Farmer Suicides – how can we prevent them?
Agriculture has always been celebrated as the primary sector in India. India is an agrarian economy, which means, Agriculture is the pre-dominant sector of the Indian economy. True to this, even to this day, inspite of the Indian economy opening out to the world and globalization, close to 70% of the population still depends on agriculture for its livelihood. The secondary and tertiary sectors in India are growing at rapid rates, still a vast majority of Indians continue to depend on agriculture. Every plan for the growth of the Indian economy aims at agricultural development, which is justified because to achieve the growth rates that the economy aims at, it is important to first address the growth rate of the major sector of the economy. Since the first Five year plan, India's focus has been on agriculture and after 50 years of Five year plans, where does Indian agriculture stand?
Thanks to the Green Revolution, India is now self-sufficient in food production, gone are the days when India had to import even food grains for daily consumption. Indian agriculture has been making technological advancement as well. Today, a visit to the villages will reveal that more and more farmers are adopting mechanization for their farming, there is an overall improvement in the agricultural trends in India.
Does that mean everything is looking bright for Indian agriculture? A superficial analysis of the above points would tempt one to say yes, but the truth is far from it. Behind all the growth and development lies the reality that Indian farmers have to face - extreme poverty and financial crisis driving them to suicides. The year 1997 saw the first few cases of farmers committing suicides, these cases steadily increased over the next decade, peaking in 2001 and reports say that as many as 6000 farmers committed suicide in the last 5 years in the state of Andhra Pradesh alone. The worst cases of farmers committing suicides come from the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra. What are the grave adversities that drive the farmers to commit suicide, at a time when Indian economy is supposed to be gearing up to take on the world?
To understand this, one must analyse the agricultural set up in India. Indian agriculture is predominantly dependant on nature. Irrigation facilities that are currently available, do not cover the entire cultivable land. Any failure of nature, directly affects the fortunes of the farmers. Secondly, Indian agriculture is largely an unorganized sector, there is no systematic planning in cultivation, farmers work on lands of uneconomical sizes, institutional finances are not available and minimum purchase prices of the government do not in reality reach the poorest farmer. Added to this, the cost of agricultural inputs have been steadily rising over the years, farmers' margins of profits have been narrowing because the price rise in inputs is not complemented by an increase in the purchase price of the agricultural produce. Even today, in several parts of the country, agriculture is a seasonal occupation. In many districts, farmers get only one crop per year and for the remaining part of the year, they find it difficult to make both ends meet.
India has witnessed a spate of droughts over the last decade. The worst affected being the farmers of Rayalaseema districts in Andhra Pradesh, it is the cotton farmers in the state of Maharashtra. Nature has repeatedly failed the farmers of these states and owing to lack of facilities to save their crops, these farmers have no means to face the adversities of crop failures. If the farmers are at the mercy of monsoons for timely water for their crops, they are at the mercy of the government for alternative irrigation facilities. The Government cannot be trusted to always act in the interest of the farmers.
The farmers normally resort to borrowing from money lenders, in the absence of institutionalized finance. Where institutional finance is available, the ordinary farmer does not have a chance of availing it because of the "procedures" involved in disbursing the finance. The institutional finance, where available is mostly availed by the medium or large land owners, the small farmers do not even have the awareness of the existence of such facilities. The money lender is the only source of finance to the farmers. Should the crops fail, the farmers fall into a debt trap and crop failures piled up over the years give them no other option other than ending their lives. The input - output ratio, in terms of money invested in agriculture is very meager, primarily because of raising cost of inputs and insufficient support prices from the government.
Agriculture works out profitably where the size of the land is medium to large to benefit from the economies of large scale production. The fact is that majority of the farmers in India own as little as 2 acres of land, cultivation on such small sized lands is not feasible, in many cases, the farmers are not even the owners of the land, which makes profitable cultivation impossible because a significant portion of the earnings go towards the payment of lease for the land. At times, even the middle to large land owners are faced with the difficulties of the vast majority of farmers, however, they are able to atleast realize their investment for each crop.
Repeated crop failures, debt hassles, lack of alternative sources of income, absence of institutional finance have left the farmers with no other solution other than ending their lives. Another disturbing trend has been observed where farmers commit suicide in order to avail relief and benefits announced by the government to support the families of the farmers who have died. This is true in the case of several farmers in Andhra Pradesh who committed suicide so that their families could atleast benefit from the Government's relief programmes.
