[Reader-list] Reg: Set - 11

[Rakesh Iyer]

Article Theme: Distress in Agriculture

Source: India Together

Link: http://www.indiatogether.org/2006/sep/psa-heartfeel.htm

Article Content:

OPINION
* What the heart does not feel, ... *
 After 15 years of a battering from hostile policies and governments, the
world of the peasant has turned highly fragile. But the onus of changing is
on the farmer. Not on those driving a cruel process and system, who have
only contempt for ordinary folk, writes P Sainath.

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OPINION
* What the heart does not feel, ... *
 After 15 years of a battering from hostile policies and governments, the
world of the peasant has turned highly fragile. But the onus of changing is
on the farmer. Not on those driving a cruel process and system, who have
only contempt for ordinary folk, writes P Sainath.
  <http://www.indiatogether.org/support/home.php>
 *10 September 2006* - The spraying season is just about to begin in
Vidarbha. Which means the region sits on a volcano. This is when a farmer
actually holds that can of pesticide in his hand. When a moment's
frustration can snuff out a life forever. Even the run-up to the season has
been a disaster. More than 200 farmers have committed suicide in two months.
August alone saw 111 indebted farmers kill themselves. That brings the total
since June last year to 828. Of these, 72 have occurred since Independence
Day this year.

We'd be lucky if the Government prepares itself for this season. And if
we're even more lucky, the suicides might taper off a bit after the
spraying. They have always had seasonal highs and lows. It's vital though
never to forget that these deaths are only a symptom of the larger crisis.
Not its cause. Failing to see this link means ignoring the main issues. It
then becomes "if they're not killing themselves, things are okay." A bad
illusion. That said, the numbers are indeed appalling.

Something very fundamental is happening. The central, driving factors behind
the suicides remain the same. Rising debt, soaring input costs, plummeting
output prices, a credit crunch and so on. But the outcome now adds up to
more than just the sum total of these factors. After 15 years of a battering
from hostile policies and governments, the world of the peasant has turned
highly fragile. Problems that would not have driven many to suicide a decade
ago do so now. It takes less to push farmers over the edge because their
resistance is down. So fragile is their economy and equilibrium.

The studies and surveys seldom account for one vital factor - the worldview
of peasants. How that is changing as their links to the land erode. How
their hopes of what's possible are constantly dashed. How, losing their
anchor, they drift to a frightening future. How it feels to watch your child
drop out of school or college because education has become too expensive.
Even as your daughter's marriage is off, because you cannot afford it. You
fail to get your ailing mother to a hospital because health is the most
costly thing in your world. All this while agriculture itself is tanking.
And there's less food on the table. For too many, pessimism soaks the
worldview this shapes. And despair gains ground as the coming deity.

But why are farmers committing suicide only in Vidarbha? This question based
on falsehood or ignorance or both, is being posed just now. Farm suicides
have been on in many parts of the country. In sheer numbers, Andhra Pradesh
has had more than any other State. During the Chandrababu Naidu years, they
accounted for the bulk of all such deaths in the country. A better question
would be why their intensity has been less since then. Or why they could
easily go up again in the same State.

Farm suicides have also been on for several years in Punjab, Haryana,
Rajasthan, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh and elsewhere. To imply they
are only happening in Vidarbha is false. The agrarian problem is nationwide.
So are many of the policies driving it. But all regions are not the same.
Some crops are more subject to price shocks. Some communities more
vulnerable than others. Some cultivation practices more destructive than
others. And some governments are far worse at handling distress than others.
No State is exempt from the crisis. But more exposed regions will feel its
effects before many others do.

Those covering the Andhra Pradesh suicides in the early years of this decade
were often asked this question: why only Andhra? Something is wrong with
people there. Among those asking were many from Maharashtra. They were quite
sure this could never happen in their State.

Farm suicides have been on for a while in the cotton-growing West African
nations, too. As they have in many other parts of the world with farmers
into other crops as well. (They occurred in the United States, too, during
the Great Depression. And again, as corporate farming snuffed out small
holder agriculture in the last quarter of the 20th century.)

But this way of posing it - why Vidarbha? - allows us to spring the next
argument. The problem is not distress or debt. The problem is with the
'psyche' of the Vidarbha farmer. Note that this 'psyche' has nothing to do
with the lived experience of the peasant. It's about the wiring inside his
brain. Having thus derived an 'answer' verging on the racist, we can leave
the status quo as it is. Counsel the poor things. They need shrinks. Also,
it becomes clear - to those of this view - that the factors are 'social'
rather than economic. If we can cut down the 'social evils' like drinking
alcohol, things would be okay.

