High land prices are forcing Indians to till the more welcoming soils of the Caucasus, writes Jason Burke in Manochahal.
THE sun dips, the cattle low as they are driven back to the farms and
a telephone rings with a Bollywood soundtrack tone. Tujinder Singh is
calling the sarpanch - the elected head - of Manochahal, his native
village.
The conversation - about crops, prices, weather and
mendacious middlemen - is like a million or so similar early-evening
calls placed by farmers across south Asia. Except that the land
Tujinder Singh is tilling is in Georgia, the small mountain nation in
the Caucasus.
Singh, 38, is one of a new wave of farmers pioneering one of
the world's more unlikely migrations. During a recent spell as a cook in
Dusseldorf he heard about thousands of hectares of fertile land on
former collective farms in Georgia, lying fallow for want of
manpower.
The contrast with his native Punjab, with its surging
population and high land prices, was striking. So two months ago he and
three friends flew from Amritsar to Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, to
seal a deal for the lease of 50 hectares.
Back for a short break and some tandoori chicken, Singh said he was
very happy with the move, even if he remains slightly vague about the
geography of his new home. ''We are paying $950 for each hectare for a
99-year lease. You'd not get much for that in the Punjab. I'm not sure
if the farm is in the north or south, but it is sort of over by Turkey
and Armenia,'' he said.
Singh and his associates are far from alone. A growing number
of Punjabi farmers are heading for Georgia. Agents in major towns such
as Jalandhar are advertising Georgian land deals and business is brisk.
''It started a while back, just a dozen or so. Maybe now it
is hundreds. Once word spreads there will be many. They come to me for
passports. They are looking for pastures new,'' said JS Sodhi, the
bureaucrat who issues travel documents in Amritsar, the nearest major
city to Manochahal.
The farmers of the Punjab, known as the grain basket of
India, have long searched overseas for new land. An earlier wave of
migrants went to Canada, where urbanisation meant thousands of farms
were empty. More recently, Punjabi farmers have been buying or renting
thousands of hectares in Ukraine, Uzbekistan and across eastern and
central Africa.
The money the farmers make overseas is often sent home to
buy land, contributing to the rise in prices that forced them to leave
in the first place.
Georgian officials in India say the new arrivals may be
disappointed. ''We are not encouraging them. They are going on their
own. There are some private people in Georgia selling land. We have no
program for this,'' a Georgian official said.
It is illegal for a foreigner to directly own land in the
country and, though it is relatively cheap, it is less abundant than
often reported. A recent project to attract farmers from overseas,
particularly white South Africans, was a failure.
''There's a huge hunger for land and it's said to be very
good land over there, fertile and well-irrigated,'' said Gokul Patnaik, a
Delhi specialist on global agriculture. ''It's mechanised farming, but
the Punjab is the one area of India where tractors are widely used, so
that won't be too much of a problem.''
Nor is the cultural gulf separating the Caucasus and western
India an obstacle. ''I like the food and the people are very
friendly,'' said Tulwinder Singh, another pioneer, though not speaking
Georgian where few speak Punjabi was ''a challenge''.
Some in the Punjab fear an exodus from the villages and the
end of a centuries-old way of life. Dulwinder Singh, the village head of
Manochahal, says he does not think large numbers of young farmers will
follow his neighbour to Georgia, however.
''Over there you work the land, you invest in it, you sweat
over it, but it is yours just for 99 years. Then what?'' he asked, as he
sipped tea with four neighbours outside his farmhouse.
''My land here was worked by my father, my father's father, his father and as far back as anyone can remember.
''What can replace that?''
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