The prolonged drought
conditions have come as a boon for money lenders who are popularly known as
cotton commission agents in the Adilabad district of Telangana.
Money lenders or
middlemen, who are popularly known as cotton commission agents who give loans
and sell agriculture inputs to the farmers had amassed large tracts of agriculture
lands and became land lords by exploiting the farmers.
Most of the cotton
commission agents forced the farmers to mortgage their lands or register
farmers’ lands in their names to give crop loans. Such incidents are on the
rise in the recent years due prolonged dry spell and prevailing drought
conditions.
Middlemen are not
giving loans to the farmers without mortgaging the land unlike in the past.
Earlier, these agents used
to give loans to the farmers and there was good will among them, but they suspect
that farmers may not repay loans in the wake of continuous drought conditions
in the last three seasons. So they buy same land by fixing
a price if the farmers failed to repay the loan. The farmers have to bear the
expenses of the land mutation in the name of cotton commission agent.
The cotton commission agents
will return the land transfer documents after cancelling land mutation if
farmer repays the loan.
It is said that now
each money lender or cotton commission agent have nearly 150- 300 acres of
agriculture lands with them which were mortgaged by distressed farmers for
loans.
There was every
possibility of becoming owner of that land if the farmer failed to repay the
loan due to mounting interest for a given time.
Farmer Naveen of
Pochera in Adilabad mandal said ‘cotton commission agents charge 20-25 interest
per annum on the loans they give to the farmers and most of the times the
interest will be calculated for six months and farmers repay their loans but
cotton commission agents charge for the one year period.
The cotton commission agents sell the pesticides,
fertilizers and seeds at exorbitant prices and charge additional interest on
the already hiked prices of agriculture inputs.
The cotton commission agents have became popular and
powerful over a period of time with the increased cultivation of cotton in the
Adilabad , Utnoor divisions and became mediators to the owners of the private
cotton ginning and pressing factories in and around the Adilabad town.
Some of the cotton commission agents in the Adilabad
division became so strong that even they were funding to the political leaders contesting
in the elections and few cotton commission agents have started showing their
wealth lavishly constructing posh buildings worth crores of rupees.
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