Busari Rajeswararao, a farmer from Sivaji Nagar village of Warrangal district in Andhra Pradesh who owns 18 acre, has just renovated his well by spending more than Rs 1.5 lakh. He took up the renovation work from the income he got after sowing high yielding bacillus thuringiensis (BT) cotton last year.
Despite the high yields due to sowing Bollgard II seed, this year Rajeswararao is not sure whether he would get good returns. It is nothing to do with the productivity of BT cotton, nor with the returns that he got last year from growing cotton. In fact, it has to do with something with which Rajeswarararao is not remotely connected?- acute labour shortage. Warangal in Andhra Pradesh along with other main agriculture regions in Punjab and Haryana are facing acute labour shortage even for basic activities like sowing, spraying pesticides and plucking.
Farmers mostly attribute this to the successful operation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), which guarantees 100 days of wage employment to all rural youth.?The cost of labour has doubled in the past one year and this has forced us to pay even more and this may dent our returns,? Rajeswararao said.
Endorsing Rajeswararao?s view, Malegoan Subrao, another cotton farmer with 5 acre, said that after the implementation of the UPA?s government?s flagship NREGA, the average daily wage has gone up from Rs 70 to Rs 120 as labourers get the prescribed minimum wage under the NREGA.
Recently, even Punjab and Haryana, who heavily depend on the labour from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh to carry out cultivation and harvesting activities, faced a shortage due to the implementation of the NREGA.
The NREGA prescribes the payment of a minimum wage to labourers at their place of residence. ?Thus we are finding it increasingly difficult to source labourers from outside,? Subrao said. What is compounding the woes of cotton farmers is that Andhra Pradesh has emerged as one of the leading states in the implementation of NREGA.
According to data from the ministry of rural development, till date Andhra Pradesh has already spent more than Rs 1850 crore out of the total budget allocation of Rs 16,000 crore under the NREGA. Out of around 16 lakh projects, those related to water conservation account for a majority as it would stimulate agricultural activities in the rural belt. Andhra Pradesh alone accounts of more than 5 lakh projects.
The NREGA, which guarantees manual work to a member of each family in rural areas, has affected the flow of migrant labour for agricultural activities, to various states a senior official with the ministry of rural development recently told FE.
Prices of cotton after hitting a high of Rs 3400 per quintal during June-July have fallen to around Rs 2800 per quintal at present.