Solapur village sinks in debt

While a few farmers sold their land to repay the debt, Patil did not even have that choice of selling his onion and sugarcane farm. ‘‘Even if we had sold our 4-acre farm, we would not have been able to repay the debt,’’ Patil’s wife Satyashila said. Now, she survives on her son Bapu’s salary of Rs 1,800 a month at a private company.

Grapes, onions and sugarcane are the major produce from this area and farmers take loans from moneylenders. ‘‘We take loans hoping to repay it when we make profits. But it never goes by plan. We get squeezed between uncertainty in prices of the cash crops and steep labour charges,’’ Dhananjay Lamkane, a sugarcane grower, said.

For instance, the Patils paid Rs 1,700 to the field worker to cultivate onion and they got a mere Rs 1,250 for 50 quintals — Rs 25 per quintal. ‘‘Getting loans from private moneylenders is easy,’’ Lamkane, who has taken Rs 1.5 lakh from a private moneylender and Rs 1.5 lakh from Vikas Cooperative Bank, said.

While Lamkane has been able to retain his farm, another farmer Bharat Ganpath Sathe, lost his 2-acre farm after he mortgaged it to a private moneylender Kumin Rama Kokade for a mere Rs 7,000. ‘‘I had taken Rs 7,000 from Kokade five years ago and had signed an agreement to repay it in 11 months. But when I could not repay it, he took away the land from me. Today, I have become a labourer,’’ he said.

There are over 12 private moneylenders in the village alone who charge anywhere between 3 and 10 per cent interest on the principal amount, according to village sarpanch Machindar Jaganath Shinde.

While most of the moneylenders refused to speak, a small time lender Navnath Yeshwant Lamkane admitted that they do provide loans to farmers. ‘‘I give Rs 5,000-Rs 10,000 to the farmers at 3 per cent interest. I don’t approach them, but they come to me as they often need money urgently. I know it is illegal,’’ he said. According to the Sarpanch, it is up to the collector and the State government to look into the matter and help the farmers.

When asked, District Collector HK Govindraj said he had not received any complaint of harassment from anybody in Akolekati. ‘‘If we get a complaint, we will take action against the moneylenders. But we will definitely look into the suicide case,’’ he said.

The Brahamdev Mane Cooperative Bank, one of the largest banks to have disbursed loans to farmers in the region, also denied having harassed them for repayment of loans.

‘‘We have never ever forced or used any pressure tactic to recover the loan from farmers. We even give them a grace period and follow the norms set by the Reserve Bank of India for the recovery process,’’ bank manager H A Kadam said.

Meanwhile, the lone hope of the Akolekati farmers to break the shackles of the debt trap rests with the state government. ‘‘The government should waive the loans we have taken from the cooperative banks and they should take action against the moneylenders,’’ sarpanch Shinde said.