Money lenders fleece farmers

 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.