What then needs to be done to prevent this sad state of affairs? There cannot be one single solution to end the woes of farmers. Giving monetary relief is not an effective solution. The solutions should aim at the entire structure of agriculture. Here are some solutions that could help in improving the state of the farmers:
1. The dependency of agriculture on nature should be reduced. This calls for effective management of water during seasons of good monsoons. Prevention of crop failure should be the primary aim of the Government. In most cases, it is not the lack of water but the lack of proper management on the government's part that causes water shortage. A simple example for this is the recent case of the farmers in the Penna delta of Nellore District of Andhra Pradesh. Inspite of the availability of ample water for a second crop, the Government decided against permitting the second crop, in view of proposed repairs and upgradation to the reservoirs. The proposal would result in draining of precious water into the sea which could be used to the benefit of the farmers. It was only after several agitations by the farmers' organizations that the Government relented and allowed the second crop. Water management should be made more effective through inter- state co-operation on water resources, where surplus water from perennial rivers can be diverted to those regions facing drought, as it is always seen in India, where in state there is severe drought, another state has to face worst floods, such regional imbalances can be managed by effective utilization of water resources throughout the country.
2. Making institutional finance available to every farmer is another important solution to save to the farmers from debt traps of money lenders. Where institutional finance is available, it should be made easily accessible to the poorest farmers. This calls for removing of elaborate formalities and procedures for obtaining the loans. A poor farmer would be unable to understand the complexities of procedures, he needs a simple solution for his financial needs. Effective monitoring of the disbursed funds is also required because in many cases, the poor farmer is used as a front-end while in fact the benefit of the loan is availed by a bigger land owner. In addition, monitoring is also needed to ensure that the farmers are using the funds for the right purposes.
3. Farmers need to be advised and guided on economical methods of cultivation which would save finances for them. The technological advancement in agriculture should be passed down to the small farmers. Where the existing crops would not do well under current drought and weather conditions, the farmers could be helped to shift to the cultivation of crops that would be easy and economical to cultivate in adverse conditions. Agriculture should be approached professionally and not as a traditional occupation.
4. The government could also explore the possibility of pooling of the lands of small farmers and making a bigger chunk of economically cultivable land. Through pooling of lands, the small farmers can avail the economies of cultivating on a larger scale.
5. Small farmers should be encouraged to develop alternative sources of income and the government should take up the responsibility of providing training to the farmers to acquire new skills. In drought affected areas, the Government could start alternative employment generation programmes to reduce the dependency on agriculture as the sole source of income.
6. Provision of relief facilities alone is not sufficient as it has been observed in the case of Andhra Pradesh where farmers committed suicides just to avail the benefits of relief packages. Relief packages should be given as a benefit to farmers to enable them to sustain their livelihood rather than as a relief to families of farmers who commit suicide.
As has been mentioned earlier, there cannot be one single and most effective solution to prevent the suicides of farmers. The trend can be reversed through active participation of the Government in addressing the real issues of the farmers that are driving them to suicides. Social responsibility also goes a long way to help the farmers. The big land owners in most places do not lend a helping hand to struggling farmers, in most cases, they grab the benefits which are otherwise meant for the poor farmers. General public, NGOs, Corporates and other organisations too can play a part in helping farmers by adopting drought affected villages and families and helping them to rehabilitate.
The solution to the farmer's plight should be directed towards enabling the farmers to help themselves and sustain on their own. Temporary measures through monetary relief would not be the solution. The efforts should be targeted at improving the entire structure of the small farmers wherein the relief is not given on a drought to drought basis, rather they are taught to overcome their difficulties through their own skills and capabilities. The Government needs to come up with pro-active solutions and the nation has to realize that farmers' suicides are not minor issues happening in remote parts of a few states, it is a reflection of the true state of the basis of our economy.
"Give a man a fish, he will eat for a day but teach him how to fish, he will eat for the rest of his life", so goes the popular saying, the case of our Indian farmers is similar to this, what they need is a means to sustain throughout their lives without having the face the desperation that adversity drives them to. If India has to shine, it is these farmers that need to be empowered.
- Harichandana Devalla
