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Sharad Joshi

In a pilgrimage of sorts from the West of the country, across Madhya Pradesh and on towards the East, Sharad Joshi has set himself the task of countering the opponents of free economy, trade and technology, and highlights the varied problems of the Narmada region.

I WAS in Bharuch (Gujarat) to witnesses the deliberations of the leaders of the mainstream farmers' movement under the Kisan Coordination Committee (KCC) that concluded in the demand for scrapping the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC).

Since then I have been moving across India — from the west, where the Narmada flows into the sea across Madhya Pradesh towards east where the great river rises at Amarkantak.

Adi Sankara had undertaken this sacrosanct circumambulation in a mission to defeat the heresy of Buddhism. I have assigned myself a similar task — countering the opponents of free economy, trade and technology that have taken shelter in the arduous mountainous regions on the banks of the Narmada.

The northern banks of the Narmada lie in the districts of Bharuch, Narmada and Vadodara (Baroda) — all black cotton soil areas par excellence, inhabited mostly by tribals, Ranipars, Kolis, Bhils and Rathwas. Cultivation of cotton is not the sophisticated commercial activity here, as in southern Gujarat. Tribal farmers grow cotton in much smaller plots and used, till last year, the traditional practices and seed varieties. This kharif season there is a major transformation.

Most of them sowed at least five months before the KCC offered its protection to the Bt varieties frowned upon by the GEAC and the Union Government. The print and the electronic media maintained a strict and deafening silence about the marvellous results of the impugned seed. This latter is not available in the normal agro service centres and seed shops. Somehow, the word went round that it was good and the largely illiterate tribals managed to get the seed from a virtually underground circuit.

The tribal farmers had obviously decided to switch to the unapproved seed as early as May-June 2002 and the KCC was only endorsing the farmers' spontaneous response and offered protection. The cultivation is so widely spread that it needed no protection. Not even the mobilisation of entire police and para-military forces could carry out even a minimally effective `uproot and demolish' operation of the impugned seed.

Farmers who have not already shifted to the unlawful seed are determined to do so as soon as possible, regardless of whether the government permits its registration or frowns upon its existence. The cotton production in Gujarat, thanks to the opening offered by the illicit Bt cotton hybrid variety, will score a hefty lead as regards output, costs, yields as also quality over other cotton producing States such as Punjab and Haryana, that have not permitted Bt variety, and Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh that are forced to use the much less beneficial varieties approved by the GEAC.

Traversing the newly carved out district of Narmada, it was a pleasure seeing the main canal of the Sardar Sarovar project carrying hundreds of thousands of cusecs of water to the dry parts of north Gujarat, Saurashtra and Kutch. Two years back I had courted arrest, symbolically lifting a few buckets of water from the overflow and pouring it in the canal. The then Gujarat Chief Minister, Mr Keshubhai Patel, had mobilised all the police and other para-military forces at his command to prevent the kisan kar sevaks from even symbolically transferring a few buckets of overflowing water into the main canal.

The kar seva took no position on the merits of the Sardar Sarovar Project or the contention of the Narmada Bachao Andolan, which were sub judice at that time. The objective was to bring out that the government had failed to construct a by-pass tunnel — a safety valve that protects the main dam in the event of abnormal floods and that, had the by-pass channel been constructed it would have been possible to take the waters from overflowing Sardar Sarovar to the parched lands and thirsty people of North Gujarat, Saurashtra and Kutch.

At one stroke the kar sevaks offended both the parties to the dispute. The Gujarat government felt `caught with its pants down'. The Narmada Bachao Andolan activists were unhappy that the Sardar Sarovar water would actually reach the distant north which possibility they had stoutly rejected.

The Gujarat government mobilised all the forces to prevent the kar sevaks from reaching the site of the by-pass channel and the NGO mounted an international campaign of vilification against the kar sevaks and the farmers' organisation Khedut Samaj in Gujarat. The kar seva was finally only a symbolic operation.

Fast flows the main canal now, as the government has completed the by-pass channel, and the Sabarmati flows full at Ahmedabad, running into the Dhaulidhwaj reservoir at Surendranagar that will eventually provide water by various networks all over Saurashtra and Kutch. The kar sevaks suffered, but not in vain.

But the problem isnot resolved. The Khedut Samaj's kar seva turned the spotlight on the drought in the North Gujarat. The State Government rushed in to a rescue operation abandoning the work of canals and sub-canals that would have benefited the region proximate to the Sardar Sarovar — Naswadi, Kawant, Chhota Udepur and Sankheda tehsils of Baroda district and Nadod and Tilakwada tehsils of Narmada district. The farmers in these regions, in particular the resettled ones, are unhappy and plan to start a campaign for attracting attention to their grievances. Narmada chapter one is over, the second chapter is just beginning.

From the newspapers I get to see on this forlorn route from time to time, I learn that both the Houses of Parliament have approved strict measures for reducing the size of bank NPAs (non-performing assets) . There is no specific reference to the action envisaged on overdue or bad debts in the agriculture sector; there is no reference to the fact that agriculture has been, for decades, subject to negative subsidies that are the prime cause of the rural indebtedness and the farmer suicides.

The Prime Minister announced only the other day that there will be no coercive recoveries of crop loans from the farmers. The Finance Minister, Mr Jaswant Singh's initiative completely bypasses the promise. Nor does it make any reference to the earlier initiative of Mr Yashwant Sinha in the last Budget of a "one-time settlement" of agricultural loans.

I have seen in a couple of cases that agricultural assets, machines and implements seized by banks are rusting in bank premises as also cases of land taken over and auctioned in order to force repayment of loans. The new owners do not put land to agricultural use. That amounts to conversion of bank NPAs into farming NPAs. That does nobody any good. It might prove interesting if the banks take over agricultural land and assets of defaulters and try to produce some crops. That might make them better bankers and the economy a less dismal phenomenon.

(The author is Founder, Shetkari Sanghatana. He can be contacted at sharad@mah.nic.in)

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