Only a week more and the red chilies in his field will be ripe for plucking. This time, hopefully, he will get a good deal for the chilies. “I should damn well get a good price”, he thought. “Otherwise I am doomed”. One more installment for the loan that he had taken for the pumpset was due this month. Several earlier installments remained unpaid and the cooperative bank was threatening action.
It was not Velu’s fault. When he started work on the borewell, the local expert had said that he would strike water at about 60 feet. Nothing happened when the bore reached that arduous depth. There was not even a trace of water. It took another 30 feet of boring and an extra Rs 8,000 to bring out the water, that too in moody trickles. Velu cursed the government. It handed out lakhs of gallons of water from the Thamiraparani river to the Coca Cola bottling plant for producing a pesticide infested drink for the people. But the government claimed it didn’t have any money to dig a canal and bring water from a nearby lake. Agricultural land in the whole of Tirunelveli and Tuticorin districts was termed “vaanam paartha boomi” in local parlance. It meant “land looking at (dependent on) the sky”. Rice cultivation was out of the question. With a bit of rain, the astute farmers survived on cotton, chilies and other dry crops.
Velu was familiar with the history of the palayakkarars in the south. He had read that after the first poligari (the British distortion for palayakkarar) war, when Kattabomman was caught and hanged, the Fort of Panchalankurichi was razed to the ground and all of Kattabomman’s wealth was looted. But, like a miracle, under the leadership of Kattabomman’s brother Oomaithurai, the fort was rebuilt and the insurgents regrouped. The British attacked them again with superior arms and defeated them. This time they took no chances. The land around the captured fort was ploughed up and sowed with salt and castor oil so that it should never again be inhabited for generations to come.
“Is it not the same ‘scorched earth’ policy of the British that continues even today?”, thought Velu in disgust. “Doesn’t matter which party is in power, they don’t want peasants to prosper”. Short of ploughing the land in the district with castor oil and salt, the various political parties that formed governments in the state after independence neglected agriculture and irrigation and left the land fallow.
Chili farming was full of risks. The seeds have to be of high quality. The crop required the right amount of heat and humidity. The plant required constant attention and tending. Velu, his wife, two sons and a daughter spent 24 hours in the field between them. Someone had to take turns everyday to sleep in the makeshift bunker in the field and keep a vigil against thieves and animals. Velusamy grew some vegetables and flowers also, not willing to be totally dependent on chilies. In fact, last year this saved them from meeting the same fate as the Andhra cotton farmers who committed suicides in thousands when their crop failed and the debtors swooped on them.
Last harvesting season, the chili farmers in the area had gone on the war path. They demanded that the government should open procurement centres for chilies and fix a minimum support price that is remunerative. Chili prices in the market had fallen below the production cost. It cost Rs 5 to produce a kilo of chilies and reach them to the market in Kovilpatti, but the prices had fallen to as low as Rs 3 per kilo. After a prolonged agitation, the government opened a procurement centre nearby. But, the procurement officers started grading the chilies by their colour, and offered to procure only the bright red chilies. The farmers were totally enraged. Those farmers whose produce was rejected heaved their sacks of chilies and spilled the contents on the road. They made their bullock carts go over them back and forth until a cloud of chili powder sent a pungent and fiery message to the procurement officials. The government was forced to declare that all types of chilies will now be procured.
The peasant union, in which Velu was an activist, made sure that the peasant’s voice was heard loud and clear. After massive protests across the state, the new government promised that all loans and interests will be waived. Getting the government to promise was a partial victory. The peasants had to now ensure that the promise was kept and that none of the revenue officials or MLAs and MPs deprived the distressed farmers of their dues.
Velu thought that the state authorities were no less hated than in colonial times. The recent massacre of plantation workers of manjolai estate by police forces was still vivid in his memory. People revolting against exorbitant taxes was a phenomenon continuing from colonial times. He had read that after the Nawab of Arcot handed over suzerainty over the southern poligars to the East India Company, in lieu of unpaid taxes, the British colonizers used unimaginable brutality to bring the peasants to their knees.
Several times Velu had nightmares about the tax and loan collectors. Sometimes he dreamt that the collectors publicly hanged him and fixed his head on a pike, the way the parnagiar did to Subramania Pillai, a close associate of Kattabomman. Other times he substituted himself for Soundra Pandian Nayak, the rebel leader, who was brutally done to death by having his brains dashed against a village wall.
But, with the vivasayigal sangham, the local peasant union, gearing up to assert the rights of peasants, Velu’s nightmares have been slowly waning. “We are not going to commit suicide, and our heads are not going to adorn roadside spikes”, he resolved.
by S. Raghavan