Political India: Engaging America

From The Hindu

CHENNAI: The System of Rice Intensification (SRI) has helped farmers in Tiruchi district to cope with an unreliable monsoon and shortage of farm labour, according to the district administration.

Speaking to The Hindu, District Collector T. Soundiah said the production cost of paddy under the new cultivation technique is in the range of Rs.2,000-3,000 a hectare, whereas it is close to Rs.10,000 under traditional cultivation methods. Where traditional methods of paddy cultivation yielded about two tonnes of paddy a hectare, under SRI farmers are able to get up to 6.7 tonnes a hectare.

The use of SRI is spreading in Tiruchi: the technique is being successfully implemented here on 20,000 ha out of a total of 70,000 ha under cultivation, according to data provided by the district administration.

“For many farmers, this has meant an additional income of Rs.25,000-30,000 per acre,” according to S. Sivaraj, Deputy Director, Agriculture, Central Government Schemes.

The SRI helps economise on resources use while maximising the yield.

“It requires a high level of farmland manure and a minimum quantity of seeds,” Mr. Sivaraj said. Only 2 kg of seeds were required per acre. The minimum age of seedlings would be eight to 12 days.

“Other important factors include wider spacing between seedlings and the use of the Cono-Weeder four times during the crop cycle,” Mr. Sivaraj said. Most important, SRI requires minimal use of water, according to Mr. Soundiah.

“The aim is to maintain the soil by wetting, not by flooding the fields as traditional cultivation methods suggest,” he said.

The district administration is implementing subsidy schemes for harvester and weeder machines to further boost productivity.

Labels: Cono-Weeder, harvester, monsoon, paddy cultivation, rice, System of Rice Intensification, Tiruchi

From The Hindu, with modifications

CHENNAI: Faced with a shortage of farm work and no recourse to alternatives, labourers in Tamil Nadu are demanding that the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) be extended to more than 100 days per year.

A. Lalitha, A. Rani and B. Papathi are landless labourers who live in Tirukanurpatti in Thanjavur. They work on a road formation project under the NREGS in the burning heat of the mid-day sun. Sheltering in the shade of a solitary tree in the vicinity, they explained why an extension of the policy is vital to sustaining their livelihoods.

“The sudden shortfall in the monsoon has left us with very few options in farm work,” Ms. Lalitha explained. “I have been without work for one whole month until I joined this NREGS project four days ago,” she said. Her husband and the husbands of Ms. Rani and Ms. Papathi are without work currently as they are looking for farm jobs that have all but vanished. “When they do find work, it pays something like Rs.20-30 per day,” Ms. Rani says, and this makes it difficult to make ends meet and feed the family. Their husbands also spend a large part of the household income on alcohol consumption, they admitted.

In this context of employment insecurity and monsoon-dependence in agriculture the NREGS is a lifeline for the landless poor. “We would like to ask the government for at least Rs.100 as the daily wage,” Ms. Lalitha said. “As for the work, what we need is a minimum of 150 days per year. Even with such an increase we would be without work for some months. Ideally we would like to be offered 300 days of work per year if possible,” she said.

The same theme is encountered across different NREGS sites. For example in Vanarangudi village near Thanjavur, R. Malika and V. Sakuntala, both landless labourers, worked on a nearby NREGS site for 70-80 days last year. They are less confident about getting enough work on farms this year, given that the monsoon failure has hit farm employment hard: “We’re finding it difficult to get work on farms nearby and have to travel farther to find employment. Our situation would be better if we were paid Rs.100 per day and had more days of work on [NREGS] sites,” Ms. Malika said.

At another roadwork project in Bodidasanpatti village in Theni district NREGS workers S. Vidiyammal and T. Veerama explained that last year they worked only 25 days on NREGS projects, far below the 100 days promised by the policy. “Most years we only find about four months of work in agriculture,” they said. Five days of work per week and a salary of Rs.100 per day would make a big difference to their livelihoods, according to Ms. Veerama.

District authorities corroborate the significant positive benefits of the NREGS for rural labour. “The right to employment is in effect being implemented via the NREGS,” argued M.S. Shanmugham, District Collector, Thanjavur. The “guaranteed” element of the scheme has been understood well by the workers and “they even complain directly to me sometimes when they have been provided fewer days of work than they have requested,” Mr. Shanmugham said.

