Farmers
The farmers in the village belong to two groups-
Some own land on which they cultivate paddy and other crops; the rest are hired labourers on the fields during different cultivation seasons. The seasonal labourers, usually, have a different primary activity, with farming only as a part-time job in some seasons. The land is fertile because there are multiple rivers like Saraswati and other distributaries of the Ganga that pass through these villages providing nutrient rich alluvial soil. Drip-irrigation systems using motorized pumps are located at distances of 4-5 km. These were installed in the late 90’s; however, a recent legislature bans new instalments of pumps owing to drop in levels of the ground water table.
The crops cultivated at the village are paddy in three seasons- aman, aus and boro. Other crops are jute, potato, mustard, sugar cane, different types of gourd, onions, peas, pumpkin, cucumber, etc.
The farms are only lightly mechanized and almost 90% of the cultivation is still done manually. It is very labour intensive. Paddy is grown into little sapplings in nurseries. Only the healthy sapplings are then transplanted by hand into fields to give the best yields.
Once the paddy crop has flourished they are harvested using sickles, and threshed using mechanical rotors. The loose paddy grains are then dried and winnowed before being sent to local rice mills for polishing. These implements are hired on monthly rental only in the seasons they are required. Almost all the farmers in the village had Kisan Credit Cards, however, a very small percentage of them had taken any loan against their accounts. This was because they were vary of banking rules and regulations and, more importantly, they were often self-reliant banking on the market value of their produce to pay for the equipment at the end of their lease term.
