Nearly 200 farmers have committed suicide and lakhs of debt-ridden are in the throes of having to repay loans and are finding no ray of hope as the crops have failed and the Government’s bailout package is of little avail.
Similarly, thousands of teachers are finding no end to their long and torturous wait for due salary and finding each passing day utterly tough as the Government’s repeated assurances to meet their demands have emerged hollow.
It goes without saying that teachers and farmers are at their lowest ebb during the Naveen Patnaik Government in the last 15 years and especially, in the last year their plight goes more pronounced. The two respectable communities who are said to be the backbone of a civilised and healthy society have got the most raw deal ever.
The suicides of farmers which have not stopped even till date speak volume not just about a serious farm crisis besetting the State, but the vulnerability of the farmers. The farmers’ predicament is huge and they are just inconsolable for whatever steps being taken to alleviate their troubles. The fact is that the farmers find the present succour to be transitory in nature while their predicament to be permanent and more importantly, the one is far weighed by the other in terms of its severity.
The present agrarian crisis has been built up over long years of neglect of the farm sector and the Government meting it out a step-motherly treatment. The importance of agriculture has shrunk to such an extent that agrarian land has got reduced in size over the years while the mechanism at play to handle the sector has failed to bring in any turnaround.
As the Government has played second fiddle with agriculture, it has not been an encouraging sector. land has been allotted to the industrialists at the cost of the agriculturists. The Government has done everything to muzzle the voice the farmers. It boasted of a fair and transparent rehabilitation policy for acquiring land but served a blow to the farming sector as a whole. In allotment of water to the industries, the Government too sacrificed the interest of the agriculturists.
The Government remained fully oblivious of the deepening crisis in the agriculture front with farmers getting little support from the beginning to the end of a crop period. Nonstop scams in seed, fertilizer, farm input, subsidy and procurement just pushed the farmers to the brink. As a result, distress sale and distress migration were on the rise. As if waiting for iron to be hot so as to hit it, the moneylenders and labour brokers held sway in the rural and interior pockets and cashed in on the worsening situation of farmers to exploit them.
The Government acted as a mute spectator when hapless farmers and sharecroppers were being targeted by the greedy and nefarious usurers and middlemen. Result: Now farmers have lost all hope and chosen suicide as the last resort to save face and end suffering.
Cheated for long, the teachers also find no light at the end of the tunnel. They have been forced to work under low payment and without an assured service career. Divided in confusing groups, the teachers though have staged demonstrations for fulfilment of their demands, their organisation has always been weak. Starting from university professors to Block Grant teachers in schools and colleges, SS, para teachers and contract teachers, the teacher community has been alleging of being deprived of their dues and left in the lurch.
The interesting point is the Government does not beg to differ on the teachers’ contentions but at the same time has let them go on a wild goose chase by promising to fulfil their demands every time they grow restive. On the ground, however, nothing happens and every Assembly Session witnesses the same drama of absurd in which teachers take out long rallies, obstruct paths and hold theatrical shows on streets in Bhubaneswar.