Marginal farmers await payments from mills

Aakanksha N Bhardwaj

Tribune News Service

Nawnshahr, November 19

During the agitation of cane farmers which ended on Sunday evening after the administration promised to farmers that sugar mills will pay Rs 200 crore of the Rs 435 crore, nearly 200 farmers from Nawanshahr had come to protest against the government in Dasuya, Hoshiarpur.

They expressed anger and said they were being harassed mentally, socially and economically by the government.They said they were coming to hold such protests, leaving their lands and fields which was costing them a lot, besides the suffering.

While talking to The Tribune, they said because of not getting payments for their sugarcane, many of them were thinking to stop sowing the crop.

In the absence of the pending amount, the farmers are left to take loans from arhtiyas and banks to make both ends meet. They have taken loans amounting to lakhs, and now they are waiting for their payments by the mills so that they could repay their loans.

Davinder Singh, a marginal farmer from a small village, Sandhwan, in Nawanshahr said he had come from his home to join the protest at 5 am on Saturday. He only owes two-acre land and had taken over 20 acres on lease. The farmer said the Phagwara sugar mill owes Rs 25,00,000 to him, adding that he had to pay debt of lakhs to dealers, banks and commission agents. Davinder said to run their families was not a cakewalk.

He said he had to pay for medicine for his parents’ illness, and fees for his ward’s education.

“I was at Dasuya since Saturday morning. My six-year-old child was sleeping when I came from my home at 5 am and he did not even know where I was, he was calling me after an hour, asking me to return home. I could not even let him know the problem we were going through,” he said.

He said though they had stopped the protest, they would resume it if the mills fail to pay in a week.

“We didn’t want to come on roads; we are not happily doing this. We have become so helpless, which is why we are doing this,” Davinder said.

“Before coming here, I had even asked my parents that I will not come empty handed. I had asked them that either I will come with the money or will not return,” he said.

Another farmer Balbir Singh from Rana Kalan said the mill owes Rs 40 lakh to him and he had a debt of the same amount.

“We are finished and don’t see any future. We are depressed,” he said.

“I have five daughters to look after and their education is my biggest priority, but the condition is too grim that I don’t know what is going to happen with my life,” he added. Though they have lost all the hopes, still the future of their families is what making them fight.