Sitting at the bustling Balugaon wholesale market in Assam’s Kharupetia last week, Shamshul Hoque (60) sold roughly 45 kg of cucumber he had cultivated from his one and a half bigha of land – a far cry from the roughly 300 kg he said he would harvest every few days in a good season. In a neighbourhood vegetable market in Guwahati, Amar Ali said that on Sundays, he would sell vegetables worth Rs 10,000-12,000. This time, by 3 pm, he had sales amounting to Rs 1,200.

“There is no peace in farming,” said Hoque, looking over the one bigha of land (1 bigha equals 2,880 sq ft) in which his cauliflower crop was destroyed in the rains this season. Adjacent to that, his brinjal crop in half a bigha of land had also been ruined. The entire vegetable supply chain in Assam – cultivators, suppliers, wholesale dealers, vendors – are feeling the strain of a decreased yield because of crops getting damaged by heavy and sustained rainfall.

Cultivators and vendors such as Hoque and Ali, both Muslims of Bengali origin, are also feeling another pinch – of multiple statements from the state’s Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.

Earlier this month, on July 13, Sarma had held “miyas” – a pejorative term for Muslims of Bengali origin in Assam – responsible for high prices of vegetables in Guwahati. Stating that vegetable vending in the city is dominated by “miyas”, he said that they were the ones charging high rates and that Assamese vendors would not have sold at such prices because “they wouldn’t have taken so much from our own people”.

Three days later, ostensibly calling on Assamese people to be more enterprising and take on more work, he claimed that he was unable to control vegetable prices because the demography supplying them would not “listen to” him. “All of Lower Assam, and Guwahati city in particular, are dependent on vegetables from Kharupetia. It frequently appears in the newspapers that they use far too much fertiliser… As a result, we have been having a rise in kidney problems, liver problems. But despite that, the gardens in our houses are lying empty. If a family does some cultivation, they can run their household, but we are not doing it… We can’t reduce the prices either because the places from where these vegetables are brought, even if I request them, they won’t listen to me. They don’t even vote for me, why would they listen to me.”

The Kharupetia-Dalgaon belt in Darrang district is one of the major vegetable producing hubs of Assam. According to an official at the Agriculture Department office in Dalgaon, almost half the crops in the belt have been damaged this monsoon.

“Water gathered in the ground after heavy rains rots the roots and almost 50% of the crops have been ruined this way. In the remaining surviving crops, the productivity has been hit so the yield is low. Now the farmers have begun cultivating the next round of crops, so it will take at least another one-and-a-half months for the supply to be normalised,” he said.

This finds resonance across the supply chain. Ramizuddin, a resident of Ghanshimuli village in Kharupetia, has seven bighas of farmland. In the last two months, he said, he has had two bighas of tomato, one bigha of cucumber, and one bigha of bitter-gourd crop ruined.

“Now I’m just able to sell some of my bitter-gourd crop – around one quintal every four days. I have now sowed seeds for cauliflower and cabbage, which in around 15 days should give me sapling for three bighas of land. That will become ready to harvest in another two months,” he said.

The farmers in the region sell their produce at the Balugaon market, one of the largest vegetable wholesale markets in the state. Until last week, the rate for bitter-gourd was Rs 35-38 per kg, Rs 50-55 per piece for bottle-gourd, Rs 40-45 per kg for round brinjals and Rs 35-40 per kg for long brinjals. When the crop is good, Ramizuddin said, the vegetables are sold for Rs 10-13 per kg.

Nur Bakhta has a store in the market and supplies vegetables from there to Agartala, and chillies as far as Uttar Pradesh and Delhi. However, he says he has put business on hold for a few weeks now.

“There is hardly any produce to buy. In a good season, there can be trade of up to 1,000 tonnes of local produce here in a day, but now there’s only about 10 tonnes. And if I trade at the current prices, I will only make a loss,” he said.

In the Brahmaputra Bazar wholesale market in Guwahati as well, vendors say they are bringing less produce, and local vendors are buying less from them in turn.

Last-point vendors like Amar Ali, in the Borbari market in Guwahati, say that the result of the high prices is that consumers have cut down on their buying: “Where they would buy one kilogram, they are now buying only a pau.”

“The Chief Minister should be aware of the reasons because of which prices are high. All sorrows can’t just be dumped onto miyas,” said Malika Begum, a vendor in Guwahati’s Hatigaon.