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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | The slaughter of suicide data -P Sainath

The slaughter of suicide data -P Sainath

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published Published on Aug 15, 2015   modified Modified on Aug 15, 2015
-Frontline

Changing the way you count changes the count.

THE total number of farmer suicides in the country since 1995 crossed the 3,00,000-mark in 2014. However, the 2014 data are not comparable with 19 earlier years of farm suicide data. This is because of major changes in the methodology of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).

With the new parameters, the number of farmer suicides in 2014 falls to 5,650. That is less than half their 2013 figure of 11,772. This happens simply because of the shuffling of the suicide numbers across new or revised categories in the NCRB tables. The “fall” in farmer suicides accompanies a stunning increase in suicides by “Others”. Karnataka, the second worst State for such suicides in the country, saw 321 farmers take their lives in 2014. That is a big drop from the previous year’s figure of 1,403. In the same 12 months, though, suicide numbers in the “Others” column of that State went up by 245 per cent. From 1,482 to 5,120 suicides. On average, the five worst States for farmer suicides saw a rise of 128 per cent in suicides by “Others”.

The NCRB 2014 data also record thousands of tenant farmer suicides as those committed by “agricultural labourers”. This too helps dilute the numbers in the main “farmers” column in a big way. By the NCRB’s own admission, there has been no data audit of its new numbers. The agency simply says that it has “already decided to organise data audit in the year on random basis”. (Read: they will now audit numbers already published as authentic.) Nor were policemen at the lowest level stations—those who record the data—trained for this new exercise.

Further, a record 12 States and six Union Territories declared “zero” farmer suicides in 2014. These include three big farming States: West Bengal, Rajasthan and Bihar. In 2010, by contrast, not a single big State had claimed “zero” suicides. And just three Union Territories had done so. Now, these States assert that not a single farmer, in the millions amongst them, took his or her life in 2014. For any reason at all.

On these counts, the NCRB says it “may seek clarification from the concerned States/ U.Ts where data is perceived to be abnormal…” (emphasis added).

There is little explanation of how the data for the new/revised categories in the NCRB’s Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India 2014 are collected. And when it comes to causes, the report goes, as always, by what State governments say were distress-driven suicides. Even so, the number of farmer suicides since 1995 touches 3,02,116. And while the changes render comparisons dubious, the aggregate figure across all farm-related suicides, at 12,336, is marginally higher than in 2013.

Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh (including Telangana), Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh are the “Big 5” States of farmer suicides. For a decade, they logged two-thirds of all such suicides in the country. In the new accounting, the Big 5 States recorded well over 90 per cent of all farmers’ suicides in 2014. Maharashtra, whose 20-year total now stands at 63,318, witnessed over 45 per cent of all farmer suicides in the country last year. However, serious questions on the changes in categories remain unanswered. As do even more troubling ones on the data collection.

The NCRB is not a data collection machinery. It collates and tabulates statistics coming in from the States. In that respect, it has no vested interest in the numbers. However, the changes in formats seem to further embolden and enable State government fudging of data. Officials in State capitals will now find that job much easier.

A heavy distortion of the data began with Chhattisgarh in 2011. The State had, by its own count, averaged 1,555 farm suicides each year between 2006 and 2010. In 2011, it went to zero, cold turkey. It declared nil farm suicides that year, four in 2012 and zero again in 2013. West Bengal followed suit from 2012. Others too began to massage their numbers. Farm suicides had become a politically damaging issue. Now, with new categories and columns to shuffle the deaths across, State governments can more easily reduce the numbers in the main farmers group. The new (sub) categories include: farmers owning their land, those working on contract/lease, agricultural labourers and more.

According to the NCRB, there is “no reclassification” here. “Just further segregation” of a table that it has published for 19 years: “Self-employed persons in Agriculture/Farming”. It does not wash. Never at any time in the past were agricultural labourers stated to be “self-employed” in NCRB data or anywhere else. A defining characteristic of agricultural labourers is that they are not self-employed. They roam the country seeking work from others.

