Festival lights in Mysuru, dry fields outside: farmers demand relief, not pageantry

Hundreds of farmers gathered in Mysuru at the start of October to protest Karnataka's spending on the Dasara festival while drought has damaged crops across the state, demanding a complete waiver of agricultural loans and much higher compensation for crop losses.

The demonstration was organised by a state farmers' association and led by its president and other farmer leaders, alongside a retired police officer. Their argument was direct: public money spent on celebration in Mysuru, one of Karnataka's biggest cultural and tourism events, should first answer a countryside where rain has failed and incomes have collapsed.

The wider Mysuru protest, reported separately, marched from near Buddha Circle in Siddharthanagar to the deputy commissioner's office and submitted a memorandum. Farmers asked the Centre and the state to share a farm loan waiver equally, pay compensation based on the actual scale of crop damage, and give an additional price for sugarcane. They said tanks and water bodies had dried, horticultural crops had suffered as borewells ran dry, and some residents were leaving villages in search of work because farming no longer provided a reliable livelihood.

Their demands went beyond a waiver. They sought a halt to bank loan recovery while drought persists, at least seven hours of electricity a day for agricultural pump sets, filled tanks, full crop-insurance payments into farmers' accounts, priority for drinking water and increased rations in drought-hit areas. In the Dasara protest, farmers also demanded compensation assessed on cultivation costs, with higher amounts for irrigated land than for rainfed dryland, and asked for public disclosure of festival expenditure.

Opposition to a proposed Dasara Kambala buffalo race has sharpened the same question. Activists from farmers', environmental and progressive organisations protested at the Sathagalli venue this week, set an October 12 deadline to cancel the October 18-19 event, and cited drought, water scarcity and the large quantity of water a slush track would use while villages struggle for drinking water and fodder.

A festival can honour a city's heritage. It cannot, in a drought year, ask the farmer to admire the lights from a dry field. Karnataka's government has announced drought assistance and sought central help; the farmers on Mysuru's streets are asking a harder question: whether relief will be measured by announcements, or by water in the tank, money in the account and a loan notice that stops arriving.