin road leads to Pan Ranjangaon Khuri, a farming village which has no bus connectivity or other proper transport. Residents of this village, located about 30km south of Aurangabad city, have been growing sugarcane, cotton and sweet limes for generations and know only of cash transactions.
The government's demonetisation move has, therefore, come as a bolt from the blue for the 3,200 villagers.Only 35% of them -around 1,100 villagers -have accounts in a Bank of Maharashtra branch located a good 7km away. The village itself is bereft of any bank or ATM.
Business in the village for now has turned into a credit system, where everyone is waiting for cash to flow in. Farmers are not finding takers for their produce while labourers have not been paid their daily wages because of the cash crunch. The concept of a cashless and digital economy seems like a distant dream.
Villagers from places towards the west and east of Aurangabad city, which adjoin state highways and industrial estates, are employed in the major industrial estates nearby or take state transport buses to Aurangabad for work. On the other hand, the villagers of Pan Ranjangaon Khuri are almost wholly dependent on the income they get from their agriculture produce.
When a TOI team visited the village on Tuesday , blacksmiths, barbers, cloth merchants, grocery shop owners and roadside vendors were offering services on credit. Even the seeds and fertilizer sellers were supplying material without taking money.
“We are in deep trouble because of the cash crunch. Nobody has cash to pay for the farmers' produce or labourers. The markets are deserted. Every single person here is suffering,“ said village sarpanch Anitabai Kale.
Most villagers told TOI that cashless transactions are not feasible in the near future. They cite the tendency of many among them to avoid cheque payments as it requires frequent trips to the bank.
Deputy sarpanch Bappasaheb Laghane said, “One cannot imagine modern ways of money transfer here. Farmers, daily wage earners and shopkeepers are in big trouble.Bank are not even releasing cash as per requirement and there is no ATM facility.“ The villagers' only brush with plastic money is the use of a “debit card“ given to those who want to use the water ATM. A reverse osmosis (RO) water filtration plant dispenses drinking water to those who swipe the card at the machine installed by the gram panchayat. But that is the only place where the card, which has to be recharged through cash payment at the gram panchayat office, works.
Laghane said the collection charges for water provided through the RO filter plant has also been marginally affected. “We provide a 20-litre container of RO purified water for Rs 5. Since demonetisation, the sale of water has dipped by 10-20%,“ he said.
Even as the coffers of many civic bodies across the country are flush with tax collections, the gram panchayat in this village has not recovered a single penny in the last 35-40 days. On an average, the gram panchayat recovers Rs 3.5 to Rs 4 lakh every year on account of water charges.Over 700 consumers pay around Rs 600 per annum each. Most of the payment is done between November-December after the crops are harvested.
Laghane told TOI that immediately after demonetisation, they had allowed villagers to pay the charges in old currency notes. However, that did not last long. “The Aurangabad Madhyawarti Sahakari Bank in Bidkin, where we have our bank account, suddenly stopped accepting the old notes. We had to cancel the scheme. Eventually , villagers were not willing to pay the charges in the new currency notes. We do not think that the gram panchayat can recover the charges in the current year,“ he said.
On the other hand, there are some who see a silver lining to the current crisis. A section of farmers and traders believe demonetisation will pave the way for developing the rural economy because of a better systems of payments. Grocery shop owner Chandrakant Dhakhi says he does not mind the cash crunch as he feels demonetisation would bring the rural economy into the mainstream.