Farmer commits suicide in Hooghly after ‘failing to repay Rs 5 lakh’

A resident of Muzaffarpur village in Harimkhola, Golak’s son Tarakhnath Ullal said: “We have a debt of Rs 5 lakh… We had grown potato because the crop had been doing so well. While some of the crop was destroyed because of the untimely rain… there were months when there was no rain. But the potato crop itself has done well in the state and thus, the prices plummeted. We couldn’t even recover our investment.”

On Friday morning, finding his father’s room locked, the family called the police. “My father did not open the door. The police broke the door and found him hanging,” said Tarakhnath.

BJP’s OBC Morcha state president Sapan Das, who hails from Hooghly, has paid a visit to the family. Blaming the Trinamool Congress government for the death, he said: “Farmers are in trouble if crops don’t do well… they are in trouble even when crops do well. The bumper crop has made the price of potatoes drop. While the market price of potato is substantial even now, farmers don’t get this price…”

“The state government buys the crop from farmers at Rs 6 per kg… While the current market price is Rs 8 per kg, the farmers are investing the same amount in the crop… So, they are not making any money… Middlemen from the ruling party buy the crop at a lower price from farmers and sell it at a higher price. Farmers are thus pushed to commit suicide,” he alleged.

Pal maintained a healthy price for the farmers is Rs 14 to Rs 15 per kg. “The government buys 40 kg of potato for Rs 120… It should instead buy 10 kg at this price,” he said. “In case of wheat surplus, the crop can be processed and stored. This is not the case with potatoes, as it is perishable. There aren’t enough storages, which the government is supposed to build. And even when storages are built, these are taken over by TMC workers and middlemen,” alleged Pal.

Bengal is one of the largest producers of potato in the country with main cultivating areas in Burdwan, Hooghly and Aram-bagh. During 2016 state polls, the Left had raised the issue of farmer suicide. According to CPM, 200 farmers have committed suicide in the last three years in Bengal, with 116 such cases in Burdwan.

Kisan Sabha state secretary Amar Haldar said the main cause of farmer suicides is debt. “The government has not made the markets easily accessible to farmers. The Left Front used to give a subsidy to farmers for crop cutting. This has been removed by the Mamata government. Moreover, the production cost of crops has increased — prices of seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, electricity have increased. The fertiliser subsidy has also been removed.”

“For the first time in 50 years, potato farmers don’t have water to irrigate their crops. The crops fail, farmers go to moneylenders and are then unable to pay off their loans,” he said.

In 2015, 12 potato farmers had committed suicide in Bengal. A bumper harvest of 120 lakh tonnes in 2014-15 led to a similar crisis, resulting in the price of potatoes falling to Rs 3 to Rs 5 per kg. While in 2012, Bengal was not among top five states in terms of suicides, by 2013, it contributed to 9.7 per cent of all suicides. Unlike Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, where the cities recorded highest number of suicides, Kolkata recorded 360 out of a total of 14,310 suicides in 2014, with most suicides taking place in rural Bengal.

Despite repeated attempts, Agriculture Minister Ashis Banerjee was not available for comments.