[Reader-list] Reg: Set - 10

[Rakesh Iyer]

Article Theme: Farmer's Suicides

Source: India Together

Date: *03 February 2010*

Link: http://www.indiatogether.org/2010/feb/psa-suicides.htm

Article Content:

*Farm suicides: A 12-year saga *
 In 2006-08, Maharashtra saw 12, 493 farm suicides. That is 85 per cent
higher than the 6,745 suicides it recorded during 1997-1999. And the worst
three-year period for any State, any time. P Sainath reports.

The loan waiver year of 2008 saw 16,196 farm suicides in the country,
according to the National Crime Records Bureau. Compared to 2007, that's a
fall of just 436. As economist Professor K Nagaraj who has worked in-depth
on farm suicide data says, "the numbers leave little room for comfort and
none at all for self-congratulation." There were no major changes in the
trend that set in from the late 1990s and worsened after 2002. The dismal
truth is that very high numbers of farm suicides still occur within a fast
decreasing farm population.

Between just the Census of 1991 and that of 2001, nearly 8 million
cultivators quit farming. A year from now, the 2011 Census will tell us how
many more quit in this decade. It is not likely to be less. It could even
dwarf that 8 million figure as the exodus from farming probably intensified
after 2001. The State-wise farm suicide ratios - number of farmers
committing suicide per 100,000 farmers - are still pegged on the outdated
2001 figures. So the 2011 Census, with more authentic counts of how many
farmers there really are, might provide an unhappy update on what is going
on.

Focussing on farm suicides as a share of total suicides in India misleads.
That way, it's "aha! the percentage is coming down." That's silly. For one
thing, the total number of suicides (all groups, not just farmers) is
increasing - in a growing population. Farm suicides are rising within a
declining farm population. Two, an all-India picture disguises the
intensity. The devastation lies in the Big 5 States (Maharashtra, Andhra
Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh). These account for
two-thirds of all farm suicides during 2003-08. Take just the Big 5 - their
percentage of all farm suicides has gone up. Worse, even their percentage of
total all-India suicides (all categories) has risen. Poor States like Madhya
Pradesh and Chhattisgarh are doing very badly for some years now.

In the period 1997-2002, farm suicides in the Big 5 States accounted for
roughly one out of every 12 of all suicides in the country. In 2003-08, they
accounted for nearly one out of every 10.

The NCRB now has farm suicide data for 12 years. Actually, farm data appear
in its records from 1995 onwards, but some States failed to report for the
first two years. Hence 1997, from when all States are reporting their farm
suicide data, is a more reliable base year. The NCRB has also made access
much easier by placing all past years of *Accidental Deaths & Suicides in
India* reports on its website.

The 12-year period allows us to compare farm suicide numbers for 1997-2002,
with how they turned out in the next 6-year period of 2003-2008. All 12
years were pretty bad, but the latter six were decidedly worse.

Reading a 'trend' into a single year's dip or rise is misleading. Better to
look at 3-year or 6-year periods within 1997-2008. For instance, Maharashtra
saw a decline in farm suicide numbers in 2005, but the very next year proved
to be its worst ever. Since 2006, the State has been the focus of many
initiatives. Manmohan Singh's visit to Vidharbha that year brought the
"Prime Minister's Relief Package" of Rs.3750 crores for six crisis-ridden
districts of the region. This came atop Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh's
Rs.1075-crores "CM's relief package." Then followed the nearly Rs.9000
crores that was Maharashtra's share of the Rs.70,000-crore Central loan
waiver for farmers. To which the State government added Rs.6200 crores for
those farmers not covered by the waiver. The State added Rs.500 crores for a
one-time settlement (OTS) for poor farmers who had been excluded from the
waiver altogether because they owned over five acres of land.

In all, the amounts committed to fighting the agrarian crisis in Maharashtra
exceeded Rs.20,000 crores across 2006, 2007 and 2008. (And that's not
counting huge handouts to the sugar barons.) Yet, that proved to be the
worst three-year period ever for any State at any time since the recording
of farm data began. In 2006-08, Maharashtra saw 12,493 farm suicides. That
is nearly 600 more than the previous worst of 2002-2005 and 85 per cent
higher than the 6745 suicides recorded in the three-year period of
1997-1999. The same government was in power, incidentally, in the worst six
years. Besides, these higher numbers are emerging within a shrinking farm
population. By 2001, 42 per cent of Maharashtra's population was already
urban. Its farmer base has certainly not grown.

So was the loan waiver useless? The idea of a waiver was not a bad thing.
And it was right to intervene. More that the specific actions were misguided
and bungled. Yet it could also be argued that but for the relief the waiver
brought to some farmers at least, the suicide numbers of 2008 could have
been a lot worse. The waiver was a welcome step for farmers, but its
architecture was flawed. A point strongly made in this journal (see *Oh!
What a lovely waiver*<http://www.indiatogether.org/2010/feb/psa-suicides.htm#>).
It dealt only with bank credit and ignored moneylender debt. So only those
farmers with access to institutional credit would benefit. Tenant farmers in
Andhra Pradesh and poor farmers in Vidharbha and elsewhere get their loans
mainly from moneylenders. So, in fact, farmers in Kerala, where everyone has
a bank account, were more likely to gain. (Kerala was also the one State to
address the issue of moneylender debt.)

The 2008 waiver also excluded those holding over five acres, making no
distinction between irrigated and unirrigated land. This devastated many
struggling farmers with eight or 10 acres of poor, dry land. On the other
hand, West Bengal's farmers, giant numbers of small holders below the 5-acre
limit, stood to gain far more.

Every suicide has a multiplicity of causes. But when you have nearly 200,000
of them, it makes sense to seek broad common factors within that group.
Within those reasons. As Dr. Nagaraj has repeatedly pointed out, the
suicides appear concentrated in regions of high commercialisation of
agriculture and very high peasant debt. Cash crop farmers seemed far more
vulnerable to suicide than those growing food crops.

Yet the basic underlying causes of the crisis remained untouched. The
predatory commercialisation of the countryside; a massive decline in
investment in agriculture; the withdrawal of bank credit at a time of
soaring input prices; the crash in farm incomes combined with an explosion
of cultivation costs; the shifting of millions from food crop to cash crop
cultivation with all its risks; the corporate hijack of every major sector
of agriculture including, and especially, seed; growing water stress and
moves towards privatisation of that resource. The government was trying to
beat the crisis - leaving in place all its causes - with a one-off waiver.

In late 2007, *The Hindu* carried (Nov. 12-15) the sorry result emerging
from Dr. Nagaraj's study of NCRB data: that nearly 1.5 lakh peasants had
ended their lives in despair between 1997 and 2005. Just days later, Union
Minister for Agriculture Sharad Pawar confirmed those figures in Parliament
(Rajya Sabha Starred Question No. 238, Nov. 30, 2007) citing the same NCRB
data. It's tragic that 27 months later, the paper had to run a headline
saying that the number had climbed to nearly 2 lakh. The crisis is very much
with us. Mocking its victims, heckling its critics. And cosmetic changes
won't make it go away. *⊕*

 *P Sainath* <http://www.indiatogether.org/opinions/psainath/>
03 Feb 2010

 * P. Sainath is the 2007 winner of the Ramon Magsaysay award for
Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts. He is one of the
two recipients of the A.H. Boerma Award, 2001, granted for his contributions
in changing the nature of the development debate on food, hunger and rural
development in the Indian media. *