This Article is From Apr 30, 2015

Band, Baaja, Debt: In a Village of Ruined Fields, a Wedding With an Edge

ALWAR, RAJASTHAN: Under a hot afternoon sun, a wedding procession makes its way through  Kalsada village in Rajasthan's Alwar district, three hours west of Delhi.

At its head, a tempo truck mounted with giant speakers, belting out Bollywood songs at full blast. Behind it, a small knot of brightly dressed men and women, some dancing, others not.

The revelry is muted. Just a month ago, close to 70 per cent of the fields that surround the village, of wheat, mustard and channa,  were ruined by hailstorm. Roughly half the crops in Alwar district are estimated to be damaged.  

The hail did not spare the fields of the father of the groom, Khemchand.

Khemchand, however, is not a landowner; he is, like several farmers in this fertile region that abuts Haryana, a sharecropper.  

He took 8 bighas of land (approximately 2 acres) on lease for Rs  12,000 per bigha, a payout of  Rs 96,000.

He now has to repay this,  in addition to a bank loan of Rs 3 lakh, of which about half was for buying farm material: seeds, fertiliser and so on. The rest was for the wedding.

Even in a good year, the wedding would have strained his savings; the profits from sharecropping small plots of land are meagre. In a bad year, the financial toll carries deep risks.

But he says he had to go ahead with the wedding. "It was planned 6 months ago", he said. "It is a matter of pride."

The same sense of pride meant that no expense could be spared, despite his fragile finances.

Around the groom's neck was a necklace of 100 rupee notes, common in most Indian weddings. The bride was bedecked with gold jewelry which the groom's family had specially made.

"We fed about 500 to 600 people. If we had not invited anyone, they would have reproved us," he said.

The government has raised compensation for damaged crops to around Rs 6800 per hectare.  But that would fall well short of what farmers here claim to have spent, around Rs 40,000 per hectare.  

Even if the compensation comes  - farmers here say no one has so far come to estimate damaged crops -  it may not reach Khemchand, since he is not the landowner.

Just eight days ago a farmer in the same district , Harsukh Lal Jatav, who had taken land on lease, and also reaped a ruined harvest, killed himself  by jumping under a train.

Khemchand says he has no choice but to now become a labourer, earning a pittance of Rs 300 a day.  

But he admits he may also have to sell the gold jewellery he had made for his daughter-in-law.
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