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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Why are India's farmers committing suicide?

Why are India's farmers committing suicide?

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published Published on Mar 16, 2018   modified Modified on Mar 16, 2018
-IANS

Farmer suicides have been taking place across India for years now, and studies of rural distress reveal the deeply-rooted, tenacious causes, such as lack of irrigation, fragmentation of land, unsuitability of seeds and inadequate sources of credit.

Despite the democratically-elected governments that claim to represent a country where over half the population is dependent on farming, agriculture has been consistently ignored at a steep cost to farmers' lives. Remedies have been tried -- the state waived loans to small and marginal farmers ahead of elections and such sops were criticised after elections for disrupting credit discipline among the borrowers.

The crisis provided an opportunity to try more adventurous "remedies"; farmers were cornered into using expensive, genetically-engineered seeds, even when these added heavily to the cost of cultivation of crops like cotton, further indebting them. Although this generated hope, which helped the governments get re-elected, none of the remedies worked. The question remained: Why did farmers commit suicide, bringing a bad name to "popular" governments?

So it became prudent and necessary for the state that other causes for the suicides were invented, such as alcoholism, depression, vices, etc. Farmers were blamed for being ambitious, extravagant, adventurous, lazy, cowardly, and too emotional. Camps were set up to help them cope with life's stresses, charities were organised and advice was dispensed. Additionally, the state found the usual way of containing the situation; not all farmer suicides would be recognised as such. There were rules to dying; only those deceased farmers who had unpaid bank loans in their names or in the names of their families, and had land in their names or in the names of their families, were considered to fall in the "farmer suicide" category.

These "correct" suicides of the farmers, verified through this process, earned them compensation money, which was given to their widows. Once again the state expected that such monetary relief would make the farmers, and voters in general, appreciate the kindness of the politicians and re-elect them. And once again, it was not a remedy. The question still persisted: Why did farmers commit suicide despite such "generosity" of the state?

Again, it became imperative for the state to find other reasons to explain why it failed to contain farmer suicides. It was believed that the compensation itself encouraged farmers to kill themselves; that the Rs 1 lakh might have increased the toll, and that farmers who died due to other reasons were shown as farmer suicides. But the state knew the truth, because the compensation procedure ensured that each farmer suicide was investigated in depth. The state was aware that farmer suicides happened because of one essential reason -- the farmer's sense of fairness and responsibility was hurt by his continued inability to repay debts.

This explanation was in stark contrast to the ease with which the state and politicians tried arbitrary solutions to farm distress and blamed farmers for their own deaths. It was an inconvenient truth that would have shifted the guilt to the state and was, therefore, never told. Meanwhile, the question continued: Why did farmers commit suicide, denting the image of every charismatic Prime Minister of the country and every dynamic Chief Minister of the state?

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The New Indian Express, 15 March, 2018, http://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2018/mar/15/why-are-indias-farmers-committing-suicide-1787539.html


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