Who is Responsible for Farmers Suicide?

Vidyanand Acharya

On 15^th August 2006, when the Prime Minister of India Dr. Manmohan Singh was addressing the nation and highlighting the farmers problems from the parapet of the red fort, at the same time a debt ridden cotton farmer of Vidarbha ended their life by consuming the pesticides available in his house. He was not in position to repay the bank loan he had taken for his cotton farming. At the Red Fort august gathering was happily clapping on the lofty announcement by the Prime Minister and on the other hand relatives of the deceased were mourning the sudden demise of their family member.

Manohar Kelkar was the name of one of the thousands of farmers those who opted suicides as the only option available to their gigantic problems. Unfortunately, the suicide by Manohar didn’t solve the problems as the widow and children. Manohar was under severe debt at the time of suicide and at present there is no one to look after the family members and their children. In reality, the farmer’s suicide in Vidarbha has become a routine event. In Vidarbha, farmers in every eight-hour have committed suicide either by consuming pesticides or poison or hanged themselves. The Vidarbha story of farmers suicide is gruesome but almost similar trends of farmers’ suicide is also spreading in other parts of the country. Suicide counts of farmers of Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Karnataka etc are on the rise.

Countless suicides

In Vidarbha alone, the farmers suicides between June 2006 to June 2007 reached to more than 755. In last one fortnight more than 15 farmers committed suicide due to unbearable burden of agri-debt. But the government authorities including Chief Minister Vilas Rao Deshmukh denied accepting the figures of farmers suicide a real one. It is to be noted that the Union Agriculture Minister, Shri Sharad Pawar in a written reply to the question raised by a parliamentarian, had accepted that 137,621 farmers till date have committed suicide across the nation. But in public meeting agriculture minister use to cite the data of cricket scores made by India and not the farmer suicide. He has no pain for the farmers suicide in India for once he quoted in a press conference that the percentage of farmers suicide in India is very low with respect to total suicides in India. Mumbai based renowned research center, Tata Institue of Social Science (TISS), in its report has accepted the suicide by farmers at alarming high.

Start of the tragedy

The early nineties witnessed the first farmer suicide in India. The first occurrences of the farmers’ suicide was reported from Maharastra and later on similar news were reported from other states also like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Punjab. This indicated that not only the cotton farmers but farmers producing other crops, irrespective of their holding size, committed suicide after new economic policies adopted in India. The new economic policies adopted in late eighties and early nineties seriously affected the life style of the common man. The farmers also trapped in the new style of farming abandoning the traditional one. As a result the agriculture became the negative economy for the farmers. The unexpected increase in the costs of production and falling prices of farm commodities compelled the farmers to either give up the peasantry or commit suicides.

The epidemic of farmers' suicide is the real barometer of the stress under which Indian agriculture and Indian farmers have been put by globalization and liberalization of agriculture. The spread of capital-intensive agriculture and indebtedness became inevitable outcome of the corporate model of industrial agriculture.

Under new market and export oriented corporate agriculture regime the seed sector was forced to open up for the multinationals seed companies like Monsanto, Cargill and Syngenta. These global corporations changed the India’s agricultural input economy overnight. Domestic seed industries saved by farmers were replaced by corporate seeds, which needed more water, fertilizers and pesticides. Thus farming was not possible without taking loans from either the banks or local money lenders at increased rate of interest.

Relief package failure

In June 2006, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Vidarbha and announced a financial relief package worth Rs 3,750 crores to the farmers of vidarbha. The moment money came to Vidarbha/ Maharastra administration, manipulation and corruption to relief money started by groups of vested interest. The main players who diverted the money to the cooperatives of Maharastra were the leaders of ruling Congress and NCP alliance. Kishor Tiwari, leader of Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti, a social movemnt spearheading the farmers’ movement in Vidarbha for last a decade and more, accused the state government for gross failure in relief distribution. Tiwari said that relief package of Prime Minister failed to address the real problem of suicide monger farmers of vidarbha that is credit and cost. Cooperatives and banks are the real gainer of the relief package, said Kishor Tiwari.

Out of 3,750 crore, 710 crore were given to the banks as interest waiver that has drastically reduced the NPA of Banks. In return banks released Rs 840 crore as crop loan to the cotton farmers. How ever NABARD failed to increase the crop loan. The data produced by the banks shows that for current financial year only two lacs farmers have given fresh loan as against eight lakh last year. Similarly, Rs. 2460 crore was sanctioned for major and minor irrigation projects out of which only 231 crore was released on paper. This resulted in no significant change in irrigation areas in comparison to last year in the affected area. The amount sanctioned to organic style of farming was totally ignored by the state administration.

