Madai and the farmer inside

From far away, finding it as a peaceful abode we headed towards this place. With a sense of envy and how the grass is always greener on the other side, we urban dwellers has a thing with space and no noise. Sanjay saw us coming. He sat down in his wooden cotton-woven khataai (bed).

This is rabi season. Sanjay has grown wheat in his 3 acre fields. Okay, it was time for the young mind to kindle with and belittle the hard working farmer. In this huge spare of land, why can't he do commercial farming? Shouldn't he grow Aloe verra, process it and sell in the market? Isn't it in the trend?

Sanjay used to work as an operator of a bulldozer in another district. He would mine sand from the riverbed. For a month he is free as the work at site is stopped. The new administrator has banned it. Anyway, why does he want to go away from his native place!

This place is at the outskirts of Maihar. The landscape is up and down. Not too far, the river Tamas make its way. During winter and uptil the high summer, it gets drier. Sanjay said that there is a declining water level in this region and rightly so. Many people have digged borewell but it seems that their money is not worthily invested. Water would come intermittently for a five minutes period and the bore would be off for an hour. There is a mark of uncertainty at his face and at least I was too naive to read it well.

When we say that 65% of Indian farmers depend on rain for the irrigation, it actually means that people look up in the sky and follow up heavily in the newspaper if it will rain or not, and what's going to be the situation with the weather? There is a changed pattern of rain in the Baghelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh, which is making the matter worse. The level of uncertainty has grown with it. Farmers are poorer and wanted to leave this profession. But, what should they do?

Next year, it is going to be the election year for Vidhan Sabha. As a matter of fact, due to the waves of demonetisation, implementation of GST and then the COVID, there has been a lot of turmoil in the country. The general people has to struggle with it. Recently, the government has taken back the three farm bills. For this region, it would anyway mattered hardly as the coverage of MSP was meagre. Due to infra issues, sheer absense of the entrepreneurial environment, absentee leadership and awry priorities, people are not sure about investing in agriculture...

If it would get heavy on Sanjay, he would get away with his land in few lakhs rupees. To anyone who confirms with the profession, it needs money, time, hard manual work and a lot of perseverance to continue be a farmer, be able to feed his family, pay for quality education for his children and the health dynamics too that is often a secondary thing to consider. 

Not too early, but our little patience flew from our minds and our 9 to 5 job seemed cool, so we ran away from that peaceful-looking beautiful green location! Good news is that there is a medieval structure nearby, where soldiers used to guard the region. It's going to be cleaned and be opened for tourists... More footfall means there is an opportunity for small businesses. When would that happen, we do not know, but this hope digging thing was not something that I was next prepared with.