Ahmedabad
It has been all unprecedented this year. First, the torrential rains, then the monumental losses to the farmers and thereafter, the State Government’s Rs 10,000-crore relief package.
However, experts and the opposition have not only termed the package as “inadequate” but also pointed to its glaring misses — unaccounted for sharecroppers or tenant farmers, mostly tribals, and compensation for the fodder for the livestock that has been washed away.
Sharecropper or a tenant farmer is a person who cultivates the land for the farm owner and, in turn, gets a portion of the produce or cash for the efforts. In most cases, farm owners bear the input costs.
While there are 54 lakh farmers in Gujarat, there is no record about how many farmers cultivate their own land. However, as per conservative estimates, other than small and marginal farmers, not a large chunk of big farmers cultivates their agriculture land. They have sharecroppers and/or farm labourers.
Announcing the relief package, Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel said that the State saw an unusual spell of unseasonal rainfall not seen in the past two decades. In addition, he also announced buying of moong, urad, groundnut and soyabean on Minimum Support Price (MSP) at a cost of Rs 15,000 crore. Patel termed the relief package a “lifeline” for the distraught farmers.
But then, the package has received flak from opposition parties – the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) – who have said the package is inadequate.
If Pal Ambaliya, president of Gujarat Kisan Congress, is to be believed, as far as the sharecroppers are concerned, only 20 percent are locals and the rest of 80 percent are tribals. Echoed Sagar Rabari, general secretary of AAP in Gujarat, “Absentee landlords in Gujarat are in large numbers”.
The condition of the tribals is pitiable, observed senior journalist Mayur Jani, who has reported extensively from the tribal areas over the years. Back home, the tribals own small pieces of land, he explained, further adding that crops there have been destroyed and they will not get anything as sharecroppers too. The contracts between the farm owners and the croppers are oral and the former is not liable to pay, especially when he is not going to recover the losses incurred from the amount he receives from the State government.
In Gujarat, crops over 42 lakh hectares farm land, spread over 16,000 villages in 251 talukas over 33 districts have been almost destroyed. Gujarat will give Rs 22,000 per hectare to the farmer who has suffered losses with a cap of two hectares.
Pravin, a tribal activist and farmer from near Godhra, asserted that sharecroppers should be given compensation. The tribals have also lost fodder and now they would have to buy from the market, he said. He witnessed complete loss of rice sown over 3.75-acre land.
From the belt stretching from Ambaji in North Gujarat to Umargam in South Gujarat, the tribals go as sharecroppers mainly in Saurashtra region and some parts of North Gujarat.
Commenting on the precarious condition of small and marginal farmers, including tribals, environmental activist Mahesh Pandya said that in 2016 he had written to the government that small and marginal farmers should be included in MGNREGA so that even if the crops fail, they get some income from the scheme.
“Why talk in hectares? Tribals do not even have one hectare land. The input cost in one bigha land is around Rs. 20,000 (3.98 bigha is one hectare),” said Lasing Gamit, a tribal activist working in South Gujarat. Now, imagine how much would the tribal farmer get for one bigha land, he said.
The mainstream media has reported four suicides from different parts of the State due to crop losses.
When asked why there is no mention about the sharecroppers in the relief package, Hitendra Patel, co-spokesperson of the Gujarat BJP, told The Indian Tribal that it is an internal arrangement between them and the farm owner. There is no mention about them in the revenue records also and hence, legal issues can crop up.
Patel claimed that some of the farm owners do pass on money to the sharecroppers from the relief they have received. He even said that when there is crop loss, the farm owner is at loss because in most of the cases they give advance to the sharecroppers.
Regardless of the relief package announced by the Bhupen Patel dispensation, Both the AAP and Congress are going ahead with their protest programmes. For the Congress, it had embarked on Khedut (farmer) Aakrosh Yatra even when the State was witnessing unseasonal rains. The yatra still continues. The AAP, for its part, has been organising Khedut Panchayats.
Ambaliya said even if the State government had given money to the farmers as per a scheme of the CM for relief of farmers, the farmers would have got more compensation. The relief package might be unprecedented for the unprecedented losses, but earlier 42 lakh hectares farm land was not affected.
In the 2022 Assembly elections, tribals played a key role in ensuring BJP’s seventh straight win to continue retaining power in Gujarat. The BJP’s dominance in the tribal belt was such that it won 24 of the total 27 seats reserved for the Scheduled Tribes and went on to register a record-breaking 156-seat haul overall. Tribals constitute 15 percent of the population in Gujarat and are largely spread across 14 eastern districts of the State.
