2 Bandra Girls Buy a Farm, Part 2 – Double Trouble

After an insane 4 hour wait at the Tala registration office, where we probably came out on top because we held our patience, we were finally proud owners of 6 acres of raw farmland. But before we could start farming, there were many ducks we needed to get in a row.

First up, we had to get the land transferred to our names in the Government Land Records. Next, get a Government survey done to ascertain our boundaries and fence the land. Then get motorable access up to the farm. Then, identify a water diviner and dig at least two borewells. Then get electric posts and lines from the nearest electrical pole, which was in the village, to the farm. Also, find a farm consultant to help us with our planning and planting. Figure where to source and hire farm labour and employ a caretaker. If the caretaker was not hyper-local, build a caretaker’s house. And, of course, since I come from the advertising world, we needed a brand name and logo pronto. The list of immediate jobs was endless.

But we figured, first things first, get the land transferred to our names on a document known as the 7/12 Utara or ‘ Satbara’. Just paying for the land, signing and registering a sale deed is not enough. You have to submit the Sale Deed with an application to the Revenue Department.

A quick legal lesson here: A 7/12 Extract or Record of Rights is the extract from the land records register held by the Revenue Department of the Government of Maharashtra. 7/12 extracts contain complete information about land in rural areas. The 7/12 is equivalent to the property cards in urban areas. A 7/12 extract is a prime indicator of the legal status of the property and serves as proof of ownership. Rather unimaginatively, the 7/12 extract is named after the two forms used to collect information for the document. Form 7 is the one that gets detailed information about the ownership, rights and liabilities of the landholder, and Form 12 provides data about the agricultural aspects such as crops grown, types of crop and the actual area of cultivable land.

Legal lesson over.

So, you can see why we urgently needed our names on the 7/12 extract of our newly bought farm. The process should be routine, but, as we had learned from our registration, the path to owning farmland is not necessarily smooth. It seems our land registration and land transfer systems are custom-made to encourage touts, agents, brokers and fixers to turn routine jobs into money-spinning enterprises.

We filled and signed all the necessary forms and trusted our broker to follow up with the registrar. Then we turned our attention to all the other things on our list. In the course of our hunt for a reliable water diviner, we met M, a man who worked with villages and hamlets around the area, assisting them with issues ranging from water, sanitation and education to health, nutrition and entrepreneurship. After a brief meeting with M, we persuaded him to come on board our venture as our point man-of-all-parts. In short order, he had a professional visit the farm who identified two possible places where we could dig borewells. One day, M brought along a friend, S, who introduced himself as a farm consultant. He told us we should keep all the wild mango trees and, in due course, graft them to produce good quality Alfonso mangoes. We thought that was a capital idea as we weren’t keen on cutting down any large trees. He also pointed out a different area where we could grow rice which we hadn’t considered. Bandra Rose and I were duly impressed (any farming knowledge would have impressed us!), and we quickly co-opted him into our team. With M&S on board, we figured we were ready to roll.

Before we could start sowing, we needed to clear the dense undergrowth, shrubs, wild bushes and scraggly trees. As it would take a team of people over a month to manually clean the land, we decided to hire an excavator to do the job in a week. And, just as things were going swimmingly, enter from stage right our broker and the Farm Fiend, who you may remember from my earlier post.

Broker and Farm Fiend were beyond surprised to see we had formed our mini team as they had expected the 2 Bandra Girls to turn to them for all things big and small. First, they tried to cajole us into dumping M&S and using only the people they recommended. Then, they attempted to discredit M&S by suggesting the duo was ‘after our money’ and would cheat us. When that didn’t work, Farm Fiend threatened M with physical harm if he dared step foot on our farm again. Things were getting out of hand, and tempers were running high. I got into a shouting match with Farm Fiend and, he, amongst other things, threatened to stall our 7/12 if we didn’t get all our work done through him. Just as we headed for an all-out fight, M&S persuaded us to stay calm as the deadly duo could jeopardise our 7/12 application. “Don’t antagonise anyone till you get the 7/12 transferred to your names”, they wisely counselled.

M offered to stay away from the farm till the situation quietened down. Emboldened, Farm Fiend professed great friendship and offered to hire an excavator for us at the best rate so S could start clearing the land. It was, of course, not the best rate, but we were trying to keep the peace and get our work done. Two days into the clearing, Farm Fiend commandeered the extractor to build a motorable access road from the village to our farm. Insisting he was acting in our best interest, he began to construct what I now call the Fiend Highway. He charged us an arm and a leg to steal over 50 tractor loads of soil from a neighbouring farm and roll a tractor over it to damp down the earth.

If that wasn’t enough, he also organised a small village uprising and told us the villagers didn’t like outsiders, and he was the only one who could persuade them to stay cooperative.

And, of course, our farm work was going slow because S didn’t have access to the excavator for long periods.

Once we had cleared the wild undergrowth and cut a few scraggly trees, Farm Fiend activated a new lot of villagers. One of them, an elderly widow, claimed her family had been cheated and forced to sell the land we had now bought. She said this had happened ten years ago. She also said we needed to compensate her for the trees we had cut as they had probably taken root when her family owned this land. We were having none of it!

It all sounds pretty ridiculous now, but for those ten days, Bandra Rose and I had our share of sleepless nights and even wondered if buying the farm had been a big mistake.

Completely exasperated, I called a cousin who called a friend who was the Personal Assistant of one of Maharashtra’s political heavyweights. The man was sympathetic but thought we had bitten off more than we could chew. Local goons were par for the course in the Raigad region, he said, and even if he did manage to warn off our Farm Fiend, another Fiend would take his place. Sell this land and forget about this hobie (hobby!!), he counselled. Or, if we still wanted to try our hand at farming, befriend a local strongman and buy land near him for protection. Very disheartening, I must say! But also very accurate as anyone who has property in Raigad will agree. We decided to ignore his advice and forge ahead with our  ‘hobie horse’.

In the meanwhile, Bandra Rose continued to chase our broker for the 7/12 transfer. Every week was a new excuse. Covid-19 lockdown, entire area quarantined, the registrar is in isolation, the computers have mal-functioned, and heaven knows what else. Our man-of-many-parts, M, kept prodding us to get the 7/12 transfer done at the earliest as he suspected some foul play. He asked us to speak to the registrar and ask him the reason for the delay.

The registrar was extremely forthcoming. A local man had objected to the transfer because he claimed to have paid a token amount to the seller (for the land we had bought), which the seller hadn’t returned. Farm Fiend knew all about this, he said, and implied that Farm Fiend was the guilty party somehow.

Bandra Rose lost her shirt and gave the broker a tongue lashing. Not acceptable, fix this now, she said when he tried to assure her there was no problem with the transfer. She also dangled a carrot by saying we were keen to register the agreement for our second farm within a fortnight, and he would get his brokerage soon if he resolved this issue.

A few days after Bandra Rose dangled the carrot and delivered the ultimatum, gears began to turn. The broker prevailed on Farm Fiend to stop work on the Fiend Highway, which by this time had shot several feet beyond our farm entrance. He also returned the money-sucking hired excavator to S to continue with the land clearing and called Bandra Rose every few days to assure her the transfer was underway.

A week and a small payout later, we had our names on the 7/12 extract. We also had a super expensive Fiend Highway which allowed us to drive directly into our farm. And, in the few days during which he was allowed to use the excavator, S had managed to clear enough land for us to begin our sowing and planning.

Farm Fiend and broker faded into the background, and M&S were back at work.

And yes, we did buy more farmland, but that’s a story for another post.