Raghbir Singh Brar
Faridkot
Email:raghbirsinghbrar@gmail.com
While the state government led by chief minister Bhagwant Singh Mann attempted to placate the struggling farmers by allowing them paddy transplantation by 10 to 15 days in advance, some of the farmers took it as granted and went ahead with the banned varieties.
As soon as the state government announced that the farmers can sow the paddy from June 1 to 9, by dividing the state in four zones, the farmers rushed to the neighboring states to buy the seeds of banned varieties like Pusa 44,Pila Pusa and Dogar Pusa which take about 150-160 days for their maturity leading to guzzle more and more groundwater.
The Punjab government had already banned the water guzzling varieties besides all hybrid ones so that PR varieties, including PR 121,122,126,128,131 and 132 may be grown and there could not be any problem in the procurement of paddy in the coming season.
But allegedly ill advised by the commission agents and millers, some of the farmers preferred to sow these banned verities on the fields.
These long duration varieties have led to a water crisis in Punjab because only less than 27 percent of agricultural land is irrigated by the canal water while most of the area is only dependent on borewells for watering.
The banned varieties are not only leading to the depletion of subsoil water, but also require too much use of chemicals and late sowing of wheat, which finally resort to burning the stubble polluting the environment.
The farmers who have transplanted paddy before June 10, have mostly grown the banned long duration varieties including PUSA 44,Dogar PUSA and Pila PUSA.
They have extracted ground water by pump sets because the government has been providing free of cost power supply to the agriculture pump sets even before June 1.
As per a rough estimate available on the internet, the government is providing between Rs 53000 to over 80000 subsidy per agriculture connection now.
Now most of the power connections to AP sets are between 10 to 25 HP.
Most of the subsidy goes into the pockets of the big farmers as they have more than 5 connections after 50 acres of land while small farmers do not have any.
Digging a borewell costs between Rs 1 lakh to 3 lakh depending upon the depth of the tubewell .Now the farmers have at many places installed tubewells up to the depth of 700 feet.
The advancement is not at all in favor of the PR varieties because if they are grown in the first week of June, they would mature before or on October 1 when the official procurement commences, but actually, procurement takes over a week to take off.Last season,it allegedly picked up on October 20.
Mann government’s move to placate farmers by advancing the paddy sowing date and providing more than even 8 hours of power supply even before June 1,would certainly lead to the destruction of the state as far as its natural resources are concerned, though it may fetch a few votes.