For around 800 farmers in and around Vaduvoor village, about 16 kilometres from Mannargudi in Thiruvarur district of Tamil Nadu, the lockdown has brought more mental agony. A year and a half since Cyclone Gaja damaged their crops, the farmers are still running from pillar to post for insurance compensation.
The farmers in this region usually obtain loans by pledging their jewels with local cooperative credit societies. According to experts, loans taken against jewels by farmers from village credit cooperative societies in Tamil Nadu do not accrue interest till the eighth month from the date of borrowing. This means that a farmer who has pledged his jewellery for a loan need not pay any instalment against the loan for the first seven months. In case he does not repay the entire loan by the end of the seventh month, from the eighth month, interest will start accruing and he will be liable to pay monthly instalments.
The problem that has come knocking at the farmers’ doorsteps is this -- The societies have refused to disburse the crop insurance compensation sanctioned for the farmers for their crop damage due to the cyclone. Instead, they are going to adjust the money received as insurance compensation against their loans.
This decision, communicated orally by the societies to the farmers, has made them feel hopeless.
Speaking to TNM, Senthil, the head of the Vaduvoor vivasayigal sangam, a collective of farmers in this region said that getting the insurance company to accept their claims itself was a humongous task. “We had to meet the tahsildar, the District Collector. Only after Mannargudi MLA TRB Raaja intervened and met the insurance company officials directly, did they agree to accept our claims,” he said, adding that now that the money has been disbursed to the village societies, the refusal by the societies to part with it has caused severe agony to the farmers.
Paddy is the main crop in this region. However, many farmers also grow groundnut, urad dal and sesame on their fields.
When cyclone Gaja struck the coast of Tamil Nadu in November 2018, unleashing its fury on the Cauvery delta districts, the farmers here lost their crops and their livelihoods. Apart from the relief materials distributed by the government of Tamil Nadu after the cyclone, they had no other means to reconstruct their lives.
Nedunchezhiyan, a 56-year-old farmer from Vaduvoor Vadapathi, has around five acres of land in which he mainly cultivates paddy. “In 2018, when Gaja hit, I had sowed paddy in my fields. I had borrowed Rs 50,000 as a jewel loan for this purpose which I have been renewing every year since then. Even this year, I have renewed the loan a couple of months ago and it becomes payable only after eight months. I still have time to start repaying it,” he told TNM. He added that it took almost a year to get the insurance company to agree to pay compensation for paddy farmers in their region.
Nedunchezhiyan was hoping to harvest his current cycle of paddy crops by early July and repay the loan outstanding in the society. However, he was informed of this decision to hold back the disbursal of insurance compensation only when he went to collect the amount a few days ago.
“I should be getting around Rs 20,000 as compensation for the crops I lost during Gaja. But the officers there are saying that they will not give us the money since we have borrowed money from the society,” he explained.
Thirty four year old Sivachandran, another farmer from Vaduvoor, also echoed similar thoughts. A paddy farmer with around three acres of land, he has to receive Rs 12,000 as insurance compensation from the society.
“The society has started disbursing the money to other farmers who have not borrowed anything. We should have gotten this compensation after Gaja. But we were happy that we are going to get it at least now, amid this bad situation due to lockdown. But now we have been left in the lurch,” he said. Sivachandran had taken a loan of Rs 57,000 against jewels and he still has time for the repayment schedule to begin.
The main contention of the farmers is that at a time when the state government has announced a slew of relaxations for payment of house rent, electricity bills and even home loans and car loans, they not being shown any consideration.
“The government has itself deferred the collection of house rent, told people to pay electricity bills the same amount as last month, all for easing the financial burden of people. Even banks have postponed EMI collection for those who have car loans and home loans. But we farmers, who have already lost a lot in the last two years, are not getting any of these benefits,” Nedunchezhiyan pointed out.
The farmers also claim that in spite of repeated requests from them to the society to not adjust their compensation amount against the loans, the officers in-charge have not heeded to their requests.
“They claim that they have been ordered by their superior officials to adjust this income against the loans or some other reason like they have not received an order related to this,” he added.
When TNM contacted Jayaraman, the Joint Registrar of Cooperative Societies for Thiruvarur region, who is in-charge of the local credit cooperative societies, he denied knowledge of any such issue.
“I am not aware of any such complaints from the Vaduvoor region. I have already instructed credit cooperative societies to disburse the compensation amount fully to the farmers, irrespective of their loans. If there are specific complaints from farmers about this, I will look into it,” he said.