This might even be funny if it weren't so tragically obtuse. For one thing,
if liquor is the main cause of farm suicides, there would be little left of
the Indian peasantry. Indeed, Vidarbha would have more survivors. The
Warkari sect - firm abstainers - have a large following here. Yet this group
too has been hit by suicides. Further, why then are there more such deaths
in Vidarbha than in Tamilnadu? Liquor is better entrenched in the rural
regions of the latter. It also raises the question why alcohol leads rich
kids in Mumbai to rape and murder, but leads poor farmers in Vidarbha to
suicide.

Sure alcohol can be a factor in some of the deaths. There have been
instances of farmers who got drunk, fought with their wives, and took their
lives. These have mostly come after financial collapse, crushing levels of
debt, and humiliation at the hands of creditors. Interestingly, an
investigation by the newspaper *Sakaal* suggests that the number of suicide
victims who had an alcohol problem is quite minor. Normally, the drunkenness
argument comes up in the second or third year of a crisis, when denial is
still an option. That's how it happened in Andhra. That it should come up so
late in Vidarbha's crisis speaks of at least two things. A bankrupt elite
scraping the barrel for excuses. And their inept yes-men in the media,
ignorant of a larger canvas or history to the issue.

*Contempt for ordinary folk*

"They did it for the handouts." That's another jibe that reeks of contempt
for ordinary folk. It tells us more about the people asserting this than
about those taking their lives. The notion is that people destroy their
families forever in order to get a 'compensation' of Rs.1 lakh. This reduces
the victim to some kind of crazed beast. Yawn. It's all been said before. In
1998, using precisely this claim, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu
Naidu scrapped compensation for suicide-hit families. Fact: the suicides
shot up and were at their highest in the years 1998-2004 when there was no
compensation at all.

Then there are the ideologically insane. The members of the sect have no
interest in either farmers or agriculture. Only in upholding their Gospel.
For them, farmers are dying because they have not been reached by free
market reforms. If more of them keep dying after they are reached, it's
because the "reforms have not gone far enough." It hangs a halo of
righteousness around wanton ignorance.

The same 'commitment' also leads to a spirited defence of large corporations
wreaking havoc in agriculture. The stout defence of technologies about which
the defender knows nothing. Some of this is, of course, ideological. Some of
it is also self-serving. Corporations involved in agriculture have organised
foreign freebies for their ideological advocates. At this moment, major
efforts are under way to co-opt journalists in affected regions. Yet, we can
be proud that the vast majority have rejected such blandishments. So many of
Vidarbha's journalists - and activists - remain a scourge of the
establishment.

Meanwhile, every other study ends up calling for 'counselling' of the
Vidarbha farmers. Calls upon them to change their system of cultivation.
Sure there's some reality in this. (The agriculture extension system - which
should indeed 'counsel' farmers - has collapsed nationwide.) But why not
counsel governments on their policies? Or call for a change in the
socio-economic system that drives people to such lengths? The onus of
changing is on the farmer. Not on those driving a cruel process and system.

Attempts to 'counsel' them in those terms have been on for years. Andhra
Pradesh tried it in 2003. Teams of psychologists, revenue officials and
doctors went out to Vidarbha's villages from as early as 2004. To counsel
the poor, disturbed souls. In one village, an old farmer greatly embarrassed
such a team: "You've given us fine advice on so many things. On coping with
stress, curbing our drinking, not fighting with our wives and so on. And
you've asked us so many good questions, too. Now ask us one more. Ask us why
farmers, who produce the nation's food, are starving. Ask us why the
children of those who grow your food, are starving." The team remained
silent.

Some of the learned - and well-meaning - team members had been to great
medical colleges. And one of the first principles they learned there is
sound. "What the mind does not know, the eye cannot observe." Very true. But
the old farmer was posing a larger point before society as a whole, not just
to the doctors. What the heart does not feel, the eye can never see. *⊕*

 *P Sainath* <http://www.indiatogether.org/opinions/psainath/>
10 Sep 2006
(*Courtesy: The Hindu*)

 * P Sainath, Rural Affairs Editor of The Hindu, 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. He recently won the Judges prize
(Newspapers category) of the Harry Chapin Media Awards for his series on the
agrarian crisis. *