Supaul, Bihar
Shankar Yadav had been waiting in line since 3 am, at Gudri Bazaar in Supaul. He and other farmers like him hoped they would be able to buy enough urea for their crops. Shankar, who hailed from Babhnagma village (ward no 14), wanted three sacks of urea. But at noon, after standing in the queue for over nine hours, all he managed to get was one sack.
That was not all. Shankar had to shell out Rs 330 for a sack of urea while the government price was fixed at Rs 266.50 a sack. He was also forced into buying a kilo of zinc at Rs 70, as the urea would not be sold without it, the hapless farmer said.
“My land is moist and ready for urea. If I do not spray the urea now, my wheat crop will not grow. I have been waiting for two days in line. It is time I can ill afford,” Shankar told Gaon Connection. “Even if the urea cost me Rs 500, I would buy it,” exclaimed the distraught farmer who had been running from pillar to post for more than a week.
Shankar is worried about his crop this rabi season as he would have to make do with 0.83 kgs of urea per katha instead of 2.50 kgs per katha (22 kathas make one acre).
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Bihar is one of the foremost paddy cultivating states in the country where 76 per cent of its people are engaged in agricultural activities. According to the Government of India’s department of fertilisers, about 7.95 million hectares are under cultivation in the state, which has about 10.5 million farmers. Of these 82.9 per cent makeup marginal farmers, 9.6 per cent are small farmers and only about 7.5 per cent of the farmers own more than two hectares of land.
Annually, Bihar needs one million tonnes of urea for agriculture. According to the ministry of chemicals and fertilisers, the state required 750,000 metric tonnes of urea for use between October and December, 2021. But it got only about 655,000 metric tonnes of urea.
Further, the state could obtain about 311,000 metric tonnes of DAP (di-ammonium phosphate) against its requirement of 324,000 metric tonnes. In all, while the requirement of the fertilisers was about 1,338,000 metric tonnes the state could obtain only about 1,285,000 metric tonnes for the period October to December 2021.
The farmers of one of the poorest states in India have struggled through the year, first to fertilise their paddy crops and now their wheat fields.
Urea crisis
It is so unscrupulous, lamented 73-year-old Rupesh Mandal from Manjhari village in Kishanpur block. “Urea that should cost Rs 266 is selling for Rs 500. DAP that should be no more Rs 1,230 is selling for up to Rs 1,600,” the old farmer pointed out. Unable to wait in lines indefinitely, Rupesh Mandal, on the urging of his sons who are both labourers in Surat, Gujarat, paid almost double for the fertilisers.
“I have about 80 kathas of land (a little less than four acres) on which I cultivate wheat in this season,” Mandal said. He bought four sacks of DAP at Rs 1,500 a sack and five sacks of urea at Rs 400 a sack. He has already spent Rs 1,750 on the fertilisers just for this season, he pointed out.
“The urea crisis has not happened overnight. The matter has been reported by the media continuously,” Mohammed Zakir, farmer leader from Thakurganj block in Kishanganj, told Gaon Connection. He said that despite assurances by the agriculture minister that the matter would be looked into, nothing had happened.
“Only about 20-25 per cent of the required fertilisers are being allotted to the district. Which means that out of five hundred farmers who should be receiving farmers every day, only about 100 to 150 of them are able to access them,” the farmer leader explained.
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“There is a shortage of fertilisers across Bihar. We are trying our best to ensure there is no hoarding or no black marketing of it,” Praveen Kumar Jha, district agriculture officer, Kishanganj, told Gaon Connection.
Stampede and lathicharge for urea
So severe is the crisis in Bihar that on December 30, in Araria district, three to four thousand farmers formed long lines at the Narpatganj High School, as they waited for the urea to be sold by the state government.
“Despite the biting cold, we have been waiting here since 3 am,” Ram Paswan, who lives in Narpatganj, told Gaon Connection. “There were so many of us that many felt they may not get urea after all,” he said. When the shutters opened for distribution, there was a stampede and eight women were injured in it, Paswan described the chaos that ensued.
“The authorities kept asking the crowd to calm down, but not once did they assure us that all of us would get at least a bag of urea to take back home,” Satyam Thakur from Araria, who was an eyewitness to the stampede, told Gaon Connection.
According to Thakur a huge consignment of fertilisers were seized by the people from a godown in Forbesganj, Araria, a few days earlier and handed over to the authorities. “There were thousands of sacks of fertilisers which would otherwise have been sold in black market at double the cost,” he said.
“Politicians make grand promises, but the reality is quite something else,” Lallan Yadav, from Marona panchayat in Supaul district, complained. Lallan had come in a boat to Supaul to buy urea. “Corrupt officials and politicians are hand in glove in the black market of fertilisers. If they were not, why would we be in such distress,” he asked.
When asked about the shortage, the stock response of authorities has been that the shortage is across the state.
Dileshwar Kamat, MP, Supaul, and member of Janata Dal United Party, told Gaon Connection, “ I raised the matter of shortage of fertilisers in the zero hour in parliament on December 6. But, even my own constituency is facing a shortfall. The state government will do something soon,” he promised.
Meanwhile, in Supaul, Suman Shah tried hard to spread the woefully short quantity of urea he had on his field of wheat. “I bought urea that should have cost me Rs 266.50, by paying Rs 400. That too, after skirmishes and lathicharge. Is it really worth pursuing farming,” he wondered despondently.
Read the story in Hindi
