Distress signals for farming community in Goa
Music is his passion and farming as a hobby give him kicks. He is all but eighty-one years in age, but yet not given up on the things he was most of fond of in life- cultivating his paddy field and rearing his she buffaloes for milk. A decade back, his paddy fields yielded two crops in a season. But with the adjoining paddy fields converted into a housing project only one crop is possible per season now – a death knell for farming in the Indian state of Goa.
For the umpteen time Joao Santan Rebello cast his vote last month, to elect his representative to the 15th Lok Sabha, the lower house of Indian parliament, since Goa got liberated from the Portuguese in 1962. Much has changed over the years with modernization in the tourist-resort state, the small state of India which welcomes some four millions foreign tourists every year. In the race to build mega housing projects to cater to the tourists many a paddy fields have fallen prey.
People like Rebello who hails from coastal village of Benaulim are becoming rarer and rarer to find in Goa , one who continue to cultivate their paddy fields in the face of many obstacles. All his life he has lived on the profits from his paddy fields and buffaloes rearing business - to take care of his family needs and to provide education to his five sons. Giving up on what he has been doing all his life is hard thing and that is what Rebello finds difficult.
Non-profitability has forced many farmers in the state to keep their paddy fields barren. Rebello too experienced the stark fact, when thirty-seven fellow agriculturists who were cultivating the fields adjacent to his, one by one forsake the paddy cultivation ten years back, in an area, which is spread over an area of two acres of land, in Benaulim village, in South Goa.
“I was left with the difficult question, whether I should follow suit, “ recalls Rebello.
But, Rebello popularly known as ‘Mastor’ (teacher), by the entire village, farming is a hobby, he gets pleasure in seeing his paddy field grow. He spends most part of the day and night in the paddy field in a small palm leave temporary hut, a ten-minute walk from his home.
“I was determined to fight back and wage a lonely battle, a struggle to continue my farming hobby. I work the fields for the sheer joy I get in seeing these green rice fields. The entire area looked like a green carpet when cultivated. Some villagers take pleasure in a local folk play (tiatro), I enjoy watching my fields grow. I love this work with my heart and soul.”
Modernization is taking a toll in the way youths in Goa look up to Agriculture, with no college catering to the a degree in agriculture, the next available option to complete your studies in agriculture is move to the neigbouring state, which many youth are not interested. Instead the best available and simpler route they prefer to take, is the journey to the Persian Gulf or work in the shipping industry.
The younger generation is simply not ready to soil their hands. Thus in the race for upward mobility the paddy fields are left barren.
“Rising labour costs is one of the reason, now I pay rupees 300, for men and 250 for women while in 1960 the rates were rupees 2.50 and 1.50 for men and women respectively. Every year I spend rupees 15,000, while I suffer a loss of rupees five thousand on each crop. Goa has been fortunate that there are no farmer suicides like in other states of India, because of loan debt. In Goa, farmers simply abandon farming and leave their paddy fields barren and the new generation look for new forms of employment or are migrating to foreign lands. It is said that an Indian farmer is born in debt and dies in debt, that’s true for small farmers like us.”
If a few decades back the entire family of Rebello was involved in cultivating the paddy fields along with labourers, the trend of Goan families breaking from the joint family system has affected the Rebello’s as two of his children have migrated in search of greener pastures to Mumbai and Persian Gulf.
“Earlier, my wife and five sons use to help me in my work, but she isn’t so healthy and my sons have their own jobs and family commitments. I also rear buffaloes and I use the dung to enrich the fields as manure. Earlier I used to plough the field with buffaloes but now I cannot do that and instead I use the tractor which I hire from the agriculture department.”
But age is slowly catching up with him, he says and he plans to say goodbye to cultivating his paddy fields in the two years’ time ‘god willing’.
“I had to make the difficult decision of giving up on paddy cultivation in three other paddy fields which my family used to cultivate a decade back, to concentrate on just one. In another two years time I will give up on farming and my paddy field would also be barren.”
An Indian farmer continues to depend on the vagaries of the climate while some of the government much published water supply schemes remain on paper or are yet to reach people like Rebello. People like Rebello still depend on their age-old primitive type distribution system of water for their crops.
The Taleband lake is a vital link in the eco-system of the village used to repaired every year by Communidade—but with the age-old system getting a beating, the control was then handed over the tenant association and subsequently to the panchayat – the self governing body of the village- took over, but they too stopped some years back. The farmers in the area then joined to repair the lake but that too was also stopped. Now he repairs a limited part of the lake for water to reach his paddy fields.
“The water in the lake was used to irrigate the nearby fields which yielded bumper crops and the local residents earlier did not have to go far to search for their stock of rice. The Taleband lake and other smaller lakes supporting farming activity have silted. Water pump has been my farming companion for the last five decades. I am pumping water from a small lake and watering my crop through the channels.”
Waterweed is another monster which has colonized the lakes and which affects Rebello’s paddy fields.
Bridge culverts which have replaced pile culverts do not drain flood waters fast enough.
“I discovered painfully in 2006, Karif (rainy season crop), with the nearby low-lying paddy fields been converted into a housing complex, my crop was damaged. I approached the agriculture department for help and I submitted my bills, instead of the rupees five thousand which I incurred, I got only rupees one thousand. Disgusting and discouraging to say the least, when the Indian government makes tall claims of promoting farming. I have got no award in my fight to continue the farming legacy in face of so many odd.
For Rebello his paddy field is a place for him to admire the tiny patch of green in the vastness of the fallows. Pulling out pesky weeds. Adjusting furrows and waters channels or just caressing the sheaves of corn at other times simply gazing lovingly at the mass of greens gently wavering in the wind.
But for the church-school trained musician from the Portuguese era who had to give on playing the trumpet after losing his teeth, he will abandon paddy cultivation in two years time leaving him to play the double bass for the listening pleasures of his grandchildren. The music which will revive old memories of the then popular group’ Louis and his Melodians’, the music group he played for many years.
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