Parth M.N.

Sharmila Joshi

Editor

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Yashodabai Jorwar spends her evenings shooing away pigs.
“They barge in and run around the farm,” she says. “The land is actually not
useful to us. But I have to do something to keep myself busy.” 

Jorwar, over 70 years old, has been living alone for the
past few months in her home in Hatkarwadi village in Beed district of Maharashtra.
“My two sons and their wives are in Baramati [around 150 kilometres away, in western Maharashtra] with
their five children,” she says. “They left our village at the end of October to
cut sugarcane and will be back by March-end.”

Every year, farmers in Marathwada, particularly from Beed district,
migrate seasonally to work as labourers on sugarcane fields because farming
is no longer enough to cover household expenses. As labourers, a couple can
earn Rs. 228 per ton of cane they cut, or a total of up to Rs. 60,000 in five
months. For many families this is their only source of steady income every
year. 

“Our yearly income from the
two acres of land is not even 10,000 rupees,” says the bespectacled Jorwar.
“Even during the farming season, we depend more on [the income from]
agricultural labour. Water is also not available easily in hilly areas.” During the
6-7 months of the year when her sons and their families live in Hatkarwadi, they cultivate food crops like jowar,
bajra
and tur, primarily for household consumption.
The harvest is what Jorwar depends on for food when she is alone.

While some sugarcane labourers – the contractors hire only
couples as cane cutters, mainly because the wage rate per person would be
higher – migrate within Marathwada, most of them travel hundreds of kilometres
to Satara, Sangli and Kolhapur districts in western Maharashtra or Belgaum district
in Karnataka. (See <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/articles/the-long-road-to-the-sugarcane-fields">The long road to
the sugarcane fields</a>). With so many adults on the move, their
own villages become deserted and desolate. It is mostly the elderly who are left
behind and, in some cases, young kids, if there is someone at home to look
after them. 

Rajan Kshirsagar, farm activist and a leader of the Communist
Party of India in Parbhani district, says that of the estimated 600,000 farmers
and labourers in Marathwada who chop sugarcane, half are seasonal migrants from
Beed. He said the
trade unions arrived at the estimate by looking at the number of students who
miss school, and also the labour required for the quantity of cane chopped in
Maharashtra on an average in the 150-day season. 

“There
are four belts in Maharashtra where migration is acute,” Kshirsagar says,
referring to the ranshadow zone between Shahade taluka in Nadurbar district and Sangole taluka in Solapur district; the tract from Chalisgaon taluka in Jalgaon to Kinwat taluka in Nanded; the Satpuda range; and the Balaghat
range.

Balaghat in Marathwada covers
the area from Pathardi in Ahmednagar
to Kandhar in Nanded. It is hilly terrain with barren land and  scanty rainfall. Most of the range is within
the 300-kilometre belt of Beed where the average rainfall is 674 mm, lesser
than the already low average rainfall in Marathwada at 700 mm. In Beed’s Shirur
taluka, the average rainfall is only 574 mm.  The lack of rainfall and irrigation – among
other reasons – is forcing an ever-growing number of farmers to migrate for
seasonal work.

The water scarcity is combined with growing production
costs, the absence of adequate and fair credit systems, and a lack of state
support. The minimum support price (MSP) fixed by the central government for crops, including cotton, soyabean, tur and bajra, does not match the production costs
borne by farmers, compelling them to double up as labourers. For instance, a
food crop like jowar sells for Rs.
1,700 per quintal, while the cost of production is Rs. 2,089, according to the<a id="4388" linktype="page"> Price Policy for Kharif Crops
report (2017-18)</a> of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices. Even cultivating a cash crop like cotton is no longer sustainable because the MSP is
almost the same as the production cost, leaving little room for a profit
even if the monsoon is decent. 

During the five-month cane-cutting period, villages in talukas like Dharur, Wadwani, Parli, Shirur, Patoda and Ashti, all in the
Balaghat range, are oddly quiet. Hatkarwadi, with a population of around 1,250, is among these. While driving to this village, up the hilly terrain on narrow, bumpy roads, the only sound is whine of the car engine. The silence pervades
even after we reach the village, broken only by chirping birds and a hot breeze
ruffling the leaves. The thud of our footsteps sounds very loud. 

“Even if someone dies in the village, it will take a few
days for others to find out,” Jorwar laughs, deepening the wrinkles on her
face. If she faced a medical emergency, she would have to call the tardy ambulance
service to take her to the government hospital in Raimoha village, nine kilometres away. Jorwar and
others like her depend mostly on the few younger adults still left in their
village and neighbouring villages – some in high school, others doing odd jobs –
when they need help. In some cases, their migrating children also leave behind
some money that gives their elderly parents some sense of security in these
lonely months.

