Jute being transported from Dhubri ghat to Gouripur jute yard on a handcart. Telegraph picture

Dhubri, Jan. 8: Assam’s Rs 120-crore jute industry is a middleman’s paradise.

Middlemen rule this booming business as the Jute Corporation of India (JCI) lacks strong infrastructure at the grassroots and the local jute mill sector lacks the strength to control the industry.

The situation becomes all the more interesting when one considers it in the light of the fact that Assam is one of the largest producers of jute in the country. In the 2008-09 fiscal, Assam produced 7 lakh bales of the fibre. Each bale of jute weighs 180kg.

“More than half of Assam’s jute sector is in the hands of middlemen. There is not much to talk about the local jute mills. Add to it the apathetic attitude of the state government, and the future does not look bright,” a senior JCI official said at Guwahati.

Altogether 70 per cent of the state’s jute farmers grow the fibre on 2 to 4-bigha plots, while the rest grow it on 5 to 8-bigha plots. But barring a very negligible percentage, most of the farmers are in the grip of moneylenders and middlemen, who, in turn, dictate the price of jute in the market.

Jute researcher and Gauhati College lecturer Apurba Kumar Das said besides the involvement of middlemen and touts at the trading level, a practice called dadani in jute- producing districts is also seen eating up a lion’s share of the profits of the state’s poor jute growers.

He said farmers often took loans from moneylenders to purchase seeds and in return, the latter takes control of the crops and reaped the profits, while paying the former a lump sum. This age-old system, in which farmers sell their produce to moneylenders at a predetermined rate, is called dadani. “This way the farmers are exploited at the first stage of production,” Das added.

Explaining the next phase of exploitation, Das said if the farmers somehow managed come to the jute market, they encountered the middlemen, who are basically agents of mills located outside the state and dictated the market prices.

As a result, the farmers are left with little choice but fall in their trap and sell their produce at low prices, he added.

Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi had announced the setting up of a jute mill at Bechimari in Darrang district, where four jute farmers were killed in police firing during a peasant protest against low jute prices. But no one exactly knows when the jute mill will actually come up.

The JCI official said the corporation’s procurement network comprised 24 centres, including its own godowns, but this was not enough to provide support to the sector. “With hardly any recruitment in the corporation since the 1990s, there is not much manpower at the field level for procurement,” he said, adding, “The JCI is just a watchdog. Had it not been there, the growers would have been completely swept away.”

The official said this year the quality of jute had been poor because of uneven rainfall. “The growers are still not responsive to modern technology,” he said.

Last year, the corporation had procured 144 metric tonnes of jute seed but could sell only 55.93 metric tonnes. “People prefer to buy low-quality seeds. We have told them that the quality of the produce would not improve if they used such seeds, but they hardly care,” the official said.

In 2010-11, JCI had procured 19,285 quintals of jute valued at Rs 6.73 crore.

Assam government has also got into the act and is planning to set up a jute park in the state.

The Assam Industrial Development Corporation has already submitted a proposal to the Centre for setting up a Jute Diversified Products Industrial Park at AIDC’s Industrial Papers Assam Limited complex at Dhing in Nagaon for better utilisation of unutilised or inadequate raw materials like jute for production of more value-added products, which will immensely benefit the cultivators.

But the park will take some time, and until then, the middlemen will continue making hay, come storm or sunshine.