“The question is, don’t farmers, like everyone else, have their rights? We have even suggested that the union form its own labour collectives of 15 to 20 suitably trained and skilled local workers each, help them own and maintain modern farm machines, so farmers could viably employ them to do all the local farm work. But the union is not interested,” he says. It would usually take 10 or more workers a full day’s effort to harvest paddy in a single acre, which a single harvester machine can do in under an hour. Even the few machines now rented from neighbouring states in cases where the union had allowed them, cost the farmer less than Rs 1500 an hour. Manual labour, besides costing much more even if available, is also inefficient — the machines avert at least 20 per cent of the crop’s harvest losses that manual labour entails.

“We don’t want to consider allowing more machines into farms now. Let the farmers first fit into our annual farming calendar that we will soon give them, so that all available workers remain fully employed,” Bodhanandan says.