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Trapped by drought and debt
19 May 2008
Image courtesy of PACS
The start of the 2005 rains in the Latur district of Maharashtra in India were
delayed by over three weeks. And when they finally came it was too late to sow
cash crops. For small farmers who pledged their fields as security against the
loans they needed to buy fertiliser, their investment went horribly wrong.
For others, like Sulochna Chincholkar’s husband, months of hard work had been in vain. He had worked long and hard at a khari kendra (a stone crushing unit) in order to buy fertilisers. He is young, but already Sulochna sees life ahead trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty. "How many more years can he work in the khari kendra?" she asks.
Having exhausted their credit limits, several village farmers were forced to
approach moneylenders - others faced exploitation in the market. The women of
Yelloriwadi explained how those who sell fertilisers and those who buy grain
work together to exploit farmers: "When we go to buy fertilisers, the rate
quoted is always very high. But when we try to sell grain they quote the lowest
possible figure."
This story was provided by PACS.
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