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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Policies goad Indian farmers to suicide: Civil society-Ashok Kumar
-One World South Asia

Reducing incomes, stagnating yields, increasing costs of cultivation, fragmenting of land-holdings and reducing of institutions credit facilities plot the graph of farmers' suicides in India.

A national consultation and public hearing on framers' suicides being organised by Action Aid in the capital brought together experts and policy critics to evaluate the progress of government initiatives to respond to the ongoing agrarian crisis.

Suicides are only one extreme symptom of the larger crisis looming over the agriculture sector, says a summary prepared by Action Aid, tracking the root to the effects of the Green Revolution technologies and market-friendly and reforms-driven agriculture, technologies and policy changes in the years following the Green Revolution. The impact of this was borne most by the small and marginal farmers who constitute the bulk of the farming community.

Agriculture and food policy analyst, Devinder Sharma said that over the years the policies have been so designed that Indian agriculture has become unviable and uneconomical. “The problem is because of the economic policy followed over the years which is pitted against the farmers,” he said. “Unfortunately, the mainline economists think that if you want to have economic growth, the way we measure our GDP, then it can be done by following those countries which reduced their population engaged in agriculture,” Sharma lamented.

Relief reports, newer technology choices, addressing indebtedness and ignoring expert advices have been the evidences of government responses to farmer suicides. Experts felt that various commissions, committees and teams appointed to look into the issue of farmer suicides in the country and provide recommendations have fallen on deaf ears. Action Aid says that the recommendations of the National Farmer Commission headed by Dr M S Swaminathan have been ignored. Similar is the fate of commission headed by Jayati Gosh in Andhra Pradesh and the Narendrea Jadav Committee in Maharashtra. Their recommendations have not been implemented.

Similarly, relief measures, announced to ameliorate the state of families have been plagued by bureaucratic language, giving governments enough to claim concern and yet leaving much to be read between the lines. As the Action Aid study points out, the announcements of compensations to the families of deceased farmers discretely hides a category called that reads 'Genuine Farmer Suicides' to be established after assessing the eligibility of the families for compensation.

In the state of Andhra Pradesh, for instance, of the total of 33,326 suicides recorded by the National Crimes Records Bureau, only 5241 were considered genuine. Maharashtra's avoidance of compensating bereaving families comes in a more bureaucratic sheath by categorising the suicides as eligible and not eligible for compensation.

According to records of the National Crimes Records Bureau, 2,70,940 farmer suicides have been reported throughout the country over the past 17 years.

Devinder Sharma said the farmers who killed themselves were the ones who could summon the courage to end a chapter. “But there are others who are also living in the same state but they do not have the courage to die. But, it does not mean that the latter are doing well,” he said.

Tens of thousands of farm women have killed themselves over the past seventeen years. Yet government records do not consider this a farmer suicide. As the report says, "Among the 2,70,940 suicides reported, 42,082, near about a fifth are women farmers. The suicide committed by the women members in the family has not been considered as a farmer suicide; despite (the fact that) they work in the field. A woman in the family is equally distressed by the crop loss in her field and burden of loan. But reasons behind her suicide are highlighted as family dispute or dispute with her husband," the Action Aid summary says.

The report is also castigating of the technology choices that are thrust on farmers as if these are magical wands. A case in the point cited here is that of Bt Cotton, which in subsequent years proved to be a major problem leading to the crisis. "More than 70 per cent of the farmers suicides reported are from cotton growing areas," the report says.

Importantly, the summary cites increasing indebtedness as the main cause behind the suicides. Citing the UPA government's loan waiver programme announced in 2004, the summary says, "Still majority of the farmers are not covered under institutional credit and depend on money lenders for high-cost loans."

The loans for the farming sector have reduced after 1990 as banks changed their criteria for disbursing farm loans, the report says.