Karnal, February 29
Small farmers and landless people in the remote rural areas of Haryana are facing acute poverty with daily wages of farm labour coming down to a level that hardly makes both ends meet. The average amount given to farm labourers in Haryana ranges between Rs 15,000 and Rs 18,000 a year.
Despite the Union Government’s “feel good” publicity campaign and record number of development works initiated by the state government in the past four years, the remote rural areas of Haryana continue to face the problem of rising unemployment with lack of credit that has forced these families into a new form of oppression.
Sham Lal (name changed), who works for at least 10 hours in a farm outside Safidon (Jind district), does not take home any wages. He borrowed Rs 25,000 from the landlord three years ago. After returning the principal amount, he is still waiting for his salary. However, he was given meals two times a day as he worked for most part of the day in the farm.
“We have taken a loan to marry our daughter, because we have nothing at home, not even grains. My elder son also works as a labourer at Safidon. He manages to get work for 10 to 15 days in a month that helps us to buy ‘dal sabji’ for the family”, he said.
The Tribune visited as many as 10 villages in Karnal and Jind districts and found that there were hundreds of landless farmers working with their landlords on just two meals a day even after paying back the credit taken to meet their family commitments.
These landless farmers not only look after the crops but also take care of the dairy animals of landowners. In many cases it is also found that the landowner gives the newborn baby calf to a landless family to rear till it matures.
Then the real owners take back their dairy animals from the landless labourers by paying a meager amount ranging between Rs 2000 and Rs 4000 depending upon the animal. The labourer’s family spends the money received from such ‘economic deals’ to purchase clothes or some items of utmost requirement to the family.
The plight of small farmers was also pitiable, as they had almost lost the purchasing power after becoming bankrupt. More than 50,000 farmers in Karnal district and 40,000 in Jind district had been declared defaulters by the cooperative banks alone.
As many as 80,000 credit cards were issued to the farmers in Karnal district by the state cooperative bank during the past couple of years, out of which, more than 85 per cent of them had gone bankrupt, forcing most of the small farmers and family members of the landless labourers to look for work in the nearby towns and cities.
