The Unjust Practices Of Natham Farmers's Summary

• Used to exploitation of middle men – though they are able to articulate the unjust practices of middlemen, they feel it is a part of a larger social and political exploitative process and middle men cannot be solely blamed for what they are doing. Natham farmers accept being exploited by middlemen as they feel that they are mutually dependent.
• Non-cooperation among farmers – when asked about cooperation among Natham farmers being a solution to overcome exploitation and systemic value addition problems, farmers replied categorically that farmers cannot come together. They justify this thought by saying each farmer internally feels proud to produce more than his neighbor and wants to differentiate him from others on his uniqueness. Though
Apparently, there was no visible clarity on how that could be done by being united.
• Entrenchment towards current system – as there are no definite conclusions about deeper aspects of current system, there is no felt need for system level changes. Till then, the present system will continue.
• Sensitiveness to relationships – even for the exploiting middlemen villagers feel related and want to justify middlemen’s scope in larger process. And since there is no secrecy involved in how the middlemen system operates, Natham villagers feel ‘being middlemen’ is also one of the occupations that is needed for the village. In a way, it does not discourage the unjust practices and not many feel there is necessity to practice what is just.
• Fear of failure – of being mocked by fellow farmers, villagers. Natham farmers want to feel accepted by the entire community. While doing something new, they want to verify whether that will be acceptable to everyone in the village. That applies to experimenting something new
When a farmer agrees to trade his produce with the broker middlemen, all activities like bagging the harvested paddy in sacks, transportation, delivering in mandi will be done under broker’s responsibility. Once the price is fixed and a token money is given to the concerned farmer, the responsibility of the entire produce shifts to the broker at the very moment. Otherwise the farmer has to manage contract labourers (of Natham village) to execute all these activities by himself. Natham farmers see not doing all these as a major relief to them. They are very relieved to transfer off the produce once the crop is harvested from the