Jaideep Hardikar

Sharmila Joshi

Editor

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From July to November 2017, the cotton growing districts of Vidarbha, mainly Yavatmal, saw a sudden spike in people coming to hospitals with complaints of nervousness, dizziness, visual impairment and stomach aches. All were cotton farmers or labourers who had been contact-poisoned while spraying insecticides in their fields. At least 50 died, over 1,000 became sick, some for months. The disaster exposed the unabated and profuse use of pesticides on cotton and soyabean crop, and will have a lasting impact on the farm economy of Vidarbha.

In this first story of a three-part series, PARI looks at what happened in the region during that period and what the Special Investigation Team constituted by the Maharashtra government found.  

In another subsequent series of reports, we will look into the bigger story of why the region consumes so much pesticide. And why Bt-cotton – a genetically modified variety that was supposed to come with in-built resistance to bollworms – seems to have cracked under the attack of the old pest. In fact, the pink bollworm is back with a vengeance. As feared, it has caused widespread devastation.                                                                                              * * * * *

Namdev Soyam was disoriented,
moving slowly, responding to questions hesitatingly, as if from far away. His
wife Vanita looked at him in silence from a distance. “He is in a state of shock,”
one of his relatives said, softly. 

His bloodshot eyes looked
frightened as he sat with a tonsured head and a large vermillion mark on his
forehead at the family’s crowded home. His elderly mother and father, both his
legs amputated long ago, sat behind 25-year-old Namdev, their breathing
laboured. Their guests, mostly relatives and villagers, had just finished lunch
– but everyone was silent.

On a plastic chair next to Namdev,
under the thatched porch roof of their house, rested a newly-framed photo of a
young man, with a garland of marigold and roses. Petals lay strewn around. Agarbattis
had been lit and placed near the frame.

The photo announced the tragedy that
had befallen the farming household of Pardhan Adivasis in Tembhi. The village is 40 kilometres south of the
cotton trading town of Pandharkaoda in Kelapur tehsil of Yavatmal district in Maharashtra.

It had not yet been 48 hours since
Pravin Soyam, just 23, had died – late at night on September 27. We had arrived
at his house a day before the Dussehra festival on September 29, 2017.

Pravin was Namdev’s younger
brother – and his buddy. It could easily have been him (Namdev) blurted out
someone from among the sombre gathering. Since Namdev was unwell, his father had
instead sent Pravin to the farm to spray pesticides barely two days before his
death. “That was on Monday, September 25,” his father, Bhaurao, told us. Pravin was
healthier than Namdev, he said, staring at his garlanded photo.

“What did he spray?” we asked. Namdev got up, went inside his home, and reappeared with bags and cans of a variety of insecticides: Asataf, Ruby, Polo, Profex Super, and monocrotophos. He laid them on the mud floor of the verandah, next to the plastic chair on which Pravin’s A-4 sized photo-frame was placed. “What are these for?” we asked again. Namdev stared at us in silence. “Who told you to use this?” He was silent again. His father said the dealer in Pandharkaoda, who sells seeds, fertilisers and other inputs, told them to use these for spraying on the fields. The family owns 15 acres, entirely rain-dependent, on which they mainly grow cotton, and some soyabean, lentils and jowar too.The cocktail of pesticides, mixed in a big blue plastic drum full of water, which Pravin sprayed on that sultry day, proved to be fatal. He died not by consuming the pesticides, but by inhaling them accidently, while spraying on the family’s crops after what farmers say was an unprecedented pest attack on their fields.As the family mourned the sudden loss of Pravin, Vidarbha woke up to a pesticide disaster.

About 50 farmers died between
September to November 2017 in Yavatmal and other parts of western Vidarbha, and
over a thousand became ill. (These numbers were collated by the state
government from public and private hospitals.) Some lost their eyesight, but
survived the accidental contact or inhalation of the pesticides’ cocktail.

The health and district
administration was painfully slow to react to the crisis, but its scale and
gravity finally forced the government to constitute a Special Investigation Team
in November to probe the matter (See <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/articles/sit-report-pest-attack-unprecedented-ferocious">SIT report: pest attack unprecedented, ferocious</a>).

Across Yavatmal, in those three
months, a flood of farmers came to hospitals, both government and private, with
complaints ranging from vision loss to nervous breakdown to respiratory
problems (See <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/articles/fumes-and-fear-in-yavatmal">Fumes and fear in Yavatmal</a>).

“This is a very unusual phenomenon
and something I have never witnessed at all,” Dr. Ashok Rathod, the dean at the
Vasantrao Naik Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) in Yavatmal, told
this reporter then. “We first noticed a sudden spike in such patients in the
last week of July,” he said. “They all came in distress, with complaints of vomiting,
dizziness, nervousness, respiratory problems, sudden visual impairment,  disorientation.” Three wards of the district
hospital – 12, 18 and 19 – were full with farmers and labourers sick from the
toxic sprays.

In July 2017, Dr. Rathod said, 41
patients came to the GMCH. The figure rose to 111 in August, but September saw
more than 300 patients pour in – all of them with similar complaints. The
crisis continued to unfold in October and November, with more than 1,000
farmers getting admitted in different hospitals in Yavatmal district alone.
Similar complaints were reported from Akola, Amravati, Nagpur, Wardha and
Washim districts too. 

