Let’s be sober by calling him Mr.Ganesh. (Ganya sounds more Gawaar; these days being Gawaar is sinful.) You may not get your soulmate if you are Gawaar. I have seen many of my cousins (we call them bhavki which means fraternity) faced lot of challenges while getting married. These boys were good souls, mostly teetotallers. In Villages drinking is still a taboo, so if someone is teetotaller that’s like having extra star on your shoulders. The only flaw in their character was their profession. Unfortunately they all were farmers. The daughters of farmers prefer auto rickshaw driver in Pune or Mumbai, living in slum or some chawls over farmer boy with sound family background. My cousin got married with Pune based Rikshawala, her mother is so proud that her daughter lives in city and she doesn’t have to clean up shit of the cow on every morning. Well, Gaumata’s dung is not that much sacred for farmers as it is for CEO of Patanjali. Don’t ask about what to do with bull of Jersey or Holstein Fresian cow if you cannot sell it for slaughtering. Because according to Maharashtra government’s definition Jersey and Holstein Fresian are also sacred containing 33 crore Gods in their body.
The reality of farming is it’s becoming shitty business. The receipt shown in this image belongs to my schoolmate and cousin Mr. Ganesh Pansare. The farmer of new generation who prefers jeans over dhoti-pyjamas. Always ready to take risks and loves to try his luck with great experiments in his farm. His distributive economics is simply based on some basic tenets. To grow best quality crops with bumper production. And distribute it in Agriculture Produce Market Committees of Pune and Mumbai. His crop is his wealth; which is distributed over these APMCs. Unintentionally he believes in Distributive economics. But here, Ganesh makes the mistake; he expects something in return. May be little profit to recover his huge investment in tillage, fertilizers, pesticides, electricity bills, canal irrigation bills and little bit on his few thousand calories of his personal toil.
In this receipt Ganesh has received at least some bucks. Sometimes he has to pay to the broker if overall expenses of loading, unloading, transport and 8% commission exceeds with the price of product sold. He calls it “Ulti-Patti” means reverse payment. Instead of getting paid for his vegetables from broker, he has to pay the broker. In that sense Ganesh is lucky chap. Alas!
It’s not like that every farmer goes through this classical financial trap. Some farmers like Bapurao, managed to get bumper rate for his tomatoes in this kharip season. He earned about ₹2 Lakh out of his half acre tomato plot. But there is no surety that he willl get lucky in next kharip season also. It’s just luck, the agricultural market is so fluctuating and so unpredictable that you cannot be sure about anything. Forget about climate change, farmer considers bad climate as mandatory sufferings of his bad karma in previous birth. He will not hesitate to sacrifice one goat to local goddess praying for better rainy season, thanks to superstitions.
The life of Ganesh is not free from social evils like dowry, huge expenses on marriages and playing Sheela ki Jawani on DJ in pious ceremony of marriage. He is frustrated for most of the times. Sometimes he curse himself for choosing this profession because he had an opportunity to be taxi driver in Mumbai with the help of his brother in law. At that time he thought that agriculture is proud profession than any such mediocre life. He fluently calls himself as feudal lord on WhatsApp groups as his ancestors were Zamindars. He do realize that he is no more feudal lord, he is just a petty peasant. He loves to live in that false pride, he embraces the ignorance. Because he believes in George Orwell’s line from 1984, “Ignorance is bliss.”
When I told him that government is planning to allow FDI in agriculture market to challenge the monopoly of APMCs, he was excited to see his tomatoes being sold in air conditioned supermarket without any middleman. He occasionally asks me the status of that FDI policy. I have no answers for him for now. Last time when we met I just told him, “Hope is life! One day, you will get your dues with interest. Toiling is in your genes, keep feeding the world. Keep on distributing your ‘wealth.’ One day they will be ashamed of themselves.”
Jai Jawan! Jai Kisan !