Broken promises, shattered dreams of farmers

Kuldeep Chauhan

The first blow to Mansa Ram and Jhinchu Ram, both Dalit farmers from Rapari village in Chopal, came about 15 years ago. The government banned their slate mine that had been their only source of livelihood since ages.

Left with no other option, they raised small apple orchards around the barren land in their village. But an unprecedented “worst” came around last Diwali when the joint forest-police team cut the 120 apple trees raised on forestland, an encroachment which had to be removed as per the High Court orders.

“First the slate mining was banned and then our apple trees were axed by ‘sarkar’ even though we had not cut any trees to plant the orchard,” they rue. They have a family of 10 members each to feed and support with no source of income left. Helpless against the anti-encroachment drive under which 3 lakh fruit-bearing apple trees have been cut, these poor and marginal have nothing to fall back on.

As you travel through the apple belt, similar tales of woes are narrated by small and marginal farmers, who point towards the fire-ravaged jungles and parched fields hit by the four-month-long drought. They term the Congress government’s four-year regime as a “reign of broken promises and shattered dreams”.

At Muina village in Pulbahal, Jeet Ram, 75, another Dalit farmer, recalls how the forest team came before Diwali and got the ‘sarkari zameen’ vacated around his house. “They chopped off 130 fruit-bearing apple trees that used to feed my family,” he says, helplessly.

Bitu Jhagta of Bamta lost his father about seven years ago. He had raised a small apple orchard around his house, but the DFO ordered his eviction as it was also on the ‘sarkari zameen’. The plight of Shaukat and Saddiq Mohammad of Kothmal village in Dewat panchayat is no different. Shaukat says his apple trees have been cut as “janglati staff say it is on ‘sarkari’ land”.

In Rohru, once represented by Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, Prakash of Dhara village (Shakla) and Suni Ram of Kiarku village are faced with the same bleak future. “The government has failed to fulfill its promise to regularise 10 bighas of land of small farmers, but on the contrary their orchards have been cut,” says Dr Kuldip Tanwar, president, Himachal Kisan Sabha.

The small and marginal farmers in Kullu, Mandi and Shimla and Kinnaur narrate the same story. They rue how the poor are being deprived of their sources of livelihood. What irks them even more is the “pick-and-choose” policy of the Forest Department in evicting only the small farmers while letting off the big fish, who own huge orchards on encroached forestland.

As far as growing cash crops is concerned, there isn’t enough water to drink, what to talk of irrigating land. To make matters worse, the monkey menace has forced people to abandon growing maize, peas, cauliflower and vegetables. The poor road connectivity in areas like the Chehta-Bhalu belt in Chopal and Chirgaon tehsils of Rohru, where most villages are at a walking distance at least 500 m from the road, carriage of crops is a major problem.

As you travel through the apple belt, most roads are potholed. The farmers pay more than 40 per cent to truckers to transport fruits to markets. The government had promised to increase the irrigation facility from 20 to 40 per cent, but four years down the line, it is a dismal scenario. More than 80 per cent of fruit, maize and other cash crops still remain at the mercy of rain gods.

Monkeys, wild boars and stray cattle coupled with forest fires continue to devastate crops, but no compensation has been provided to farmers.

Many orchards were destroyed in the Shimla apple belt due to the spread of fire from the contiguous pine forests in Ksha village. Also, the fires devastated 1,750 hectares worth Rs 2.54 crore of forest areas, including rare chilgoza, blue pine and juniper jungles in tribal Kinnaur this year alone.

No farm panel

Farmers point out that the government failed to set up a state agriculture commission to solve their problem despite this being part of their 2012 manifesto. “The farmers produced about 15 lakh tonnes of vegetables, but no cold storage facility was provided to save them from ‘distress sale’ during the glut period,” say Prem Kumar and Virender Verma, vegetable farmers in Shimla rural area.

The performance of the Congress regime with regard to combating monkey menace too is far from satisfactory. “The government has squandered Rs 20 crore on sterilisation of over 1 lakh monkeys, but the simians continue to play havoc with our crops,” say farmers.

The list of failed promises includes an increase in import duty on apple and treating it as a special category fruit and providing only limited subsidy on the anti-hail nets scheme, which is quite effective in saving crops. The relief manual too has not been reviewed. The loss to vegetable crops, which is the mainstay of small farmers, was not compensated and relief was not enough to even meet the production cost. Though 39,000 farmers have adopted organic farming but they lack both irrigation and markets to sell their produce.