As heaps of wheat lie unsold at grain markets, the Bhakra Main Line (BML) canal in Punjab's Sangrur district has turned into a graveyard of farmers who are committing suicide by drowning in it.
Eleven bodies of farmers have piled up at the canal's Khanauri water-head this month so far. Forty-seven of them were found at the same place in September last year when rice was harvested and many farmers could not get enough yield to repay their loans.
It is this bitter harvest of death and the large and winding size of the water body that has earned it the nickname 'Anaconda Canal' among the locals.
On April 2, when the body of Najam Singh, a 45-year-old Jat Sikh farmer from a Patiala village, was found floating in the canal, the hawaldar posted at the Khanauri sluice gate was not shocked. "We find bodies of farmers of all ages here. This year is one of the worst after rains spoilt their crops. The deaths started even before harvesting began on April 14," said Kulwant Singh, head constable at Khanauri.
This 164-km stretch of BML canal, which runs from Nangal to Narwana, is an inter-state channel which supplies water for irrigation and drinking to Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan. But over the past decade, it has earned a reputation of becoming a favourite suicide spot of distressed farmers and some students.
"My son Jagtar went missing on April 15, after the government announced that there would be a cut in the minimum support price (MSP) of damaged wheat. We had a Rs 5 lakh loan. There is misery and sorrow everywhere," said his 72-year-old father Gurdev Singh, as he waited near the canal.
Every day families gather near a small shelter here, meant for irrigation engineers to keep their instruments, and wait endlessly for bodies to float up. While the well-off hire a private diver, who charges about Rs 5,000 for a few hours, others just seek help of locals and the police.
Many paste posters of missing people on the walls. The Good Samaritans among locals have pumped in money to build a small residential place to temporarily keep the bodies and house the farmers' families.
According to a 2010 official survey, the only one that Punjab government commissioned till date, 2,145 farmers committed suicide between 2000 and 2008 in the above two districts while overall 6,926 in Punjab had died.
Of them, only 1,160 in Sangrur and 1,080 in Mansa received their mandatory compensation of Rs 2 lakh, which too was disbursed in 2013 following a petition by non-profit organization Movement Against State Repression in Punjab and Haryana high court.
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