When heroes cower

Friday 13th November 2020

The government would have the public believe that it can control the rice market with the help of the Paddy Marketing Board (PMB). But the truth is that its share of the paddy market is so miniscule that it is no match for the Millers’ Mafia. The Movement for Land and Agricultural Reform (MONLAR) has told this newspaper that the government cannot purchase more than 2% of the local paddy production, more than 90% of which ends up in the silos of big-time millers.

Following the 1977 general election, the UNP government, which flung the economy open, eviscerated the PMB for the benefit of its cronies, who also had the state-owned ventures such as the CTB debilitated. The state thus lost the most potent instrument in its possession to prevent the exploitation of paddy farmers. True, the PMB earned notoriety for corruption, etc., but the fact remains that it benefited the farming community. The JVP wreaked further destruction on the PMB in the late 1980s. It burnt down 240 agrarian service and paddy storage centres during that period. This was revealed by Maithripala Sirisena in 2012, when he was the Minister of Agriculture in the Rajapaksa government.

The SLFP-led governments, which came to power after 1994, especially the Rajapaksa administration, took steps to revive the PMB, which, however, is still a shadow of its former self.

Successive governments have laboured under the delusion that the solution to shortages of rice is to resort to imports. There may have arisen some situations where the local paddy production actually dropped and rice had to be imported, but in most cases, rice is in short supply due to market manipulations. The solution, we believe, is not to import rice in a hurry, but to ensure that the hoarded paddy is released to the market.

The writ of the state did not run in some parts of the country while the LTTE was around. They were opened up after the defeat of the LTTE and they are now under state control again. But there are still some areas that have yet to be liberated; they are the lands on which the sprawling warehouse complexes of politically-connected millers stand. These places must be raided and paddy hoarded therein seized when millers create shortages of rice and jack up prices.

The PMB must be developed as a national priority with more paddy storage facilities while action is taken to give a leg-up to the small-time millers so that they can purchase paddy from farmers.

Paddy farmers are in a debt trap. They have to sell their paddy at lower prices to the Millers’ Mafia that lends them money for cultivation purposes. A large number of micro finance companies also operate at the village level, lending money to the farming community at exorbitant interest rates and seizing borrowers’ assets in case of default. The hapless cultivators cannot borrow from the state financial institutions, which ask them to put up their properties including their houses as collaterals. Successive governments have let down these people.

Fertilizer subsidy has stood the farming community in good stead, but much more remains to be done. They must be financially empowered to break free from the clutches of unscrupulous millers and private lending outfits that aggravate rural indebtedness.

Some government ministers have sought to lay the blame for the high prices and shortages of rice solely at the feet of the powerful millers. But we have government leaders boasting of having defeated the world’s most ruthless terrorist organisation. So, crushing the Millers’ Mafia and liberating the farmer and the consumer should be child’s play for these heroes. Why do they baulk at taking on the Millers’ Mafia? These business tycoons have political connections. Dudley Sirisena and Siripala Gamlalath are two of them; they have links to the present dispensation.

The Millers’ Mafia is known to bankroll powerful politicians’ election campaigns and their huge slush funds act as a bulwark for them. Politicians of all stripes may not hear poor farmers’ plaintive cries, but they are all ears when money talks, so to speak.

The exploitation of the paddy farmer and consumer will go on until the Millers’ Mafia is tamed. It is a shame that the brave slayers of ferocious ‘Tigers’ have their tails between their legs before wealthy rice millers!