Even as the Left is baring its fangs in Delhi to get Kerala?s foodgrain quota cut reversed, their Kerala comrades are being driven up the wall over the paddy harvest issue. The state?s paddy production was hauled up by a token 1.5% last year. Soon enough, the Kuttanad shock, where summer rains damaged standing crop, shattered Kerala?s success-story with one stroke. The fire-fighting exercise that followed has left the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government exhausted on the food security and fiscal fronts. Against an annual 40-lakh tonne rice offtake, Kerala produces only 6.35 lakh tonnes per year.
Another casualty of this is that even before the state budget has been passed, non-Plan expenditure has started bleeding. Chief minister VS Achuthanandan has offered to mop up the Rs 30-crore damages. The entire damaged crop will be procured at Rs 10 per kilo or even more and as ?cattle-feed?.
Harvest in several fields in Kuttanad was scheduled in the first week of March. But Kerala State Karshaka Thozhilali Union (KSKTU), the CPI(M)?s farmer outfit, did not allow harvesting machines, says Oommen Chandy, veteran Congressman and Opposition leader. While CPI(M) fears a stripping of its defining (sickle) identity, the CPI has been bold enough to walk the talk on farm mechanisation. About 72 machines have been hired.
Rain, however, did not wait for the debate (on whether machines would end jobs for farm hands) to subside. It poured with fury, dampening the standing paddy crop and the just-harvested paddy left out in the fields. As much as 13,000 hectares (preliminary estimates) of harvest-ready paddy were spoiled during three days of pre-season rains in several districts. In Kuttanad alone, about 35,000 tonnes of standing paddy is feared lost.
There is a cost-rationale, as CKP Padmanabhan, president, KSKTU, argues that manual harvesting is not only socially productive, but economically viable, too. Hourly rent for a harvesting machine is Rs 1,600-1,700. Meanwhile, 10 farmhands on the same job would cost only Rs 1,500, he says. At the same time, the unions discount two factors. One, shortage of farmhands. Two, the time pressure. Manual labour cannot always catch up with machines, as grains need to be hurried to a dry shelter before the wet spell starts. ?In the below sea-level Kuttanad, flooding in of brackish water during rains is a perpetual problem for paddy? says Thomas Peelianikal, director, Kuttanad Vikasana Samithi.
One look at Kerala?s post-harvest planning glitches and it?s clear that the paddy loss was a calamity waiting to happen. The Met centre had predicted the rains early enough. But then, there are hardly any dry granaries, godowns or warehouses in the paddy belt. The harvesting machine row has added to these woes. With the price of common rice varieties spiralling to Rs 20-25 per kilo, soon enough it won?t be just the farmer who?s left worrying in Kerala.