TKTU chief Bodhanandan says the union has decided on a solution: Make all the farmers sow and reap, taking staggered turns and not at the same time as they have been doing. This is to fit their farming with the availability of union hands to do the farm work. “We are finalising a calendar for farmers here. From next year, they should plant and harvest at the times specified in it for each, so that enough workers are available, so that they need not come to us asking to be allowed to hire machines,” he said.

The sanction, anyway, is not free of cost. Farmers lucky enough to be allowed say the comrades extract a ‘Nokkukooli’ (payment for watching work being done) for every harvesting machine allowed into a farm, though Bodhanandan claims it’s not really a union-authorised levy, and will punish comrades taking it.

Not everyone is amused. “We got many farmers together last year to jointly shift to organic farming. We even helped get them the international quality certification to export their crop as organic food, fetching them much better prices. Between the crops, we also pioneered prawn and grass carp fish farming on their farms to supplement their income. But the party and the union hounded us, attacked us in meetings held in every village. They even broke down many of those temporary fish hatcheries on the farms. It was only after Archbishop Joseph Puwathil called on CPM state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan that they allowed us some amount of peace,” says Father Thomas Peeliyanikkal of the Kuttanad Vikasana Samithy, a prominent church-based farm development body. The ordeal, he says, had begun soon after the Samithy got many harassed farmers together to put up applications to the union at one go, praying that all be allowed to use farm machines. This was after the ripe paddy began deteriorating as not many workers were around to harvest. The crop loss from the delay was considerable, he says.

... contd.