It gets worse.

The constable at the lowest police station in a district will apparently lay down whether the person who has committed suicide is a farmer, a cultivator, a tenant, a landowner or a labourer. Something that is difficult even for a trained surveyor. The NCRB does say that the “data is based on official records of police stations”. The data on unnatural deaths (UDs) are fed to the District Crime Records Bureaus (DCRBs). And upwards to the State crime records bureaus (SCRBs), which format them and send them on to the NCRB.

The NCRB says that it, in fact, held a “one-month rigorous training of trainers (ToT)” last year. That is, for officials of the SCRBs. These are people located in State capitals. Not at the local police stations. “The trained officials of the SCRBs,” says the NCRB, “were requested to impart similar training for concerned officials of the DCRBs/police stations of their respective States for data feeding.” Did the SCRBs ever do that? It just never happened. Officials at the police stations we contacted in high farm-suicide regions like Vidarbha in Maharashtra and Mandya in Karnataka seemed baffled. So were top police officials in four of the Big 5 states.  “We know of no circular asking us to collect or collate the data this way, recording those categories,” said a senior police official in Andhra Pradesh.

In Telangana, a top police official said: “The classification is not the job of the constable but of the tehsildar. Who is a farmer or not, that is the Revenue Department’s call. A copy of the FIR [first information report] goes to the tehsildar. The policeman present simply notes the apparent reason of the suicide.”  This means the classification can get done at the Revenue Department or the SCRBs in the capital. And, when in doubt, he said, “the entry will likely go into the ‘Others’ category”. That last seems to have happened with thousands of cases.

In Maharashtra, the worst-affected State, senior police officials we contacted were only aware of a 2006 State government circular on the farm crisis. “That required us to report any farm suicide to the District Collector,” said one officer. He also forwarded us a copy of the circular.

 In Karnataka, reeling under a spate of farm suicides at present, the police said they were mystified by the new data classification system. Local stations had not been instructed to make such distinctions in the FIR or its summary. Top police officials in Madhya Pradesh said that to their knowledge, the constable in the field had not been asked to collect such data.

The NCRB report itself reflects the confusion the new moves have caused. The second paragraph of its note on farmer suicides says quite correctly: “Farmers include those who own and work on field (viz. cultivators) as well as those who employ/hire workers for field work/farming activities. It excludes agricultural labourers.” Then how do the latter fit into a table of “self-employed”?

Take tenant farmers, those who cultivate the land owned by others, paying a rent in cash or with a share of the produce. Most tenancy contracts in India are informal and not recorded. So tenant farmers struggle to get bank credit. They are deep in debt to moneylenders and many have committed suicide. However, with no record of identity, tenant farmers have all along been undercounted in the farmers suicide category.

Now they will be even more decisively excluded. Only a tiny fraction with recorded tenancy will make it to the NCRB’s new subcategory for them. Most will simply be counted as agricultural labourers.  And this has clearly happened in the latest data. The number of agricultural labourers across India committing suicide in 2014, at 6,710, is over a thousand higher than farmers.  In Andhra Pradesh, for instance, the record shows just 160 farmer suicides for 2014 but nearly three times as many agricultural labourer suicides in the same year.

The NCRB’s response to this: “It is presumed that the concerned police station has fed the category of victims, viz. agricultural labourers, farmers, etc., based on finding of enquiry into such unnatural deaths.” However, the agency concedes that, given the potential problems, “the Bureau will seek clarification from the concerned State”.

The NCRB knows there is a problem. And senior officials admit that only those whose tenancy has been recorded would have been counted. Yet, it also says: “NCRB at present does not intend to carry out detailed study on tenancy rights/issues which varies from State to State.” Alas, that is precisely the point. The recording or lack of it, of tenant farmers is a mess that wrecks the 2014 data. “The NCRB 2014 misclassifies many tenant farmers as agricultural labourers,” says  All-India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) vice president Malla Reddy.  

