Agrarian crisis in India

Across the country in desperate pockets like this one, 17,107 farmers committed suicide in 2003. Changes brought on by 15 years of economic reforms have opened Indian farmers to global competition and given them access to expensive and promising biotechnology, but not necessarily opened the way to higher prices, bank loans, irrigation or insurance against pests and rain.

Most suicides have occurred in states of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala and Punjab.

In 1997 India experienced its first bout of farmers suicides and since then over 25,000 farmers have taken their own lives. India’s agriculture has turned into a negative economy due largely to three main factors: rising costs of cultivation, plummeting prices of farm commodities, and lack of credit availability for small farmers.

The first state where suicides were reported was Maharashtra which spread through Andhra Pradesh in longer time. In the beginning it was believed that most of the suicides were happening among the cotton growers, especially those from Vidarbha(in north-east Maharashtra) but the situation in several other states, including the frontline agriculture states of Punjab and Haryana, and even in the left-ruled West Bengal and Kerala were no better. While statistics may show Punjab to be India’s ‘breadbasket,’ claiming its rich soils;the reality is revealed by the increasing number of suicidal deaths among Punjabi farmers. While Punjab was intended to be the paragon of the Green Revolution success story, farmers of the region face an estimated debt of Rs 10,000 crores.

Vidarbha remains a grim statistic. One suicide in every eight hours. More than half of those who committed suicide were between 20 and 45, their most productive years.





Causes

* absence of adequate social suppport infrastructure at the level of the village and district
* uncertainty of agricultural enterprise in India
* indebtedness of farmers
* rising costs of cultivation
* plummeting prices of farm commodities
* lack of credit availability for small farmers
* relative absence of irrigation facilities
* repeated crop failures

One of the major causes of agriculture crises in India is, the World Bank’s structural adjustment policies ,in 1998, forced India to open its seed sector to global agribusiness. As a result, traditional farm saved seeds have been replaced with genetically engineered seeds which are non-renewable, thus requiring repurchase for each growing season. In most cases this has lead to poverty and severe indebtedness. In futile attempts to relieve themselves of debt, some farmers have even sold their own organs. When these attempts fail to rectify their financial situations, many farmers find no way out but to take their own lives. Combined with the pressure of high production costs, WTO free trade policies have created a drastic drop in global produce market prices. For some produce, prices have been cut in half in as little as six years. India’s farmers are losing an estimated $26 billion per year, a burden that their current state of poverty could never allow them to be.

On the other hand,the government of Karnataka, a southern state, has refused to recognise the link between economic causes (i.e. indebtedness) and farmers suicides. Thus, instead of changing agricultural policies, officials have made unhelpful recommendations suggesting that farmers boost their self-reliance and self-respect. Instead of addressing the root of the problem, the government attributes the cause of farmers suicides to peripheral problems such as adultery and alcoholism.

Remedies

* government to actually implement the various money-lending Acts that already exist to prevent the alienation of the farmers land-holding
* to make the crop Insurance Scheme more farmer friendly, with lower premia and less red-tape
* renewal of the land’s biodiversity to ensure the health of land and enable the farmer to cope with market ups and downs
* better health facilities in the locality since expenditure on health has been one of the most important financial drain in the village
* better education facilities at school level in the villages to enable better coping with a more technologically oriented agriculture
* quality checks on agricultural inputs like seeds, fertilizers and pesticides to prevent cheating of the farmer by unscrupulous suppliers of industrial inputs for agriculture
* reliable agricultural advisories for farmers on farm related practices
* better access to markets for agricultural produce to get higher rates for farm produce

Expressing concern over the rising incidents of suicides a public interest petition was filed by Sanjeev Bhatnagar, a Supreme Court advocate who is also an agricultural economist, said that over 10,000 farmers had committed suicide in the last five years, and Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala being the worst affected states.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had admitted that farmers were not given a fair price for their produce, leading to their indebtedness, even as hostile nature often added to their woes, said the petitioner.

The central and state governments were under constitutional obligation to ensure the survival of the farmers, said the petition, adding that the government's planning lacked in concern for the farmers as they were virtually left at the mercy of private moneylenders and vagaries of nature.The heavy cost of inputs and farming operations were not correctly taken into account by the government agencies while fixing a price for their produce.

The petitioner said that loans of the farmers who had committed suicide should be written off.