Spectre of debt amid loss of job looms large in Dharmapuri’s villages

The little black goat hungrily drank cow’s milk from the feeding bottle Muthammal held to its mouth. Muthammal had simply purchased half a litre of milk from her neighbour Ambigai, who stood by holding her aluminium milk can, measuring to refill the feeding bottle.

“She [Muthammal] bought this kid as a new-born from someone, who needed money. She will raise it, and then sell it to make some money,” Ambigai defined the economics of goat-rearing. “Sometimes it may go up to ₹10,000, if she is lucky. As Muthammal fed the motherless kid, one of her three adult goats, threw a tantrum by bumping her from behind. She would take them to graze around this M.Thanda village in the dry Eiryur block of Dharmapuri.

As they wait, Muthammal informs Ambigai that she withdrew the last of the MGNREGS work payment of ₹1,200 this week. That was the six-day work wage credited for March that she saved up until now. “There is no more work now,” says Muthammal. It has come down to 3 weeks work a yr now with extra individuals and fewer work, by no means 100 days, says Ambigai.

In the agricultural milieu, between the final of MGNREGS job work cost, the State authorities’s COVID-19 money aid of ₹4,000 for each ration card, with dry rations, the village financial system is tottering on naked minimal existence with none sustenance throughout the ongoing pandemic-induced lockdown.

Dairy bother

On Wednesday, Ambigai, who provides a mean of 5 litres every day to the native milk cooperative society diverted some milk to Muthammal’s goat. Amibigai wanted the cash.

While the Society procures at ₹22 per litre, she will promote it in the open at ₹40 per litre. “But, the society’s is a steady income. I know they will buy it. Here, no one can afford milk every day. They will buy one day and not for 10 days. I can’t lose the Society.” Though, the Society has not paid from March onwards, she’s sure they’ll clear the dues. “But on days like these, when someone asks, I sell it.”

But, Ambigai is unaware of slightly element since her funds are but to come back. The Societies have lower down the procurement worth by ₹3 payable to the milk suppliers like her.

In the neighbouring block of Palacodde in Dodaaradhanahalli village, Muniamma, in her 50s, is fearful by this slash. Only this Pongal, Muniamma purchased a cow. “I borrowed ₹50,000 from my Sangam (SHGs), bought a cow for ₹40,000. The society paid ₹22 per litre, but now they only pay ₹19, saying milk prices have come down.” She sells 10 litres/day to the society, which meant a loss of ₹900 per 30 days.

As half of its electoral promise, the DMK authorities slashed the worth of Aavin milk by ₹3 procured by the State-run milk cooperative federation from the farmers. But, this concession can also be subsidised by girls like Ambigai and Muniamma.

“How will I pay back my loan? I have to pay ₹2,500 per month (SHG), and spend on fodder of ₹ 1,100 per bag (two bags a month)”, she says. If this troubles her waking hours, the exclusion of these above 50 years from MGNREGS works citing the pandemic is making her despondent. “It is true, they won’t give us work any more? Where are we to go?”

Across villages, as girls go about their every day chores, the spectre of debt as a result of SHGs make up the conversations. The girls had been additionally given loans understanding that they’ll discover work and that the boys had been on the market working vouching for the compensation, says Ambigai. But, now the boys have returned from their jobs. “Without men, we ate what was there, not needing to cook three times. Now, the rations and the gas always falls short,” says Ambigai, whose husband employed in a snacks unit returned.

The State authorities’s money aid of ₹4,000 for each ration card has cushioned the influence of joblessness briefly.

In a predominantly rain-fed, drought inclined panorama like Dharmapuri, the spurts of summer time showers introduced with it seasonal farm work for almost all landless on the marginal landholdings of the few in the village. This yr that was to not be. Given the drying up of money inflows in the village financial system, these with meagre landholdings have fallen again on household labour, with the return of the boys, and lack of money influx to pay wages.

R. Prabhu was steadying up an enormous sack of groundnut between his legs on his moped exterior his home in Chinnaperamanur village in Pennagaram taluk. He was doing masonry works incomes ₹800 per day relying on the scale of the buildings, till he returned to the village after the spike in circumstances and the resultant lockdown. Prabhu’s household owns 1 acre on which they raised paddy final yr, ragi and groundnuts thereafter. “What we grow we keep it for our own use, not needing to buy anything. Sometimes, we sell if there is excess,” his mom pitches in. “We can’t pay wages now. Our family members are our farmhands.”

As one drives via the villages, stray development works on homes with hole blocks are being carried out by the relations.

Loan waivers for some

“They (farmers) will start coming for loans once this lockdown is over,” predicts, K. Periasamy, the secretary of the Primary Agricultural cooperative society, Jarthalav, from throughout his desk overlooking the campus of Paaparapatty Cooperative Sugar mill in Palacodde taluk. The Society lends crop loans to landholding farmers, other than jewel mortgage and loans to girls’s SHGs.

“We will not lend a rupee if there are outstanding loans. Every year, there are outstanding loans because farmers say the ‘cane is lost, crop is burnt’. But, this year, the State government had waived Agricultural Cooperative Society farm loans and SHG loans ahead of the elections. “Before they could issue the G.O for jewel loan waiver, elections came. So, the status of jewel loans is unclear,” he says.

For the bulk of girls’s SHGs serviced by the regional rural banks and nationalised banks, this mortgage waiver to the Societies-lent SHGs has left them feeling disadvantaged.

“Society lends only to those with land. Benefits are accrued to those with land and the rest of us don’t get anything,” surmised Vijayshanthi in Paruvadhanapalli village in Pennagaram block, who has ₹38,000 loaned by her Sangam (SHG) and a jewel mortgage from a financial institution.

“How does one register with a society to get the waiver?” asks J. Kalpana, as she lower fodder in the 33 cent land her household owns. This fodder wouldn’t final three weeks for the 2 cattle we’ve got, she added. Kalpana heads the SHG in M.Thanda village in Eriyur block. Her SHG borrowed ₹3 lakhs from a nationalised financial institution and shared it between its 20 members. Now for 2 months, the ladies had a tacit settlement to not ask one another for curiosity. “Two months, no weekly savings or interest payment.” But quickly, the financial institution will ask Kalpana and he or she should ask her members.

Shankar had been ducking from collectors as a lot as he may ever since he returned to the village from the stone crushing unit he went to in Kuppam in Andhra Pradesh. “The agent took me before the lockdown, but no raw materials came and they brought us back after 20 days work and no pay.” He was nonetheless reeling below the burden of repaying a rice chit (month-to-month/weekly casual chit scheme to purchase good rice simply in time for Pongal). “I borrowed ₹8,000 and ended up repaying ₹30,000 for interest defaults,” he says.

“You know it hurts, when the wife says, ‘What man are you, if you can’t buy a little something for the children to eat.’ ”

This incapability to offer a snack for the kids was a chorus in the conversations with the ladies in the villages.