When it is hard to find labourers for farming works, here is a sarpanch who offers to do paddy cutting for others.
Meet 47-year-old Chittaranjan Behera, Sarpanch of Bhagabatpur Panchayat. He engages himself for crop cutting in others’ paddy fields these days and finds immense pleasure in doing so.
According to Minati Das, a 58-year- old widow of Banahara village, “I had grown kharif paddy in two acres of land through share cropping. I had decided to harvest the paddy with my son. But my only son Sarada Prasanna Das suddenly was down with typhoid. I did not have money to hire labourers. However, when I brought my sorry plight before sarpanch Behera and asked him to give some money for engaging labourers, he assured me he would himself do crop cutting.”
And as per his promise, Behera came to her house wearing a white Dhoti and a towel and asked her to go with him for starting the paddy harvest work.
“First of all, I thought the sarpanch was joking. But, later I along with him and another person started the harvesting of paddy. We worked for three days,” added Minati.
Similarly, the sarpanch also cut paddy in two and a half acres of land of 50-year-old Ratnakar Behera of Shyamsundarpur village following the latter met with an accident. Ratnakar was worried a lot thinking about how he would harvest his paddy. However, when the matter came to the knowledge of Behera, he too extended him a helping hand by way of giving manual labour in his field.
“As I belong to a farmer’s family, I know all the tricks of farming. When I came to know about the plight of some people of my panchayat, I decided to help them,” said Behera.