Kishor Tiwari revealed another interesting story of corruption involved in the relief package. He said that in every district a committee was constituted to identify the farmers who committed suicides. District Magistrate headed the committee along with two farmers representatives. Paradoxically in each committee the farmers’ representative were either the leaders of Congress Party or the Nationalistic Congress Party. As a result out of 1200 suicides 890 cases were rejected by the district and state administration. This clearly shows that even Prime Minister office has failed to monitor the relief package given to the farmers of Vidarbha and to the other state also. (Pl. see the box)

Farmers Widows cheated

Last year Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh announced Rs one lakh of financial assistance to each widows of the farmers who committed suicide. The state and district administration were told to implement the order on war foot level. But the cheques given to the widows were of fewer amounts. In more than hundred instances the bearer cheques even bounced back. The Prime Minister press secretary in press conference at delhi denied the facts of ceque bounce but Raksesh Tiwari of VJAS said that Prime Minister office is not aware of the reality of the Vidarbha farmers. One such affected women is Vandana Anil Shende from Yavatmal, the widow of Anil Shende who committed suicides. She was given a bearer cheque of Rs. 10,000 only by the district administration against a lakh announced by Prime Minister. She deposited this cheque in her account and after few days she was told that her cheque had bounced. The issue came into lime light. People like Kishore Tiwari raised this issue as betrayal to the farmers’ widow by Prime Minister. Only after honourable state high court intervention the issues were sorted out.

Who is responsible?

More and more affected farmers are directly blaming state policy - not drought or floods - for their misery. Some confront the Government in tragic ways. Some of the suicide notes of farmers are talking directly to Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and even to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

"Don't blame my family members for my action, I will never forgive anybody who does." Suicide note of young Kuchankar reveals. And in one poignant sentence, addresses the 19-year-old girl he had wed just six months ago: "Pratibha, I am sorry. Please get remarried." He blames the procurement price for cotton as the source of farmers' distress. "We are fed up with the delay in procurement and crashing prices. This will further aggravate the situation."

His message to Mr. Deshmukh: "Mr. Chief Minister give us the price." And to Home Minister R.R. Patil "if you do not give us a price of Rs.3,000 per quintal, suicides will surge." Kuchankar wrote: "The cotton price has fallen to Rs.1,990 a quintal. We cannot manage with that. Which is why I am giving up my life." The suicide note is a bunch of anguished scribbles across a sheet of paper.

The suicide note of cotton grower Ramakrishna Lonkar in Wardha district wrote, "After the Prime Minister's visit and announcements of a fresh crop loan, I thought I could live again, but, he concluded, he found nothing had changed on the credit front or on other policies.

It is shame on the system when the name of chief Minister, Prime Minister appears responsible for the suicide of the farmers in their suicide notes. This is clear indication of the systemic failure of the regime.

Table-1

Chronological account of farmers suicide

Month Farm suicides District Farm suicides

July-2006 90 Yavatmal 283

August -2006 111 Amarawati

180

September-2006 124 Akola 131

October-2006 112 Washim 151

November-2006 107 Buldhana 145

December-2006 105 Wardha 104

January-2007 70 Nagpur 27

February-2007 86 Bhandara 32

March-2007 82 Chandrapur 41

April-2007 90 Gadhchiroli 12

May-2007 79 Gondia 14

June-2007 64

Total- 1120 Total 1120

Source-VJAS blog

Box-1

PM’s panel finds fault with his package on farm suicides

Over a year after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced a Rs 17,000-crore package for alleviating the agrarian crisis in 31 districts hit by farmer suicides — in Vidarbha, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala — the expert group he set up on rural indebtedness has criticised the implementation of the PM’s package calling for “urgent corrections.”

The key findings of the report, authored by the task force headed by Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research director R Radhakrishna:

• No coordination between different agencies implementing the schemes: Credit component being managed by Finance, watershed and rainwater initiatives by NABARD, irrigation by Water Resources Ministry, extension services, seeds by Department of Agriculture, livestock by Departments of Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries. Each ministry’s working in isolation.

• No information available on impact of the scheme on people. Need to fix physical targets and introduce monitoring and mid-term evaluation.

• The package (to be implemented until 2008-09) is “universal” in nature not taking into account the fact that causes of distress differ across districts. For instance, in some it’s crop failure; in others, it’s price collapse.

• On extension services, Karnataka’s performance poor. Extension services have a pivotal role in distress but are not the priority when it comes to budgeting.

• On financial targets, most states fall far short. On waiver of interest, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra exceeded targets but Kerala achieved only 54% of the target. On loan rescheduling, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra exceeded targets but Kerala achieved only 43%. Again, on fresh loan disbursements, Kerala and Maharashtra exceeded targets but the other two states could only meet two-thirds of their targets.

• Gap in off-take of fresh credit indicates credit needs of farmers not assessed accurately. Credit flow targets do not appear to have been based on a proper assessment of the credit absorption capacity at the farm/household level. Disbursements should have been made only after proper project appraisal.

• Progress on watershed development extremely poor in all the states. Even Maharashtra, which had in place a shelf of sanctioned projects, could utilise only 12% of its financial allocation of Rs 54 crore in the year. Kerala falls under high rainfall area and no watershed projects are being implemented.

• Rainwater harvesting, construction of check dams non-starters in most districts. NABARD yet to receive proposals from any of the states for check dams.

• Major irrigation schemes delayed because of red tape and slew of sanctions.