DEVELOPMENT-SRI LANKA: Rice Farmers Go Hungry to Save Themselves

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

HINGURAKGODA, Sri Lanka, Aug 17 2000 (IPS) - Wimala Nona could not stand it any longer. The 65-year-old grandmother had to choose between watching her Sri Lankan rural household starve, or joining the protest.

Nona, along with 10 other, mostly elderly people, lies on a straw mat, on the ground outside a Buddhist temple in Hingurakgoda town, some 240 km north-east of the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo.

The group is on a hunger protest and has refused to eat till the government accepts the demands of thousands of rice farming households in the region.

“There was nothing I could do. There were few choices left. So I joined the protest,” she says.

Her family is urging her to give up, but Nona will not listen. “I am determined to continue till the government gives us our rights,” she says, as a crowd gathers around them in support.

The protesters, who include another old woman, three Buddhist monks and six men, are demanding that the government prop up rice prices to help the deeply indebted paddy farmers.

Since January this year, at least eight rice farmers have committed suicide in the Polonnaruwa district, which includes Hingurakgoda, because of their inability to repay debts.

Polonnaruwa is Sri Lanka’s third largest rice growing region, after Ampara in the east and Kurunegala in the north-central province. These regions have also seen farmer protests in the past few months.

The hunger protest was launched after a march by 1,500 farmers across Hingurakgoda to demand government intervention to check the fall in rice prices. The marchers represented 52 farmers’ groups in the region.

Representatives of the farmers’ groups say they have still not got a response to a written appeal, earlier this year, to Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga.

They have demanded a meeting with the president, a guaranteed minimum purchase price of about 20 U.S. cents per kilogramme for white rice and a ban on the import of all food crops.

The farmers also want the government to make public, a decade- old report by a government commission, which probed farmers’ problems and suggested ways of tackling these.

M. Jayatissa, one of the farmer leaders, who sits with the hunger protesters, says the government has ignored their pleas all these years.

“We have repeatedly raised these issues with all governments to no avail. We resorted to this in desperation,” says the 65-year old rice farmer.

“This is better than committing suicide or taking to arms to fight for our rights. By fighting for our rights in a peaceful, Mahatma Gandhi-type of protest, we hope there would be a solution to these burning issues for generations to come,” he says.

Rice is Sri Lanka’s staple crop and the country has been close to self-sufficiency in recent years. Rice production in the country rose last year by seven percent to 2.9 million tonnes.

But in recent years, economic liberalisation policies have led to an influx of cheaper rice from India.

“It’s a vicious circle. Imports are crippling us and we are eternally in debt,” says rice farmer R.P. Dharmatillake, another hunger protester.

In July, the government temporarily stopped rice imports in the face of mounting protests from paddy farmers.

“We somehow repay our seasonal loans even if our families have nothing to eat,” says Dharmatillake, who owns a one-hectare paddy farm in Polonnaruwa.

Rice is purchased by ‘Sathosa’, the government’s main commodities purchasing agency, and village cooperatives, for about 10 rupees (less than 15 cents) per kilogramme.

However, the government agency and cooperatives buy only in small quantities, with private traders buying up the bulk. However, the latter pay less than eight rupees per kilogramme.

The farmers complain that the closure of the Paddy Marketing Board (PMB), which bought and stored rice during the two rice seasons, has made things difficult.

“The PMB was the main buyer of rice at reasonable prices and by stocking up rice for lean seasons, there was no need for imported rice,” says Weerasooriya Karunaratne, another paddy farmer from Hingurakgoda.

The government has shut down PMB outlets and storage facilities across the country, citing huge running losses.

The farmers say this created a brief seasonal shortage of rice in the market, which led the government to slash rice import duties from 35 to 10 percent between October and December 1999, to stabilise rice prices.

According to farmers’ groups, it costs 13,200 rupees (about 170 dollars), on average, to grow paddy on a one hectare plot. This includes labour charges and pesticide costs. However, the earning from this amounts to only 12,800 rupees.

“We can make a slight profit only if we don’t use any labour, which is a must for most farmers,” says a farmer leader.

With Sri Lanka due to elect a new parliament in a few months, two national lawmakers elected from the area, have visited the hunger protesters.

The political leaders urged the farmers to stop their protest and promised to take their complaint to the president and parliament.

“These promises are all hollow. We have heard them many times over,” says one of the protesters.