Forced by the Kisan Sabha, the Andhra Pradesh government had introduced the Andhra Pradesh Licensed Cultivators Act in 2011 to confer clear proof of identity to tenant farmers.  They were to be issued “Loan Eligibility Cards” to enable them to seek bank credit. “But 90 per cent of the 32 lakh tenant farmers in the present Andhra Pradesh have not been issued the cards,” says Malla Reddy. “How will they prove their identity?” Tenants account for a third of all farmers in Andhra Pradesh.  Incidentally, the AIKS counted more farmer suicides in Andhra Pradesh in seven months of 2014 than the NCRB does for that whole year.

(Even the Indian Banks’ Association had recognised the problems of this group across the country. It reported in 2008 that they faced a “range of problems dominantly stemming from the lack of official recognition of tenancy and the fact that their status as actual cultivators is nowhere recorded”.)

Besides the tenant farmer issue, there are other problems that discredit the latest farmer suicides data. The most vital of these is the spectacular increase in suicides recorded under “Others”. Particularly in the Big 5 States, where they have doubled in the 12 months of 2014. “Others” in Karnataka shot up by 245 per cent in just that one year. In Andhra Pradesh by 138 per cent. In Maharashtra by 94 per cent. In Madhya Pradesh it was up by 89 per cent. Chhattisgarh saw a rise of 30 per cent.

In the years 2011-14, when Chhattisgarh was declaring “zero” (or single digit) farmer suicides, its average for suicides under “Others” grew by 83 per cent to 1,472. No prizes for guessing who many of those “Others” were.

The “Others” overall has swollen as a result, from 24,809 in 2013 to 41,216 in 2014. Astonishingly, the “Others” category balloons to that figure despite the fact that 15,735 deaths have been withdrawn from it to form the new category of “daily wage earners”.

“Others” in 2014 accounts for almost a third, 31.3 per cent, of ALL suicides in the country. The Big 5 alone contribute 16,234 of those. In 2013, the number was 7,107.

There is also the “Self-employed persons (Others)” column within the farm data whose numbers have shrunk. Creating the new categories obviously implies a carving up of that grouping. In Chhattisgarh, though, there is an obvious link between the farmer suicides and the SEP (Others) columns. When the State reported a high farmer suicide figure of 1,802 in 2009, its SEP (Others) figure was 861. When it claimed “zero” farmer suicides in 2013 (for a third year running), the SEP (Others) figure reached 2,077. If in the three years 2011-13, we add "SEP (Others)" and the "Others" categories, they account for around 60 per cent of total suicides in the State.

Within their limits, the NCRB data gave us a fair trend, if not accurate figures, for 19 years. Now that integrity is badly compromised.

Why did the government feel the need to reclassify farm suicides data? Were the numbers proving to be an embarrassment? Hence a need to prove that the data—which are entirely gathered by arms of the government—were an overestimation?

The NCRB says format revisions are routine. “A regular exercise considering the data requests of various stakeholders.” They say there is nothing on record to show that the government or any particular agency sought the revision. However, it does seem that the agency acted on a “request” from the Agriculture Ministry in 2013 (the time of Sharad Pawar as Agriculture Minister).

The argument appears to be: oh, we were lumping all the categories together earlier. So now we’re breaking them up to make sense. It wasn’t all farmers. That won’t work because: The data up to 2013 refer clearly to self-employed in agriculture. Agricultural labourers are NOT self-employed. To questions raised in Parliament over the years, the government stated the NCRB figures as being those relating to farmers only, not to other categories.

Faced with a tragic, deepening crisis (of which the suicides are but one symptom), how do governments react? Not by facing up to the problem, but by fiddling the data in sometimes blatant and often ingenious ways. The trend that began with the “zero” declarations has worsened. This year’s fudging is more sophisticated. But there is also this self-delusion: If we don’t know the numbers, there is no problem. Change the way of counting and the count changes. And quiet flows the countryside.

Frontline, 21 August, 2015, http://www.frontline.in/social-issues/the-slaughter-of-suicide-data/article7495402.ece?homepage=true


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