West Bengal Assembly Elections 2021 | Amid election fever, farmers in Bardhaman feel left out
The Hindu
We are all in the same depths of darkness as we have been in the past, says a farmers deep in debt and distress
In the villages behind lush paddy fields along the road from Bardhaman town to Katwa, there is agrarian distress, and no one knows it better than the farmers of Musthali. Only a couple of months before the West Bengal Assembly election began, hundreds of journalists and scores of camera crews had descended on the village when BJP president J.P. Nadda had lunch at the home of a small marginal farmer, Mathura Mondal. On January 9, after the televised lunch, Mr. Nadda launched the party’s Krishak Sampark Abhiyaan by asking for a handful of foodgrains from a few houses in the neighbourhood. Mr. Mondal’s house still bears a fresh coat of lime paint, but the courtyard where the BJP leaders sat for lunch has a few bags of rice. Out of 12 bags of paddy the marginal farmer grew, he had to give six bags to the moneylender. He said he still owed him ₹5,000. At the beginning of the farming season, he had taken a loan of about ₹10,000 from the moneylender, some of which was spent on tilling his small land holding and some on hosting the guests on January 9.More Related News