South Bengal ruinously impacted by COVID-19 and Amphan

COVID-19 took away wages sent home by migrants, Amphan has destroyed sharecroppers’ paddy and vegetables

For 31-year-old Halima Bibi, a landless sharecropper, survival over the next six months is dependent on subsidies from neighbours and the government, now that two sources of livelihood on which she relied have dried up. COVID-19 snapped the allowance that Ms. Halima and her two teenage sons received from her Kerala-based husband Alamin Mondal, while cyclone Amphan ruined her last available source of livelihood — paddy spread over an acre in Charmahatpur, a deeply agrarian but prosperous village in Nadia district.

Also read: Amphan leaves behind trail of destruction in West Bengal

West Bengal is the highest producer of rice in the country, with over half its land dedicated to rice cultivation, and Halima Bibi is one of over 1.5 million sharecroppers who have lost their entire produce.

“The cyclone came exactly at a time when I was about to remove the paddy from the field in [the next] three days’ time,” she said, while dumping the moistened crop in front of her damaged house. “Sob dhan-e kall beriye gechey”, or the grain has come out after the paddy was covered in rain water for a night, she explained. The soggy Rabi crop will produce substandard rice. “Most of it will go to feed the cow,” she said.

Out of work

Meanwhile, a reasonable monthly allowance of around ₹5,000 that Ms. Halima’s husband used to dispatch from Kerala stopped coming from early March as the 35-year-old mason went out of work with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. On phone from Kayamkulam town in Alappuzha in south Kerala, Mr. Mondal said he is confused whether to return to Nadia or not, though many are boarding home-bound trains and buses from there.

“I do not have any income and there is no job in Nadia. [Now] tell me why should I return?” he asked.

But Mr. Mondal is aware that his mud house by the river Khori is damaged and the family is without any income. “I am getting some indications from the contractor, with whom I have been working for last 15 years, that work may resume, which is the only hope left for us in here and Charmahatpur,” said Mr. Mondal, thanking the Kerala government for “excellent free food”, which he could not buy in normal times.

He stays in one of two cramped rooms, with 14 other workers from his neighbourhood in central Nadia. Most of them do not want to return as they have “bigger financial burden”, he said. With shrinking income from land, scores of boys left to work in other States from every village in Krishnanagar II block, where Charmahatpur is located. “We call them foreigners,” quipped Rahim Baksh Molla, an affluent farmer.

Prices to skyrocket

“With COVID-19 and Amphan, the area’s economy is ruined,” said Liakat Ali Jangi, manager of one of the oldest cooperative societies, Dhubulia Krishi Unnayan Samiti, with about 1,000 members.

“Most of the farmers are now coming to the society to withdraw deposits from the [cooperative] bank, and not to buy fertilizer or pesticides,” he said, while introducing farmers and vegetable vendors.

Rajesh Sardar, a vendor, said prices of basic kitchen vegetables had shot up by 20%.

“It will be up by four times as there is demand without supply. The farmers have not just lost the paddy but the vegetables too,” said Mr. Sardar.

Also read: Cyclone Amphan | Mousuni licks its wounds as leaves turn yellow, resorts stare at certain doom

Uttam Ghosh, a small farmer, said that “80% of sesame, jute and corn” — the profitable cash crops, had been “killed by Amphan”.

“If there is no farm loan waiver along with additional loan to cover input costs of the next farming season, it would be the end of us,” said the cooperative’s accountant Parthasarathi Kumar.

Bengal has not witnessed suicides by farmers due to crop failure as seen in several other States owing to some stability in the landless sharecroppers’ income, initiated by the West Bengal Land Reforms Act, 1955, its subsequent amendments, and the recording of names of sharecroppers — by the Operation Barga movement — entitling them to a share of farm produce.

Cyclone Amphan may have reversed this, while COVID-19 has shaken the confidence of farmers like Halima Bibi or Uttam Ghosh, considered Bengal’s economic bulwark for centuries.

“[Whatever] money I had spent in nurturing the field is wasted; if monthly ration stops, we will have no option but to starve,” echoed Ms. Halima.

Most of the 300 families of Charmahatpur are faced with similar realities. “In fact, this is the story of all of south Bengal in the summer of 2020,” said Liakat Ali Jangi.