Dozers come to life

Sadoli Khalsa,a village in Kolhapur district,is a village of bulldozers. Its simply good business,villagers say

Sambhajirao Patil has lived with caterpillars all his lifenot the green,furry sort; the big,yellow hulk that is parked in front of his house. His great granduncle was the first to bring home a bulldozer,a Caterpillar D-4,and thats how Sadoli Khalsa became Dozer gaon or a village of bulldozers.

It was in 1950 that my great granduncle brought home a second-hand bulldozer. I was 10 and remember looking at it in awe. He was known as Jamadar Patil. He bought the Caterpillar D-4 chain bulldozer for Rs 25,000 to till our sugarcane field, says Patil,who owns six bulldozers today. His seven brothers own nearly 40 bulldozers amongst themselves.

After that first bulldozer,the Patil family bought another one two years later and then,there was no stopping them. The family started renting out these bulldozers to nearby villages and that started bringing in a steady flow of income. In the 1950s,we rented out a bulldozer for Rs 20 an hour. The vehicles made it easy for the farmers to till their land,acres of it, says Patil.

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Soon,others in the village replicated this model. They invested their savings,the money from their agricultural produce and the bank loans to buy bulldozers. They used some of them on their fields and rented out some. The bulldozers are a good business proposition for farmers,though we do not get any government support or subsidy, says Patil.

Almost every house in the village has a dozer parked outside. The village,16 km from Kolhapur city,has acres of sugarcane fields and most of the villagers are members of sugar factories and have invested in dozers and dairy processing. Except for the monsoon months,the dozers are rented out to government organisations for construction and other related land work.

Bajirao Bhamnekar,a villager who has his dozers in Karnataka,Andhra Pradesh and even Jharkhand,is proud of his investment. The investment is high,but these dozers can work for nearly 20-25 years with proper maintenance. Our dozers are sent away for a lot of government projects and that yields good returns. It has been good for our village, he says.

A lot has changed since that first Caterpillar rolled into Dozer gaonthe rents,for instance. Villagers now rent out their dozers for Rs 850 an hour,up from Rs 20 in 1950.

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Villages near SadoliAarey,Pachne,Kandgaon,Uditreyare picking the trend and buying bulldozers. Apart from the Caterpillar bulldozers,there are vehicles from Bharat Earth Movers Limited and Cummins and many others,all worth Rs 10 lakh and above. The villagers keep tabs on new dozer models and the younger generation browses the Net and informs the elders of the new dozer companies coming to the country.

The money has brought with it problems too. Dozer owners complain of threats by local mafias when they take their dozers outside the state,some others complain of being overworked. There are the usual problems,but we cant worry about such things as there are impediments in every business, says Sambhaji Patil.