The state’s agriculture officials
were perplexed. So were the health officials. The state government later sent
Dr. Rathod on forced leave for failing to quickly react to the crisis,
and sent the head of the forensics department of the Government Medical College
and Hospital, Nagpur, Dr. Manish Shrigiriwar, as the new acting dean of GMCH.

The cases tapered off by November
end, with winter setting in and the farmers completely stalling the spraying of
pesticides out of fear. By then, the damage had been done – to humans and to the
cotton crop that was under an unprecedented pest attack.

On his seventh straight day of
spraying pesticides on a farm where he works on an annual contract, 21-year-old
Nikesh Kathane collapsed around noon in the first week of October.

“I had a very heavy head, I could
not see anything,” he said in mid-October, recuperating on a bed in the intensive
care unit (ICU) of the GMCH in Yavatmal city, his tense parents around him. “We
rushed him to the hospital the same evening,” his brother Laxman said. That
helped. Any delay could have proved fatal. Nikesh, who vowed never to spray
pesticides again, had muscle spasms. He was out of danger – but terrified at
being surrounded by nine patients in the ICU who were battling for their life.
He had been in the ICU for a week when we spoke to him.

He had used a China-made
battery-operated spray-pump – that makes spraying easier and faster – and more
dangerous. “You spray more in less time with this pump,” Nikesh said.

The Kathane family is from Dahegaon
village of Ralegaon tehsil, about 30 kilometres from Yavatmal city. Laxman said five more
patients from the same village were recuperating in other wards of the
hospital; their condition was not serious, but they too were suffering from the
aftereffects of the poisoning.

In Ward 18 of the hospital was Indal
Rathod, 29, a farmer from Wadgaon
village of Digras tehsil, whose family owns four acres. He had been in the hospital for about 10
days, his younger brother, Anil, told us, and he was still disoriented. 

The fear and panic was palpable not
only in the crowded hospital wards, but across the district.

A number of farmers this reporter
spoke to from September to November 2017 said they had stopped spraying insecticides
out of fear. As did Narayan Kotrange of Manoli village, when he felt dizzy one day after
spraying Profex Super on the 10 acres he had leased from another villager. “I
had done nine sprayings already,” he said, “and on the tenth occasion, I
decided to stop; I could not work for the following entire week, I was sick.”

In every village there was someone who was sick after spraying. “The blood tests of the patients show that the poisoning hit their nervous system,” said Dr. Parag Manape, a junior residential doctor who was attending to Nikhil and others at the ICU. The impact, he said, was the same as consumption, but its treatment was difficult since a ‘stomach wash’ was not possible to remove the traces of poison – inhaling fumes directly affected the respiratory system, he explained.The testimonies of farmers who were hospitalised indicated two broad trends: one particular insecticide formulation in powder-form caused visual impairment among those who used it. And those who used a specific liquid formulation had a nervous system breakdown.These formulations contained a mix of profenofos (an organophosphate), cypermethrin (a synthetic pyrethroid) and diafenthiuron, prescribed for use against a pest-complex on multiple crops. Combined together, they form a deadly composition, farmers said, potent enough to kill a person.

In the Soyam household in Tembhi village, Pravin’s health
deteriorated gradually. At first he complained of chest pain, then vomiting and
nausea, followed by nervousness. Within 24 hours he was critical. He died a day
later, three hours after reaching the small hospital in Pandharkaoda. It was all
over within a span of two days.

Doctors at the
hospital surmise that Pravin had not taken adequate safety precautions while
spraying, and had died of contact poisoning. Almost no one in these parts ever
wears gloves, a mask and body-protection apparel while spraying deadly pesticides.

“I asked him to complete the
spraying on the cotton plants because Namdev had fallen sick,” Bhaurao said.
This year, like the other farmers of their village and region, the Soyams saw
multiple pests attack their crop from July 2017, prompting them to deploy a
number of pesticide formulations many times over. 

After the spraying, Pravin complained
of weakness, but refused to see a doctor. “We thought it was due to heat. The
weather was sultry and at this time of the year fever is very common in our
village,” Bhaurao recalled. When Pravin’s condition deteriorated the next
evening Namdev and his mother Babybai took him to the primary health centre in
the next village. An attendant there, sensing that this was an emergency,
referred him to the Pandharkaoda hospital, 40 kilometres away.

They reached the hospital around 7
p.m., Babybai said. Young Pravin died at 10 p.m. His post mortem report says: “Death
due to organophosphate poisoning.”

Lethal pests, deadly sprays

கொடிய பூச்சிகள், ஆட்கொல்லி தெளிப்பான்கள்

घातक कीट, घातक छिड़काव

خطرناک کیڑے، مہلک چھڑکاؤ

ଲିଥାଲ କୀଟ, ଘାତ ସ୍ପ୍ରେ

মারণ কীট, প্রাণঘাতী কীটনাশক

বিধ্বংসী কীট আৰু প্ৰাণঘাটি কীটনাশক

रसशोषक अळ्या, जीवघेणे फवारे

Yavatmal

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Lethal pests, deadly sprays

What hit Vidarbha’s cotton belt, especially Yavatmal, late last year? Why were over 1,000 very sick farmers and labourers hospitalised? Why did many, desperate to save their crops, die after spraying pesticides?

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