The administration in Tiruchi district reports a similar situation: “A large number of labourers in the district are demanding more than 100 days of work. In most such cases the workers have already completed 100 days of work and desire further employment,” says J. Dhanashekharan, Project Officer responsible for the NREGS in the District Rural Development Agency.

Given the sharp drop in agricultural production resulting from monsoon failure this year, the voices of the rural poor in Tamil Nadu districts are a clarion call for extending the NREGS. With drought or drought-like conditions in many districts the Government of India needs to rapidly consolidate and build further from its initial efforts to provide employment security to the rural workforce. In this context the recent proclamations by the Finance Minister that more than 100 days of employment will not be provided is a regressive step that could undo the progress made thus far towards reducing the vulnerability of the landless poor.

Labels: 100 days, agriculture, employment security, monsoon failure, NREGS, Thanjavur, Tiruchi

From The Hindu

CHENNAI: Agrarian distress is spreading through parts of Thanjavur and Tiruchi districts, gathering speed as farmers realise the full impact of monsoon failure.

The release of water from the Mettur dam on July 28 was significantly later than the usual date of June 12. This delay has caused the failure of the Kuruvai crop to the extent of 30,000 hectares in Thanjavur.

In neighbouring Tiruchi the original target of 6,000 hectares of Kuruvai was missed by a wide margin: “Only 4,224 hectares have been reconciled,” T.Soundiah, the District Collector, explained to The Hindu. Paddy has not been the only casualty of the monsoon failure, according to Mr.Soundiah, who also pointed out that only 610 hectares out of a potential 54,000 hectares are being cultivated under millets.

Farmers depending on pump irrigation have seen marginally more success with Kuruvai than their counterparts who depend on canals. In Thanjavur, 15,000 hectares of Kuruvai were cultivated using pump irrigation.

However, even pump irrigation is no guarantee of sufficient water. A farmer K.Sundararajan who cultivates 10 acres of paddy in Thanjavur has pumps and bore-wells and is also not far from the river bank. Yet he says, “I have been unable to plant Kuruvai this season and have only got enough water for my animals to drink.”

In the “rice bowl” of Tamil Nadu farmers are left with intensifying distress. They are being constricted by a wide array of deteriorating circumstances including water shortages, power shortages, inaccessibility of loans for farm inputs, and barriers against mechanisation.
Optimism about the next round of cultivation for the Samba crop is fragile.

The Secretary of the Cauvery Delta Farmers Association, S.Ranganathan, explained, “If we get the normal amount of water and it is released on time – on June 12 – we can expect up to seven months of continuous water through the canal system. However, this year we can only expect water for 1.5 days in every 10 days.”

Insufficient power supply

Power supply for pumps is also insufficient, according to J.Varadarajan, who owns 50 acres of farmland in Devangudi, Thanjavur district. Normally he uses 4 bore-wells, each of which can irrigate up to 15 acres if continuous power is provided.

“Given the fluctuation in power supply, we are only able to irrigate about 5 acres per well,” Mr.Varadarajan noted. “I have also received no water via the canals, and my dependence on the bore-wells is even more,” he said. However this dependence has led to an imbalance in the pH of the soil which potentially reduces the yields of all farms in the vicinity.

Farmers are struggling to combat the drop in yields by increasing input productivity. In part, this is driven by finance for fertilisers, pesticides and equipment being completely beyond the reach of small and medium farmers. P.Manikavasakam and V.Jivakumar, who cultivate five acres and one acre of land respectively, explained that under the AIADMK administration they might have got a loan of Rs.9,000 with an acre of land as collateral. “At present we can only expect to receive a loan of Rs.1,000 to 2,000, which is barely sufficient to finance transplantation of paddy,” Mr.Manikavasakam rued.

Collectivised approach

Mr.Ranganathan makes a strong case for a collectivised approach to agriculture. Pointing to a sharp drop in agricultural yield in the lands that he farms, he said, “The solution lies in increased mechanisation, which has however not gained momentum in the Delta region. Given that threshers, for example, cost Rs.18-20 lakh, the entire village must pool its land as collateral and obtain finance.”

However, the interest in collective action is being thwarted by the diminishing prospects of those who remain in agriculture. They face the grim reality of having to choose between watching their margins get squeezed as their indebtedness grows and forsaking the lands that their families have cultivated for generations.

Labels: Cauvery, delta, fertiliser, Kuruvai, mechanisation, Mettur dam, power, pump irrigation, rice bowl, Thanjavur, Tiruchi, water