At ground zero of Mamata Banerjee’s rise, potato farmers count their losses
Twenty years after Mamata Banerjee began her rise to power from Singur in Bengal’s potato belt, farmers deal with the fallout of a record harvest.
Farmer Debabrata Bera infront of stacked Potato sacks, at his residence in Meghsa village. (Express photo by Partha Paul) In 2006, Mamata Banerjee made a decisive move that would end up catapulting her to power. With the Left Front government acquiring 1,000 acres of fertile land in the state’s potato belt to set up a Tata Motors’ Nano plant in Singur in Hooghly district, Mamata launched an anti-land acquisition movement that changed the trajectory of Bengal politics and marked the beginning of the end of the Left’s 34-year-old dominance.
Two decades on, as Banerjee seeks a fourth straight term and following a “miracle harvest” this season, the potato belt is back in focus in the middle of an acrimonious poll campaign. Aided by an unusually long winter, potato production in Bengal has touched a high of 140 lakh tonnes this year. However, the lush, green stretches of Meghsar in Hooghly district, around 30 km away, fail to mask the stench of rotting potatoes amid the glut.
With Assembly polls just over 10 days away, politics in the “potato belt” has heated up. A day after Union Home Minister Amit Shah in Bankura accused the TMC government of blocking farmers from accessing external markets, promising policy changes if voted to power, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, during a visit to the district, accused the BJP of unleashing a “firework of lies” while sleeping through the crises faced by rural workers.
“They claim potato farming in Bengal is rotting. I ask, when floods destroy the lands, where are you? You sleep and snore,” Banerjee said, pointing out that the state Agriculture Department conducts door-to-door surveys to ensure every affected farmer receives full compensation. “Farmers are not required to pay a single paisa for insurance; the government covers the full cost,” she said, adding, “The government continues to expand cold storage facilities and distribute modern agricultural tools to modernise the sector.”
A cold storage building at Sudarshan, Ramnathpur in Hooghly district. (Express photo by Partha Paul)
Two days before Shah’s speech, Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, during a visit to Singur, accused the Bengal government of “not supporting the potato farmers”.
‘Numbers don’t add up’
In the region, farmers affected say the crisis is bigger than politics. In Meghsar village, Debabrata Bera watches helplessly as 800 bags of potatoes remain unsold. “It is not about the BJP or the TMC. It is about working for 90 days in the cold and then throwing everything away,” he says. His 80-year-old Kausaha says she has not received her widow’s pension or benefits under the TMC government’s flagship Lakshmi Bhandar scheme despite repeated applications.
Debabrata Das, a farmer who cultivates 10 bighas of land, says the numbers no longer add up. “It costs around Rs 40,000 per bigha to cultivate, but we are getting barely Rs 15,000 in return. The government said it would procure 70 packets from each farmer. Even if one potato is slightly damaged, the entire packet is rejected,” he says.
Prices have collapsed at the market, too. “We are selling a 50 kg sack for Rs 80. For survival, it should be at least Rs 450,” Das says.
Left to right Debabrta Das and Gautam Das farmer from Darbasi village in Hooghly district. (Express photo by Partha Paul)
For years, Bengal’s potato surplus supplied markets in Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar, and Assam. But recent restrictions on inter-state movement — aimed at controlling retail prices in Kolkata — have left farmers struggling to find buyers.
Another potato farmer, Biplab Bera, 48, echoes Das’s distress. “A 50 kg sack is selling for Rs 100. We put in months of labour, but the market treats our work like dirt. We are not just losing profits; we are losing our future,” he says.
At a cold storage unit in the district with a 2.1-lakh-tonne storage capacity, the scale of the glut is visible. Thousands of potato sacks are stacked in narrow, chilled aisles at temperatures below 2°C, preserved in the hope of better prices.
Owner Ramesh Perival, in the business since 1989, says this year’s production is the highest he has ever seen. “Potato sowing starts from the end of October and goes on till December. Every year by mid-March, the temperature shoots up and hovers between 34°C and 36°C. Farmers have to complete loading their produce in cold storage units by March 15 as the optimal temperature for potato cultivation is around 30°C, leaving farmers with 80-90 days. This time, yields are up by 15-20%. In my 40 years, this is the best production,” he says, attributing the bumper harvest to an extended cold spell.
A cold storage building at Sudarshan, Ramnathpur in Hooghly district. (Express photo by Partha Paul)
Short window
The high output has brought fresh challenges. “Farmers already faced losses during harvesting. Bengal leads in yield per acre, but the window for cultivation is short. The state has the capacity and skilled labour, but it needs a stronger policy push,” Perival says.
He also points to technologies such as conveyor belts replacing manual loading as a sign of progress, but says systemic support is lacking.
Industry representatives argue that the immediate solution lies in moving surplus out of the state. Subhajit Saha of the West Bengal Cold Storage Association says nearly half of the 140 lakh tonnes produced exceeds local consumption. “Restrictions on exports allowed other states to expand their own cultivation. Uttar Pradesh, for instance, captured those markets,” he says, advocating transport subsidies to ease the crisis.
However, the price gap remains stark, with farmers getting as little as Rs 2-3 per kg, while urban consumers pay nearly ten times more.
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