The Government of Goa in its public utterances firmly claims it supports agriculture through its various programmes and schemes. The State has a ‘Vision for development of agriculture and allied sectors’, proposing a systematic roadmap for sustainable development of agriculture and related sectors. The department of agriculture aims at self-sufficiency of the State in agriculture, with higher net income to our farmers. Despite these pious platitudes, what is the ground reality of farming in Goa’s khazan sector?
Goa needs to salute its farmers, who are doing farming of their lands under extremely dubious vested interest nexus, harsh man-made and natural conditions, and severe financial challenges, especially in the khazan lands.
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The farmers in most of the khazan areas spread across Goa are tenants of the comunidades. This is the case in Divar, Merces, Chorao and across entire Goa. The most serious challenge they face is flooding of their fields, by vested interests, for fish breeding by opening the sluice gates and breaking of bandhs. There is a strangulating nexus between politicians, mamlatdars’ offices, respective tenants’ association and lessees of sluice gates (manshekar) which is killing agriculture in Goa.
As narrated by farmers, over the years they were cultivating the fields and during the harvest time the manshekar would allegedly break the bandhs or take water through the sluice gates and inundate the fields. So the crop would be destroyed and farmers would end up in total loss with the destruction of their crop. This went on for many years till the farmers, after putting up a brave battle, gave up cultivating fields in such khazan areas.
Presently, the khazan lands are totally inundated and farmers are deprived of cultivating their fields. The other modus operandi is that the fields are allowed to be cultivated and under the cover of heavy rains, the fields are inundated by letting in huge quantities of water so that the crops rot.
Few would know that the unique mechanism of the sluice gates was set up to control the tidal flow into the inland for farming and managing the water in the fields. But today the mechanism of sluice gates is completely used to promote fish breeding and not farming.
As per the topography, fishing is to be exclusively done in the poim (water body) which exist beside the fields. But the greed of some manshekar is such that they flood the fields and breed fish in the fields at the cost of farming.
Every December, the comunidades hold their annual auction, where the manshekar becomes a lessee of the manos (sluice gate). At this time he has to pay 50% of the total auction amount. The other instalments are paid in March – June and/or maybe in August. However the nexus between the lessees and tenants association is such that they pay only the first instalment and by allegedly bribing the tenants association, they do not pay the remaining instalments, thus benefiting both parties.
The biggest culprit in all this is the mamlatdar’s office or the revenue department, as alleged by the farmers. If farmers file complaints about inundation of their fields, the cases are postponed and in limbo for years till the farmers are fed up and give up on the cases. In some cases, the talathi will come for inspection, but the manshekar are forewarned to let the water out of the fields so that the talathi observes in his report that there is no flooding of fields. Shockingly, the situation is so bad all over Goa that till date not a single complaint by a farmer has reached its logical conclusion. No action has been taken against a single manshekar.
There is big money and big corruption involved in the auctions, such that farmers claim that it is a ‘multi crore scam’ directly involving the mamlatdars, the aval karkuns, the talathis along with the lessees and the tenants associations. Auctions are conducted for the annual lease for lakhs of rupees (per sluice gate).
Farmers claim that information under RTI is not provided and RTI cases are dragged by mamlatdars for years together. The scanty information which is given is also incomplete. This scam happens every year with the blessings of the Revenue Department, farmers claim. They demand that this racket needs to be thoroughly probed not by an SIT but should be handed over to the CBI for investigation. Also they demand that the khazan fields be transferred from the jurisdiction of the Revenue Department to the Agriculture Department. Finally, they urge that the non-cultivated fields should be given to active farmers and not to the government or to corporates for prosperity of agriculture.
