Death Trap

At 26, Kishore Kolta had dreams in his eyes and fire in his belly. The first graduate of the village, he convinced his illiterate, debt-ridd...

At 26, Kishore Kolta had dreams in his eyes and fire in his belly. The first graduate of the village, he convinced his illiterate, debt-ridden father to abandon paddy and switch to lucrative sugarcane. Two years later, the family was even deeper in debt and a demoralised Kishore had killed himself.

The tragedy of the Kolta family — Kishore left behind his aged parents, a young wife, a 10-month-old son, an unmarried sister and a debt of Rs 2 lakh — has ramifications that extend far beyond the borders of Raigarh’s Kesapali village, population 500. It illustrates how lethal half-hearted agricultural reforms can be, and how deeply dependent farmers still are on the whims of the market.

‘‘Kishore wanted to do something new to relieve our debt. So we switched from growing paddy to sugarcane. A miller in Orissa’s Bargarh district, close by, promised to buy all the sugarcane we produced on four acres of land. When he backed out at the last minute, approximately 22 trucks of sugarcane just sat in the fields,’’ says Sahib Ram, Kishore’s father.

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Weeks after the youth took his own life on August 20, the overripe sugarcane still stands in the fields, a cruel reminder of what could have been. Just a year earlier, in 2002-03, a similar healthy harvest had helped the family clear part of their debt.

In fact, the promising start encouraged the family to double its sugarcane area to four acres, in the hope of clearing off the debt in one go. Not only has that aspiration died, the family even had to raise money from the villagers — 70 per cent of them are small farmers — to perform Kishore’s last rites.

‘‘Others could follow him,’’ warns local sarpanch Daya Sagar Bhoi. ‘‘Sixty per cent of local farmers are in debt. Like Kishore, many switched to sugarcane in hopes of assured profits. But since there is no reliable market nearby, that hope is turning into a dead-end.’’

Official statistics confirm the change in farming habits. More than 1,000 farmers in Chhattisgarh’s poverty belt are into sugarcane, many more are trying their luck with ginger — yet another so-called lucrative cash crop — and consequently, the area under paddy has come down from 2.5 lakh hectares to 2.13 hectares.

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The only assured markets, however, continue to be for oilseeds and cereals. Records available with R K Gonekar, Deputy Director, Agriculture, Raigarh, show that farmers in the Salheona belt — including Kesapali — were aware of the lacuna as far back as 1998. They got together to demand the establishment of a sugar mill, and even raised Rs 5 lakh themselves for the Rs 52-crore project.

But the state showed little interest in the mill, and the matter remained buried till two years ago, when the farmers raised the issue before then Chief Minister Ajit Jogi. The mill took off, but in Kawardha district. And the new BJP government has ruled out one in Raigarh, since the Kawardha one is already making huge losses.

‘‘Sugarmills are becoming unviable since things began looking up in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra,’’ admits Raigarh Collector R S Vishawakarma. ‘‘I’ve asked the SDM to inquire into the circumstances of Kishore Kolta’s death.’’

Kishore’s family and his farmer neighbours, though, know the reasons only too well. The youth had borrowed money from two local money-lenders — one of whom took away his motorcycle a week before his death — as well as the State Bank of India. ‘‘He died because of the huge debts. Because there was no market for his crops,’’ says sarpanch Bhoi.