A Script Gone Horribly Wrong

The story of land reforms and their fate is enough to explain the rise and fall of the Left in West Bengal

Exactly 30 years ago, Monoranjan Patra received the patta (land deed) for a two bigha (1.6 acres) plot of ceiling- surplus land near Purbatati village in Ausgram-I block, West Bengal. A landless peasant who once used to toil at subsistence wages on the farms of rich landlords, Patra finally had a farm of his own. He was also able to draw on other agricultural initiatives by the state, such as high-yielding varieties of paddy introduced as part of the Green Revolution. By 1981, he had enough money to renovate his house for the first time in four decades. Over the next decade-and-a-half, Patra’s income rose to the point where he owned cows and was able to send his children— four sons and two daughters—to school, and later, college. But life had started turning tough around that time. By the time of his death in 2003, things had gone from bad to worse.

Earlier this month, Patra’s son, Gosai, killed himself. He was college educated (the farm earnings had seen him through), and had faced the rigours of academic pursuit. But he could not face another failed crop. His accumulated debts over the same piece of land were just too onerous.

In 1977, shortly after the Left Front government first came to power in West Bengal, it launched one of the most ambitious land reform programmes in the country, Operation Barga. Starting in the Ausgram-I block of Burdwan district, it took the state by storm, forging for the Left a support base that rival parties dared not dream of dislodging. Now with reports of suicide after suicide of farmers from the very same block, the story of how these reforms have fallen apart offers a ringside view of how the Left has lost its hold over the state.

Gosai had taken a loan of Rs 22,000 from a moneylender a few months ago, but could sow seeds for the aman (monsoon) crop on only half of his 2.5 bighas. “He was depressed,” says his younger brother Kajal, “and when the standing paddy on the portion he cultivated wilted, he lost all hope.” Gosai’s wife Champa had given birth to a girl just two days before he hanged himself—his mother Sethbarani tells us that the burden of bringing up a second girl must have weighed on his mind.

The fate of Gosai’s land reflects Ausgram’s present penury. Most of the land lies fallow due to the failure of monsoon rains. The paddy in the fields, irrigated with ground water drawn by pumps, has long wilted. Ironically, a large irrigation canal abruptly ends just 2 km short of the area. “Land was acquired for extending the canal long ago, but nothing was done. A submersible pump was installed just adjacent to my farm a year ago, but was dismantled and taken away by the gram panchayat after a few weeks,” complains Chandan Thakur, a resident of Korotia Majhpara village in Ausgram. Sheikh Kerim, 45, of Jharul village in the same district’s Bhatar administrative block, tried to pull along for quite some time. He finally gave in and drank a bottle of pesticide on 3 October. A sharecropper who used to cultivate a 3-bigha plot of land owned by a neighbour, Kerim had taken a loan of Rs 10,000 a few months ago to buy fertilisers and seeds. “He had an outstanding loan of Rs 20,000 from last year, and had hoped to repay that as well as the fresh loan with the money he would earn this year. But his hopes were dashed, and he went into depression, ultimately taking his life,” says a sobbing Mausum Bibi, his wife. O

n 10 October, 24-year-old Madhab Bhandari, who owned three bighas of farmland in Akamba village of neighbouring Birbhum district, too drank pesticide. He died, leaving his wife and seven- month-old daughter to fend for themselves. Villagers say all their paddy crops have wilted, and repeated pleas for a pump-set were ignored by the local gram panchayat run by the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM). “They punished us for supporting the Trinamool Congress in the last Lok Sabha polls,” believes Sushanta Mondal, a sharecropper and Bhandari’s neighbour.

What riles not only the bereaved families but also millions of other farmers is the state government and CPM’s refusal to acknowledge the crisis. “All these suicides were due to marital problems or disputes over property within their families,” says Amal Haldar, the CPM district secretary of Burdwan, “We investigated each case, and none of the farmers took their lives due to poverty or crop failure. Most, in fact, were well-off and even had colour TV sets at home.” Reflecting the state government’s assessment, the police have registered all these suicides as ‘unnatural death’ cases.

