Lucknow, Dec 20 (IANS): Vipul Kumar Singh, 28, is a young farmer in Sultanpur district. He has done his master's degree from Lucknow University and has not yet found a job for himself.
So, he has now taken keen interest in farming on his two-acre land and actively follows the developments in the ongoing farmers' agitation.
"I am glad that farmers from Punjab and Haryana are raising these issues. We have been suffering for decades but could never raise our voices, mainly due to lack of unity and resources," he says.
Explaining further, Vipul says that since caste remains a dominant issue, farmers view each other with suspicion and there is also a lack of farmer leadership in central and eastern Uttar Pradesh.
He says that farmer unions, if any, are largely invisible in the area.
Talking about minimum support price issue, he says, "For years, my grandfather, father and now I have been selling our produce to middlemen. We are small farmers and twice when we took the produce to the procurement centre, the officials there made us wait for three days and then told us that our paddy was sub-standard. We wasted our time and also the transport charges. It is better to sell the produce to the middleman who collects it from our doorstep."
Dharmendra Mishra, 54, a small farmer in the Jasaipur village in Basti, had a similar story to tell.
"There is a local grocer Manoj Kumar in the village who collects our produce and then takes it to the procurement centre. He has the right 'contacts' and sells it in no time. Individual farmers are harassed by the officials there," he said.
Mishra said that against the paddy MSP of around Rs 1,868 per quintal, he sold his produce at Rs 1,400 per quintal. His land holding is about 2.5 acres.
Most of the farmers in the region are small and medium farmers and keep back, at least, 25 to 30 per cent of the produce for home consumption, depending on their family size.
"It is not economically feasible for us to hire transport, take the produce to the procurement centres, haggle with the officials who keep us waiting for two to three days. Instead, it is better to sell it in the village at account. The government should ensure village to village collection as they want to eliminate the middlemen," said Shafeeq, a farmer Barabanki.
Interestingly, all these farmers profess their support to the ongoing farmers agitation but have different reasons for not joining it.
"How can I go alone if others are not coming along? Most of the famers in my village say that they are not financially well off enough to go to Delhi and sustain themselves," said Vipul Singh, while Dharmendra Mishra said that small farmers, in any case, were not in a position to launch a major agitation on the issue.
According to the official records, the reported agriculture area in eastern Uttar Pradesh is 26 per cent of the state.
Eastern Uttar Pradesh, largely inhabited by small-marginal and landless farmers, have subsistence farming as the main source of livelihoods. Working as agriculture labours also provide earning opportunities to the marginal and landless farmers, besides significant population depending on shared/leased land cropping.