Pandavapura/Mandya: For as far as the eye can see, the sugarcane fields that should have been a sea of green, signalling the prosperity that they should have brought to the lakhs who toil in the fields all day, are dry, scorched, left to face the elements.
The sugarcane farmers of Mandya district have abandoned their cash crop to their fate, much as they have their own. Last count, the unconfirmed death toll from the suicides had risen to 50. Not only is sugar, once the most sought after cash crop, no longer the money-spinner it once was, farmers across Pandavapura and Srirangapatna taluks of Mandya district have decided its time to switch over, back to paddy even.
Farmer after farmer said they have no-one else to blame but themselves, for not seeing the writing on the wall. “We should have known when sugar processing factories stayed undecided on whether to buy the crop or not,” said one farmer. With no-one to pick up the produce, the cane was left standing in the fields, long after it started ripening in April. Four months later and with no buyers in sight, farmers have stopped protecting their fields, even allowing cattle to graze on them. “Why irrigate a crop that no-one wants, so we’ve just left it to dry,” said one.
By this time last year, bullock carts laden with cane and trucks carrying the crushed and processed sugar would have been clogging the roads into and out of the sugarcane
factories. This year, the ominous silence says it all.
Three more commit suicide
This fertile district continued to witness suicide by farmers in debt and distress with three of them, including two who tended to sugarcane crop, ending their lives on Saturday. While Ramakrishna, 35, of Aipanahalli in KR Pet taluk, committed suicide because he could not repay a loan of Rs one lakh borrowed from a public sector bank for sugarcane cultivated on 2.24 acres, Chinnaswamy, 45, of Kempinakoplu in Kikkeri police station limits in KR Pet taluk, committed self-harm because he too could not pay back a loan of Rs two lakhs borrowed for sugarcane and brinjal crops on two acres owned by him.
In Doddapalya, a village in Srirangapatna taluk, Prakash, 28, owner of 20 guntas land, committed suicide today. Local police are investigating into factors which forced him to take the extreme step.
The fourth suicide was of Shivanna, 36, a security guard, who consumed poison in Saadolalu in Maddur. His father, Kempaiah, owned 2.5 acres, and was in debt because the local sugar factor failed to pay arrears for sugarcane supplied last year. His kin said he took the extreme step because he was depressed about the fact that the family could not repay a loan.
