Sugarcane dues, high power tariff, loans drive UP farmers to Ghazipur protest site

Ram Lakhan got only Rs 1,000 for a quintal of maize this season in Etah, Uttar Pradesh. Last year, he had gotten Rs 1,800 for the same amount. He hadn’t gotten what he had spent to cultivate the crop.

Lakhan owns less than an acre plot and such losses have brought him and many others in a similar situation to the protest at Ghazipur on the Delhi-Meerut highway. He is a marginal farmer and has had to supplement his farm income by working as a daily wage labourer.

“It has become expensive to farm, but if I don’t farm my family will die of hunger. I am not an educated man, but I know what will happen to farmers like us. Contract farming has already wreaked havoc in Uttar Pradesh. Poorer farmers have nowhere to go. More people will join in solidarity with the farmers from Punjab and Haryana. It’s only a matter of time as our situation has been worsening under the Yogi and Modi governments,” said Lakhan.

Close to 5,000 farmers from Uttar Pradesh, Uttarkhand and Madhya Pradesh have assembled around the highway to protest the three new Farm Acts, which were passed by the BJP government led by Narendra Modi.

These acts- the Farmer’s Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill 2020, the Farmer’s (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill 2020, and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, which later became Acts - will exacerbate the woes of the farmers in Uttar Pradesh. They have been hit hard by the pending sugarcane dues, hike in electricity rates and failure to implement the MS Swaminathan report on agriculture.

The farmers have assembled at the same spot where they had assembled in 2018 as a part of the Kisan Kranti Yatra. Then they had come to demand the implementation of the Swaminathan Report and free electricity for irrigation. In 2018, they were lathicharged and stopped at the Ghazipur border by the Delhi police.

The farmers in Uttar Pradesh have been restive since 2017. The Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Ajay Bisht during his poll campaign had promised to waive off all farm loans before March 2016 and in his first Cabinet meeting he had announced, amidst much cheer, the decision to waive off loans of Rs 36,359 crore taken by about 94 lakh small and marginal farmers in the state. The amount was to include Rs 5,630 crore loans of 7 lakh farmers whose accounts were declared non-performing assets (NPAs) by banks.

However, it became evident that most farmers had been taken for a ride. A Mathura farmer got a loan waiver of one paisa, while several others got waivers of less than ₹15. Later, it was reported that the government had waived off amounts between ₹1 and ₹100 for 4,814 farmers, between ₹100 and ₹500 for 6,895 farmers, and between ₹500 and ₹1,000 for 5,553 farmers.

Immediately after coming to power in Uttar Pradesh, the Bisht-government had increased the power tariff in 2017, followed by another hike in 2019. In 2017, the Uttar Pradesh Electricity Regulatory Commission (UPERC) announced a hike of 12% in power tariff and in 2019, a hike of 8% to 12% was approved.

Adding to these woes is the non-payment of the sugarcane dues to farmers in Uttar Pradesh. As of September 2020, according to a response given in Parliament, ₹10,174 crore was due to sugarcane farmers in Uttar Pradesh for the crop procured during the 2019-20 season. In August, several farmers came together under the banner of Bharatiya Kisan Union to protest the non-payment of dues. The lockdown only aggravated their situation.

Jagveer Singh from Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh who cultivates sugarcane on his six-acre farm said he spends ₹294 per quintal of sugarcane and earns only ₹325 per quintal. “This does not include mine or my family’s labour cost. The MSP fixed by the government is less, but without that, we would get even lesser,” pointed out Singh, who is a member of All India Kisan Sabha.

“In Uttar Pradesh, there is already a limit on the quantity of sugarcane that will be bought from a farmer at a government-approved mill. Even if we have a bumper crop, the mills will not buy more than what has been fixed. We have to sell the rest of the sugarcane to private players who pay us only ₹200 per quintal. How are we to make a living then?” said Singh.

With such realities staring in their face, Singh said with these new laws the government will push an entire generation into penury. “Our struggles seem to be never-ending. The government said the farmers and the rural economy had helped the economy recover from the pandemic. So, instead of aiding us, they want to kill this too?” asked Singh.