“Almost [everyone in] the entire village has left,” Jorwar says. “Even I
used to cut cane with my husband. He died a few years ago, but anyway we had
stopped going around 10 years ago. Old people have no place in this line of work.” 

During the day, Jorwar, who
walks with a hunch, spends her time fetching water, and cooking food for
herself. “The village handpump often dries up,” she says. “So I have to walk
about two kilometres to fetch water from the village well.” While we sit talking
on the rocky platform in front of her one-room hut, Baburao Sadgar, drawn
to the sound of our voices, approaches us from his nearby home. He is 70, and
walks slowly with the help of a cane. “I heard people talking so was curious to
know what is going on,” he says. “It is a bit unusual to overhear conversations
here during this time of the year.” 
















Sadgar too has stayed back in the village with his wife Chandrabai, while
their two sons toil away at sugarcane fields – he does not know exactly where. “I
have seven grandkids,” he says. “My wife and I are frail now. We can hardly
look after ourselves, which is why my sons did not leave their kids behind. It
is physically impossible for us to take care of our grandchildren.”

Two of Sadgar’s grandsons are in their 20s and away
cutting cane with their wives. The other five grandchildren, ages ranging from
8 to 16, miss school when they migrate with their parents for five months. As
do Jorwar’s five grandchildren, ages 5 to 13. (See <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/articles/cutting-cane-for-2000-hours">Cutting cane for 2,000 hours</a>). When they return
they have a tough time catching up on studies or getting anything like a
consistent education.

With many parents taking along their children during the
migration months, Hatkarwadi’s
primary school, with classes till the fourth standard, only has a
handful of students. Eight-year old Kunal Sadgar, accompanying us to the
school, takes us through dusty alleys with padlocked wooden doors on both
sides. Kunal stayed back with his mother because his father died four years
ago. Since contractors only hire couples, his mother now works as an agricultural
labourer in neighbouring villages.

The teacher, Sitaram Kokate, 31, arrives just as we reach
the school. “We only enrol kids up to nine years of age,” he says. “But kids
that young usually insist on going with their mothers. This has an adverse
impact on their education. With their parents busy cutting cane, there is
hardly anyone to look after their studies.” 

There have been sporadic efforts in Beed district to keep the
children in school even when their parents migrate. At Dhangarwadi, a village with a population of
around 1,350, around six kilometres from Hatkarwadi, headmaster Bharat Dhakne has
achieved some success. “Four years ago, you would not have seen a single child
in the school,” he says. “Now 91 students are registered up to the eighth standard
here; 80 are present today.”

Dhakne says he collected funds with the help of local
non-governmental organisations and renovated the hostel in the village run by a
school committee set up by the state government. Then he tried to convince
parents. “The government gives 1,416 rupees per month [under the Hangami Vastigruh Yojana, a seasonal hostel plan] for every student whose parents
are sugarcane cutters. It is obviously not enough,” he says. “But after the
hostel renovation, we went door-to-door and explained how important it is for
the children to stay back. Students who migrate with their parents struggle to
do basic maths. How will they get jobs in the outside world?”

It took a while, Dhakne says, for the parents to come
around. “Some were persuaded in the first year,” he says. “Then those who had
stayed back helped us convince others. Gradually, we managed to convince almost
all of them.”

Even before the hostel was renovated, Ashok Gadhve, 16, stayed
back with his elder brother, now 20. “My parents have been cutting cane since
my birth,” he says. “I never went with them.” Ashok is now studying science at a high school in Raimoha, and lives alone in the house during the migration season.
“My brother is also out working as a labourer,” he says. “I cook my own food
with whatever is available on the farm. I do not want to cut cane. I want to be
a pharmacist.”

Back in Hatkarwadi, Jorwar
and others try and pass the long and lonely hours. “In the afternoon, some old people gather
around the temple and chat. In the evening, we head to our farmlands [to shoo
away pigs],” she says. “We have a lot of time.”

‘Almost everyone in the village has left’

இந்த கிராமத்தில்   கிட்டத்தட்ட அனைவரும் சென்றுவிட்டனர்

‘ଗାଁର ସମସ୍ତେ ଛାଡ଼ି ପଳାଇଛନ୍ତି’

‘गावातलं जवळपास समदं माणूस गाव सोडून गेलंय’

গ্রাম ছেড়ে প্রায় সকলেই চলে গেছে

‘गांव का लगभग हर व्यक्ति जा चुका है’

’گاؤں کا تقریباً ہر آدمی جا چکا ہے‘

Beed

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‘Almost everyone in the village has left’

The elderly in the villages of Beed in Marathwada have become used to the lonely months from October to March, when their families migrate to work in sugarcane fields – leaving entire tracts deserted and desolate

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