Farmer Suicides - how can we prevent them?, Farmer Suicides
Agriculture is the science and practice of producing crops and livestock from the natural resources of the earth. The primary aim of agriculture is to cause the land to produce more abundantly and at the same time to protect it from deterioration and misuse. Agriculture in India is one of the most prominent sectors in its economy. Agriculture is the largest economic sector and plays a significant role in the overall socio-economic development of India.
The monsoons play a critical role in the Indian sub-continent's agriculture in determining whether the harvest will be bountiful, average, or poor in any given year. The entire rainfall in the sub-continent is concentrated in the few monsoon months.
Agriculture in India is constitutionally the responsibility of the states rather than the central government. The central government's role is in formulating policy and providing financial resources for agriculture. The government administers prices of essential commodities to protect farmer's interests. It also administers other commodities which are produced by government-controlled companies, like petroleum, coal, nitrogenous fertilizers, etc. Other than these, most agricultural commodity markets operate under the normal forces of demand and supply.
The Indian peasantry, the largest surviving body of small farmers in the world, is currently facing an epidemic of suicide. For thousands of years farmers have depended on the Earth to sustain their families. Now, in the twenty-first century, their livelihood, prosperity, and the well-being of their families for generations to come are being threatened by globalization and the shift in the linkage of agriculture from the Earth to a few profit-driven multinational corporations.
In 1997 India experienced its first bout of farmers suicides and since then over 25,000 farmers have taken their own lives. The crisis has stemmed from a number of hardships which have led to the irreversible indebtedness of small and marginal farmers from even the most historically productive regions of the country. 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. Most of these factors can be attributed to corporate globalisation and unjust free trade policies implemented by the World Trade Organisation.
In 1998, the World Bank’s structural adjustment policies forced India to open its seed sector to global agribusinesses such as Monsanto, Cargill, and Syn genta. As a result of this adjustment, traditional farm saved seeds have been replaced with genetically engineered seeds which are non-renewable, thus requiring repurchase for each growing season. What was once a self-renewing resource and gift from the Earth has now become a corporate commodity and a costly investment which farmers must make every 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.
Along with social maladies, the planting of GM seeds poses a significant threat to India’s biodiversity and will throw off the balance of its agro-ecosystems. While each farming region once grew a variety of seeds, many are now limited to the production of crop monocultures. This will lead to the extinction of millions of plant species which will, in turn, increase risks of crop failure. 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. These price cuts cannot be attributed to increased productivity but, rather, are a function of increased subsidies and increased monopolization of global seed markets by just a few multinational corporations. For example, when US farmers are given subsidies by the US government, commodity prices are lowered artificially. The South’s small farmers cannot compete with the rock bottom prices of imported produce. The spate of suicides in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Karnataka and Maharashtra, coupled with the declining share of agriculture in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and increasing burden on the agrarian system belies the lofty, almost ideal, claims put forth in the National Policy on Agriculture. These suicides point to a greater crisis in the agrarian system as a whole where the suicide is a symptom of a greater malaise that threatens millions of farmers and the landless agricultural labourers in the sub-continent. We need to go the roots of that very crisis in order to arrive at a causation that can explain the suicides.
A very beneficial biproduct of efforts to aid farmers will be the renewal of the land’s biodiversity. This renewal is crucial because if ecosystems lack natural infrastructures we will soon find ourselves at a resource deficit. Methods of organic farming and integrated pest management should be introduced to eliminate dependency on commodities such as chemical fertilisers, pesticides, and GM seeds. Organic farming methods will also serve to eliminate emerging monocultures and promote strong, diverse agro-ecosystems.
Most importantly, agriculture must return to a “farmers first” policy rather than its current bias towards corporations. It is only when this ideal is achieved that farmers will regain control of their own lives: financially and mentally. Globalisation, WTO trade policies, and domestic negligence have had a devastating effect on India’s farmers. While nature’s unpredictability has been additionally detrimental to the welfare of farmers in some regions, these are challenges that farmers have been able to use their prowess to overcome in the past. GM crops have converted a once innovative and knowledgeable community into a community that can no longer work with the earth which they know, but is dependent on costly, unnatural inputs with which they are unfamiliar. It is possible for the government to modify its policies in order to conserve the legacy of India’s farmers and put a stop to farmers suicides.
Many states currently offer financial relief packages only to the families of deceased farmers who were unable to manage payments on their bank loans. However, it remains that loans taken from private moneylenders are the most difficult for farmers to pay. Since this is the case, over half of the victims’ families who need these relief packages do not qualify for receipt by government standards. The reality of the families’ situations must be examined more closely and compensation should be given accordingly.
While some states have attempted to ban exorbitant interest rates implemented by private moneylenders, their effectiveness has been questionable. Usury will continue as long as farmers continue to depend on private loans where there are no written agreements regarding interest ceilings. Farmers must be provided with substantial institutional credit and given an alternative in order to extinguish their tendency to fall prey to the convenience of private moneylenders.
In addition, a Crop Insurance Scheme must be carefully implemented so that farmers who are affected by crop failure will be relieved of the subsequent financial burden. Specific attention must be given to cover the lost profits of cash crops such as cotton, sugarcane, and edible oils.
After weighing the pros and cons i can come to a conclusion that
A) An immediate (adequate) compensation be offered, on a priority basis, to the families of the victims. In order to do that, a committee comprising eminent persons / representatives from institutions / activists and voluntary organisations be set up under the aegis of the Court, which should have a high-level government nominee. The committee should recommend the form and the content of the relief to the Court to consider.
B) The Central Government should immediately announce the setting up of a commission with statutory powers that takes decisions on issues such as genetic modification technology and its impact on Indian agriculture, agriculture pricing policy and cropping pattern. The commission should also look into the issue of integrating the irrigation schemes in terms of surface and groundwater and integrate the line departments in order that the schemes are implemented efficiently. Nobody can do everything, but everyone can do something. so please help farmers to face such adverse scenario.
DR.RAHUL KUMAR SHARMA
