Amid farm despair, grains of smile for Sangrur’s Dalits : The Tribune India

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Amid farm despair, grains of smile for Sangrur’s Dalits

BALAD KALAN (Sangrur): Dalits of Balad Kalan village in Sangrur district of Punjab are reaping profit from the wheat they sowed last year on 125 acres of panchayat land they had fought to get on lease for joint farming.

Amid farm despair, grains of smile for Sangrur’s Dalits

Wheat is distributed among Dalit farmers at Balad Kalan village, near Bhawanigarh, in Sangrur district on Friday. Tribune photo: Sushil Goyal



Sushil Goyal

Tribune News Service

Balad Kalan (Sangrur), April 24

In a season of farmer suicides and agrarian despair, here’s something that would tell you not all’s lost. Dalits of Balad Kalan village, tucked away in Punjab’s Sangrur, are smiling after working for decades as daily wagers on a land that they tilled. Today, they have a rich wheat yield from 125-acre panchayat land – something like their own – for which they struggled for joint farming on a lease basis.

Reserved for the Scheduled Castes, the land situated near Bhawanigarh has yielded 2,640 quintals (around 22 quintals per acre) wheat worth Rs 40 lakh this rabi season.

Of the 144 Dalit families who worked hard, 74 — who contributed Rs 11,000 each for the lease amount to be deposited with the government — have got four quintal wheat and a trolley of “toori” (straw) each. Those who didn’t invest anything have received two-quintal wheat and a trolley of “toori”. Sixty-five families who breed animals have also got “barseem” (green fodder) that will last around five months.

To mark their success, the families celebrated “Baisakhi” by organising a cultural programme in the village on Thursday.
Under the banner of the Zamin Prapti Sangharsh Committee (ZPSC), the Dalits had protested for around  three months to get the reserved land on lease for joint farming. On their way stood dummy Dalits, the ones propped up by local landlords. Nearly 40 farmers spent about two months in the Sangrur jail. The district administration arranged a compromise in August 2014 when all Dalits were allowed to sow wheat on the common land.

Rampal Singh, one of action committee members for joint farming, said after distributing adequate wheat among the farmers, the rest has been sent to the grain market. “The profit to be earned from the sale will be used to take the land on lease again for the upcoming kharif season. The money won’t be enough and farmers will have to arrange more,” he said.

Sangrur Deputy Commissioner Arshdeep Singh Thind said: “Officially, the administration had done nothing to provide reserved land to the agitating Dalits. It had only called both sides (Dalits who were cultivating the land and those agitating) for talks.”

Former village sarpanch Gurdev Singh said villagers were split on whether the reserved land should be given to Dalits for joint farming. “Only 30 per cent of the general caste villagers favoured giving it to the Dalits while half of them wanted open auction, the rest had no opinion,” he said.

The farmers had taken the panchayat land on lease for Rs 15 lakh. They had grown “barseem” on five acres and wheat on the rest of the 120 acres. Of the 2,640 quintals harvested, 1,600 quintals have been sent to the grain market, while the rest has been distributed among the farmers.

Joginder Kumar, District Development and Panchayat Officer, Sangrur, said there was around 350 acres of the panchayat land in the village. “As per a sub-clause of Section 6 of the Punjab Village Common Lands Regulation Act, 1964, one-third of the panchayat land in a village has to be given to the SCs for farming,” he said. In the next season, auction would be held for the reserved village land.

 

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