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Journalism of Courage
A splash of colours catches the eye, and soon the uneven landscape is transformed into neat little stacks of saplings and flowers growing out of small black plastic bags. A small road leads off the highway and weaves through beds of red, yellow and pink roses, ornamental palms and mango saplings.
Three kilometre down the curvy road A. Satyanarayan Murthy, owner of one of the nurseries in the Kadiyam area, works side by side with the four labourers he has hired for the day. A scooterist draped in TDP colours passes by driving with one hand and waving a flag with the other. Murthy and his labourers look up for a moment but are back to picking out wilted mango saplings in his field.
This year has not been good to Murthy. For the first time in his 30-year-old career as a nursery farmer he has been forced to take a loan of Rs 3 lakh to see him through the season. The nursery for the last 30 years has supported him and his family of three daughters and one son. But now competition is squeezing Murthy out of business.
There are around 1,000 nurseries in the fifteen villages in the Kadiyam area and the unofficial turnover in this areas is pegged at Rs 700 crores. Ornamental and fruit plants from this area are sold all over the country in Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad to Chennai. But in the last two years, attracted by the big bucks, more farmers have turned to the trade. Over the last two years over 300 new nurseries have come up. For smaller farmers like Murthy this has meant a drop in sales. ‘‘No dealer is coming to buy from me anymore. They ask for mango saplings at Rs 3 for each but unless I sell for Rs 7 I don’t make a profit at all,” he says. The thought of going straight to the government is too daunting a task for Murthy, who is yet to make a bulk sale this year.
From the loan Murthy is paying five labourers — Rs 100 for men and Rs 40 for women per day, taking care of his family and buying saplings. He is hoping a bulk sale comes though before he runs out of money. ‘‘This is the only life I know,” he says.
The only thing that Murthy is grateful for at this stage is the ease with which he has got his loan. Otherwise government formations and elections have little meaning in his life. Ask him who the sitting MP of his area is and he draws a blank.
Just a few miles down the road Tadala Veeraswamy sits under the thatched roof of a little hut watching the labourers working under the field. Business is good for Veeraswamy, the owner of five nurseries in the area. His only complaint is over the 6-hour electricity supply to his village. ‘‘God has given us everything — plenty of water and fertile soil. But man has betrayed us, ’’ he says.
And adds, ‘‘The TDP is not bothering about farmers. They all sit in big bungalows. Chandrababu Naidu has developed the cities and made it high tech, But he hasn’t done anything for the villages.’’ The Congress also doesn’t cut much ice with Veeraswamy. The Congress has promised 24-hour, free power supply. ‘‘The Congress talks about free power but we don’t want free power. We want to pay for it, after all how long is anything free in this world?’’
The northern part of the coastal belt is generally considered a TDP stronghold. The farmers in Kadiyam all belong to the Kapu community and have traditionally voted for the BJP-TDP combine. The Rajamundhry seat is a BJP seat. This time round the sitting BJP MP S.P.V.P.K. Satyanarayan Rao was denied a ticket and BJP has fielded a K. Saravaraidu, an RSS loyalist. And the Congress has fielded Brahmin candidate U. Arun Kumar.
Farmers here are happy over the development of the national highway making it easier for them to send out their plants but are angry that the electricity situation hasn’t improved in the area in the last five years. Until last year the farmers got together and held a flower show annually. They say Chandrababu promised to take care of the power situation but nothing happened.
