After the starvation deaths in Amlasole, a seeds scandal is threatening to rip apart the farm-friendly facade of the West Bengal government. Though the Left Front government has ordered an inquiry and brought in experts to investigate the sunflower crop failure in the West Midnapore district, an Andhra-like suicide situation is already being apprehended. It all began about a fortnight ago, when Harisadhan Dolui, a farmer in Baharampur village, discovered that none of the flowers across his 17 acres of land had borne the oilseeds that make sunflowers a profitable crop. He preferred to burn all the plants — thereby incurring straight losses of Rs 40,000 — rather than invest more money in harvesting the crop.Local farmers hold the Surya-51 seeds supplied by the West Bengal Seeds Corporation responsible for the calamity. Dolui himself was convinced by agriculture department officials this February to cultivate sunflowers on land that, till last year, grew potatoes. In all, some 12 hectares of land in the Chandrakona block were under sunflower. ‘‘We set fire to the crop because cutting it would have cost us Rs 5,000 to Rs 6,000,’’ says Balai Chand Middha, Dolui’s nephew. ‘‘We’ll never grow this crop again. Last year, we grew potatoes and suffered losses because there was a bumper crop and prices were low. This year’s shock has led my uncle to talk about killing himself.’’ Their’s is not the only family to be so affected. Says Kalipada Sarkar of the nearby Ghanarampur village, ‘‘I got one quintal of crop from 10 kattahs of land, which is lower than the normal yield. I am wondering if I’ll ever go in for sunflowers again.’’ Gangadhar Bag, also of Baharampur village, too, regrets his decision to farm the flowers. ‘‘Last year, I suffered because of the bumper potato crops. This year, it’s the poor yield of sunflowers that has done me in,’’ he told The Indian Express. Belying the all’s-well-in-rural-Bengal image promoted by the state government, grievances run deep among the farming community. ‘‘Last year, there weren’t enough cold storages to accommodate the bumper potato crop. We destroyed 10 quintals of potatoes because we could not sell them. This sunflower disaster is the second quick blow to this region,’’ points out Dilip Sarkar, another farmer. Dolui and a couple of other farmers have lodged complaints with Chandrakona Agricultural Development Officer Tapan Jana. ‘‘I received a complaint from them and have forwarded it to my senior officers. Experts are enquiring about the low yield, particularly in Dolui’s case, where such a huge piece of land yielded nothing,’’ says Jana. According to Jana, the state government come up with the idea of introducing sunflowers in the region after the potato fiasco last year. ‘‘Midnapore is the potato zone of West Bengal. I admit we requested farmers to try sunflowers, but we didn’t know our efforts would come a cropper,’’ says the officer. For the record, Minister for Agriculture Kamal Guha has denied that the quality of seeds supplied was suspect, and has held late sowing responsible for the low yield. Local agriculture officers, however, say that the poor quality of seeds led to the low yield. ‘‘The Surya-51 variety is of questionable quality. Farmers who tried this variety suffered. But we cannot open our mouths,’’ an agricultural department official told this reporter on condition of anonymity.
