Having sold off her jewellery to survive a failed crop — she only retained a small silver nose pin — the white-haired woman, her face careworn, has been camping at Jantar Mantar with similarly afflicted farmers for a week now. People come, look at the skulls, the green-clad protestors and move on, uncomprehending of the crisis that makes a better future almost impossible for these wretched farmers.
The skulls are a grisly reminder of what lies ahead. The Cauvery basin is nearly depleted of groundwater. Rivulets, streams and canals are running dry, and farmers have to dig up to 1,500 feet below ground to find water. "Our lands are bone dry because there has been no rain," said the diabetic Rajalakshmi, who had taken a 5-acre farmland on lease with her husband.
Another protestor, Perumal, disclosed that the farmers' collectives in the Cauvery delta decided to exhume the skulls of the dead farmers as the symbol of their desperation. Perumal, who availed a Rs 5-lakh loan in 2004 to buy a tractor and agricultural inputs, now finds the repayment amount has bloated to Rs 20 lakh with the interest he has accumulated over the years. "I think they will seize my land because that's the only asset I now have," he worried.
The farmer's existential trauma is not simply due to climate. The recent outcry over the cola companies in Tamil Nadu is part of it. Explained Rama Naidu, an independent researcher who joined the sit-in after seeing his father lose his land for defaulting on repayment of dues: "The Palar river is drying up, and the wells bored by beverage companies are playing havoc with the water situation. Besides, input costs have increased heavily."
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