Haldar’s contention, however, does not stand scrutiny. None of the bereaved families Open visited are even remotely welloff; none have even transistors, let alone colour TV sets, and most people here eat barely one square meal a day. Neighbours of the bereaved families tell us that none of them had family problems, disputes or marital strife so acute as to push them to suicide. Haldar and his party’s denial of the obvious has only alienated farmers in this red citadel further still.

Also, as it turns out, not all recorded ‘beneficiaries’ of Operation Barga have gained much from land reforms. Take the case of Manikeshwar Bagdi, whose neighbour Jitu Bagdi drank pesticide and died on 21 August in Ausgram’s Korotia village. Manikeshwar, 58, got 1.5 bighas of vested land in September 1976. But he never got possession. “The powerful landlord whose surplus land was acquired by the government and distributed to landless peasants like me, worked the system and engaged other sharecroppers to work on his land,” he reports, “He got close to the ruling party, and despite repeated complaints, even to the Krishak Sabha (a CPM affiliate), I couldn’t cultivate the land that’s in my name.”

There are thousands like Bagdi who have never got to cultivate the land they had been granted the deeds of, or have been evicted from such farms by powerful landlords in cahoots with local CPM functionaries. Scores of poverty-stricken farmers recount similar tales as we tour interior areas of the district. Krishak Sabha leader Rezzak Mondal admits that there have been a few such cases, but claims that the Sabha intervened in each case to restore the farms to the official beneficiaries. But Swapan Debnath, Trinamool Congress MLA from this district, alleges that only those who support the CPM have ever benefited, an allegation that echoes in village after village.

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), which could have provided relief, is another story of corruption, nepotism and apathy. On an average, people have got only 15 days of work over the last eight-and-a-half months. Jitu Bagdi’s ‘job card’ shows he worked for 12 days this year, and his wife, Rupa, just four days.

A common grouse is that even projects under the NREGA are rejigged to suit the interests of local CPM leaders. A few weeks ago, residents of Korotia village were given six days’ work, but only to clear a 14 bigha plot of land owned by Rathin Konar, an influential party leader, that had been overrun by shrubs and bushes. “We told the officials we want to dig ponds to harvest rainwater so that our crops don’t fail next time,” says Lakhi Bagdi, a relative of Jitu, “but they didn’t listen, and we were asked to clear that field so that it becomes cultivable.”

Such cases are common in Basantapur, Joykrishnapur and Beluti villages under Berenda gram panchayat, where villagers were engaged under NREGA to dig up tracts of land and construct ponds on plots owned by CPM leaders and panchayat bigwigs. “These have become their private ponds and fisheries, and the villagers don’t benefit from any of it,” says Sheikh Rehmatulla, a local. In Nabagram, people were engaged under NREGA to repair a road leading to the residence of Anisur Sheikh, a local CPM fellow. “Not only is enough work not being provided under NREGA, even when it is, public assets are not being built,” alleges MLA Swapan Debnath.

Ainul Haque, a CPM district committee member, rubbishes the allegations, and, when apprised of our findings on the ground, says: “You have been wrongly informed by some motivated people.” On his part, Krishak Sabha’s Rezzak Mondal is ready to blame anyone and everyone except the state government. He blames the weather for doing a lazy job this year, the Damodar Valley Corp authorities for not releasing water for irrigation during lean months, nationalised banks for not disbursing loans, the Union Government for not helping the farm sector, and, of course, liberalisation and globalisation for just about all the woes of Burdwan’s farmers.

Says Aniruddha Das, head of the plant physiology department at Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya: “Farmers were never given adequate state and institutional support to sustain the gains of Operation Barga.” Das is certain that West Bengal is “surely going the Vidarbha way”. His prophecy mustn’t be dismissed. He might be right if the farmers of Bengal’s rice bowl are left with only a binary choice: starvation or suicide.

About The Author

Jaideep Mazumdar