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India shines in deathly light: 2
lakh farm suicides due to indebtedness
WSN Bureau
 In times of much
hype about high growth rates in
India
and claims about the country escaping the recession, here comes the
bitter truth: most sections of the population remained outside the
footprint of where growth happened. Worse, the farm sector saw more
than 2 lakh suicides since 1997.
The National
Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has now come up data that shows there
were at least 16,196 farmers’ suicides in
India
in 2008, bringing the total since 1997 to 199,132.
One of India's
most consentious journalists, P Sainath, who has tracked the crisis
in agriculture, the rank poverty and the strange dichotomy between a
glittering India and impoverished masses, has once again underlined
the problem.
The share of the
Big 5 States or ‘suicide belt’ in 2008 — Maharashtra, Andhra
Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh — remained very
high at 10,797, or 66.6 per cent of the total farm suicides in the
country. This was marginally higher than it was in 2007 (66.2 per
cent). Maharashtra remains the worst State in the nation for farm
suicides with a total of 3802. (This is just 40 short of the
combined total of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.) The all-India total
of 16,196 represents a fall of 436 from 2007. But the broad trends
of the past decade reflect no significant change. The national
average for farm suicides since 2003 stays at roughly one every 30
minutes.
Within the Big
5, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh recorded higher
numbers. The increase of 604 in these three States somewhat offset
the dip in Maharashtra (436) and Karnataka (398). But a fall in
suicide numbers in other States (for example, a decline of 412 in
Kerala and 343 in West Bengal) means that the Big 5 marginally
increased their two-thirds share of total farm suicides in 2008.
The NCRB data
now cover all States for 12 years from 1997. In the first six years
(1997-2002), the Big 5 witnessed 55,769 farmers’ suicides. From 2003
to 2008, they totalled 67,054, a rise of nearly 1900 a year on
average.
Maharashtra has
logged 41,404 farm suicides from 1997 (over a fifth of the national
total) and 44,468 from 1995, the year when this State began
recording farm data. No other State comes close. During 1997-2002,
Maharashtra saw, on average, eight farmers kill themselves daily.
The corresponding figure rose to 11 during 2003-2008. The rise was
from an average of 2,833 farm suicides a year in the first period to
an average of 4,067 in the next period.
Professor K.
Nagaraj, an economist who has worked at the Madras Institute of
Development Studies, says of the NCRB data: “There is hardly any
decline in the suicide belt, though individual States may show
variations across 12 years. If this is the state for 2008, the year
of the Rs. 70,000 crore loan waiver and multiple farm packages, then
2009, a drought year, could show very disturbing figures. The
underlying agrarian problems seem as acute as ever.”
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Punjab no
different
The situation in
Punjab has not been very different. Revenue records show that some
130 farmers committed suicide between 2000 to 2007. Grassroot
organisations put the number at 20,000 plus. A Punjab Government
survey done by PAU, Ludhiana showed that 2,890 farmers and farm
labourers in just Bathinda and Sangrur killed themselves over a
period of nine years in distress because of farming crisis of
indebtedness.
That is
approximately one suicide every day. About 87 per cent of them were
small farmers and agricultural labourers. The study was done
door-to-door.
According to the
study, in Bathinda, 773 farmers and 483 labourers, and in Sangrur,
984 farmers and 650 labourers ended their lives. Of the total
suicides, 37.89 per cent were by agriculture labourers.
About 65 per
cent of the suicides were due to indebtedness. The remaining 35 per
cent were due to “other reasons”. However, farmers’ organisations
have been opposing the argument of “other reasons”.
Worse, even
among the poor dead, there is discrimination. Suicides by labourers
have been happening for a long time, but the debate has focused on
farmers only. Nobody is paying any heed to the misery of the
landless labourers. Labourers are forced to lead a hopeless life due
to the agrarian crisis. The collapse of traditional farming and the
public distribution system had made them completely dependent on
market whims.
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27January 2010
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