It?s pouring, and the uneasy atmosphere at a samvaad (dialogue meeting) between 12 major cooperative banks in Karnataka?s Chikmagalur district, and the local unit of the Karnataka Rajya Ryota Sangha (KRRS), or farmers’ union, adds to the gloom. The farmers, most of them defaulters, ask for more time. The bankers, facing mounting losses and sudden low recovery rates, just want their money back.
Such a meeting was unthinkable just a few years ago. In 2004-05, in fact, the local Prarthamika Sahakari Krishi Mathu Aviruddhi Bank won an award from NABARD for its 100% recovery rate and best practices. In 2010, these recovery rates are down to 19%, and the bank is turning turtle. ?This used to be a model bank, now we are staring at at least Rs 17 crore of outstanding debt and mounting losses every year,? says Vasudeva Bhat, manager of the bank.
Behind all this despair is yellow leaf disease, which is ruining thousands of acres of arecanut plantations in the prosperous, cash crop-rich districts of Chickmagalur, Shimoga and South Kanara. In Sringeri taluk alone, 13,000 acres is officially affected by the disease. The betelnut barons of Karnataka’s rich Malnad area, who inspired Kuvempu and UR Ananthamurthy to create literary worlds out of this verdant landscape, are now a community under siege.
Arecanut or supaari, as it’s known in the north, is a staple cash crop in the region and the basis of its prosperity, with prices hitting a peak of up to Rs 22,000 per quintal in the late 1990s. Exported to several south-Asian countries, it is used for gutkha and even medicinal purposes. Unlike the arid north Karnataka districts, Malnad and South Kanara have always been cash crop-rich areas, with aware farmers and access to institutional credit. The last few years, however, have not been kind to the civilisational heart of the state.
On the day of the samvaad, local papers are full of reports on how at least 25 families have pulled up stakes, locked their houses and vanished from Megur village in Chickmagalur. ?This is Krishnamurthy Hebbar’s house,? says Ramesh Hegde, a local farmer and former president of the Ryot Sangha. ?His land was spread over two acres. Hebbar sold bits of it to settle debts and has now moved to Bangalore. His children are settled abroad, he told us to inform him if anyone wants to buy his plantation,? adds Hegde. Once a pillar of the community, Hebbar’s abandoned home is now locked up and a lonesome gourd hangs from the ceiling, the only remnant of a thriving plantation.
Mugudgola Prakash’s home, too, is deserted. His tractor and car garage are falling to pieces. ?Prakash’s case is really tragic. He had an eight-acre spread, which used to yield up to 40 quintals of areca nut, but when it slowly dwindled to two quintals, he just gave up,? says K Sriniwas, his neighbour. Indeed, Megur is no place for young people, with only the old left behind?too old to farm, too old to adapt to city living either. ?They survive on money orders from children who live away. The educated one’s manage good jobs; others work as cooks and help out in city temples,? says KC Sathish, president of the Ryot Sangha.
The old feudal world of rich landlords and petty potentates that Ananthmurthy depicted in his novels are a far cry from the state now. Most farmers are left with small holding of six-eight acres, and as the years have diminished their yield, their social stock, too, has taken a dive. Earlier, a landowner was a prized matrimonial catch; now inter-caste marriages are a norm, as the largely Brahmin landowners cannot find matches in their own community. ?Most upper-caste girls are educated and don’t want to live in the villages with impoverished farmers as husbands, so inter-caste marriages are being arranged,? says Hegde.
N Jayachandra Rao, a Brahmin landowner in the area, recently tied the knot at the age of 42 with a lower-caste poojary girl. He is not alone in this. N Ravi Shankar Rao, scion of an old manetana (feudal homestead), found his match at a local orphanage. ?I waited till I hit 40; how long could I have waited,? he reasons. Local matchmaker Puttur Rama Rao says he has at least five such requests every month. ?Unheard of before,? he says, with a shake of his head.
Yields have been dropping fast, but not, it seems, as fast as the social cache of landowners.
What makes it all the more tragic is the fact that this is not an endemically distressed area. Scoring high on both economic and social indices, it was the pin-up poster of all that was right with Indian agriculture. Diseases and crops go hand in hand, but the chronic nature of YLD and its fatal effect on soil fertility has raised alarm bells in both the Centre and the state.
A worried state government hurriedly set up a YLD research centre in the area, headed by BS Shivakumar, who frankly admits that the centre is still in the process of assessing the damage. ?Many people have left the area, so our assessment forms are not coming in as fast as we’d like,? he said. ?I can say, however, that yield has decreased by nearly 60% over the past four years,? he adds..
Ramesh Hegde went a step further and offered a plot of his land for a ten-year study to Dr Saraswathi of the Central Plantation and Crop Research Institute. ?We couldn’t come to any one conclusion over the causes or the remedy,? he says. ?YLD existed earlier too, but in the past few years, it has spread vastly. For a plantation owner, the sight of trees in the morning is almost an inducement not to venture out,? he says with a shake of his head.
A team from the Central government, under Dr Gorakh Singh of the Indian Council for Agriculture Research, visited the area four months ago. Their prescription: destroy the arecanut crops and do alternative cropping instead.
The only hitch is the loans taken against the land. The loan waiver announced by the Union government in 2008, known here as ?Chidambaram’s loan maafi? came as a cruel joke. Farmers had been paying up using all their resources, including family gold, only to find that their regular repayment made them ineligible for the package. As a result, the Ryot Sangha boycotted payment plans and recovery rates dipped. The samvaad with the bankers was a desperate cry for help, as further loans were blocked.
The vicious cycle of credit and default has the place in its grip. The yellow pallor over the verdant green Malnad has eaten into not just arecanut, but also those whose lives it ordered for over a century. In an area where the lifecycle of the crop decides everything, the place appears in terminal decline.
What is YLD
It is still not clear exactly how and why yellow leaf disease (YLD) occurs. After several years of research, all that scientists at the Central Plantations and Crop Research Institute (CPCRI) can say is that it ?might be caused by a phytoplasma”. Opinion is divided over just how to treat it, with scientists admitting that there is as such no cure for it. The three districts of Chickmagalur, Shimoga and South Kanara have a prevalence of the disease, with rough estimates saying that in Chickmagalur alone, around 12,000 farmers are directly distressed by it. It destroys the land, but it is not clear whether it leaves the land fit for cultivating any other crop or not.