Karnataka: Officials turn blind eye to farmers' plight

Hubballi: If the rain gods are letting down farmers here, leaving them staring at huge losses, and suffering from ill health and mounting debts, the state government is doing hardly anything either to come to their rescue.

Take farmer Mallikajayya Kallurmath, 56, of Doni village in Gadag district’s Mundaragi taluk  - one of the most backward in the state - who has been nursing a sick wife while coping with the recurring drought of the last two years.  Forced to give up sowing his fields because of poor rainfall , he has been working as a daily wager for his landlord despite his own ill health.

A decade ago he sank a 120 ft deep borewell, but it gave him a mere two inches of water to irrigate  his three -acre farm and two years ago it became defunct  leaving him at the mercy of the rain gods.His worst fear came true when the monsoon failed and his groundnut, jowar, and cotton crops  withered  Left with no choice, he sold his cattle to repay the money he  had borrowed to buy the seeds and fertiliser.

Although he has suffered a  Rs 60,000 loss over the last two years,  the government has been of no help at all, giving him a mere Rs 250 as compensation and that too in cheque, says the despairing farmer . “ I did not encash the cheque as it would have cost me that much only to open a bank account. Instead  I borrowed Rs 50,000 from moneylenders against an acre of my farmland to settle my Corporation bank loan,” he rues, adding with tears in his eyes, " The drought and our poverty are a curse brought on by the  misdeed of our previous birth."

Farmers here hoped the Singatalur lift irrigation project would help irrigate their fields, but the government doesn’t seem to care enough to fast track this ambitious project which will draw water from the Tungabhara river for their needs.

Officials have not helped Mallikajayya get crop insurance either despite his many pleas.  And with  the district administration doing nothing about  the flouride contaminated drinking water that is affecting the health of villagers, the farmer feels death is  preferable any day to living in such  misery.