MUMBAI -
In his first-ever address to the nation last week,
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh promised his
government would take steps to alleviate the sufferings
of the farming community. Singh's assurance was prompted
by a spate of suicides by farmers in various states.
Typically shy in such matters, the government is
not forthcoming on the exact number of farmers who have
lost their lives in this manner. But media reports and
estimates by non-government organizations (NGOs) put the
number at around 3,500 over the past one-and-a-half
years. In Andhra Pradesh, the worst-affected state, a
rising death toll led to a chief minister losing his
chair. In neighboring Kerala, the National Human Rights
Commission asked the state government for a complete
dossier on the deaths, and suicides by farmers have been
reported from even the progressive agricultural regions
of Karnataka.
The three aforementioned states
are in the southern part of the country, but the crisis
has engulfed other areas too. Farmers have taken their
lives in the prosperous northern state of Punjab, often
referred to as India's granary. In Uttar Pradesh, it has
been sugarcane farmers; in Maharashtra, cotton growers.
Suicides have also been reported from the eastern states
of Orissa and West Bengal.
But the problem is
most acute in Andhra Pradesh, which ironically was being
developed as a hi-tech information technology state and
had even placed a bid to acquire a Formula One race
track. In just one week beginning May 17, 42 farmers
committed suicide in the state where 70% of the
population makes a living from agriculture. Over the
next 10 days, another 55 either consumed pesticides or
hung themselves from trees in their fields. Most of
these farmers were men in the 40 to 50 age group.
The state government, led by new Chief Minister
Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, recently announced a compensation
of Rs 150,000 (US$3,271) for the family of each victim.
Reddy immediately put forth a laundry list of reasons
for the suicides: incessant floods; manipulation of
prices by traders; supply of spurious pesticides and
seeds; decline in prices of agricultural produce;
increase in the cost of agricultural inputs; successive
drought in recent years and of course, neglect of
farmers by the previous state government.
He
cleverly failed to mention the main cause: humiliation
as a result of harassment by private moneylenders. Only
a quarter of the Indian farming community turns to
organized financial institutions for credit. The
remaining majority, in order to avoid red tape and
corruption, seek help from private moneylenders who
charge sky-high interest rates of between 30 and 60%.
When the farmers fail to pay the loans back on time, the
moneylenders often resort to strong-arm tactics. There
have also been cases of the farmers' female family
members being molested.
A study conducted by
India's National Institute of Rural Development reported
that most of the suicide victims are marginal, small and
medium farmers with no staying power. It presented
actual cases of insult and disgrace meted out to them
that led to suicide. Unlike industrialists, farmers do
not have access to debt relief acts. Once they become
indebted to private money lenders they cannot approach
any public authority to declare themselves insolvent.
The report observes: "Debt trap is getting tightened
because of agrarian crisis and inaccessibility to
institutional credit."
Successive governmental
cutbacks in fertilizer and power subsidies have added to
the cost of cultivation. Liberal import policies are
also hurting the farmer. For example, in Karnataka,
factories used to buy sugarcane from the farmer at Rs
1,700 per 100 kilograms in 1991. Today, the purchase
price has dropped down to Rs 1,100 per 100 kilograms. As
if this was not enough, the farmer has also to compete
against imported sugar which is available at Rs 850 per
100 kilograms.
Social workers lay the blame on
other factors too. "[Economic] liberalization,
privatization and globalization, the three evil faces
staring at us today, have pushed us towards a suicidal
state and the worst affected are the farmers, the
country's backbone," declares Rajiv Dixit, the man
behind the Azadi Bachao Andolan (Save Independence
Movement). Modern thinkers, he says, have neglected the
agricultural sector totally and the farmers have been
left to fend for themselves. Thousands of farmers
committed suicide during the summer months only because
their various state governments failed to help them with
support for their produce when the monsoon, too, failed
them, Dixit adds.
Local factors have added to
their woes. As a result of the severe drought last year,
there is now a shortage of groundnut seeds in the states
of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and
Chattisgarh. Only 52 million kilograms of the seeds are
available when the requirement is of 58.6 million
kilograms. In West Bengal, often praised for its
agrarian reforms over the years - particularly in for
the distribution of land to landless farmers - five
government-run fertilizer-manufacturing companies have
shut down in recent months.
The farmer suicide
issue has become a hot political potato countrywide,
especially after the complete rout of the ruling Telugu
Desam Party in Andhra Pradesh's recent local elections.
Ousted chief minister Chandrababu Naidu was accused of
paying more attention to the computerization of his
state even as his farmers were giving up their lives.
But things have not improved for Reddy. In the fortnight
after he took over, 50 more farmers committed suicide.
Alarmed, the state government and several organizations
appealed to the distressed farmers not to commit
suicide. Last month, the government flagged off a rally
to create awareness among farmers about the schemes
launched to address their problems.
Reddy
himself led a rally of prominent citizens to express
support to the farming community. His government, he
promised, would pay more attention to agriculture.
Reddy, who came to power after a 1,400 kilometer-long
"mass contact program", revealed he had finalized a
program through which 7 million acres of land will be
brought under irrigation at a cost of Rs 460 billion. He
also announced the setting up of telephonic help lines
in districts where most suicides have been reported.
The Andhra Pradesh government is working out a
moratorium on farm loans. It is looking at the
possibility of giving farmers loans at the ludicrously
low rate of 3% per annum and a comprehensive crop
insurance scheme. It is setting up a department for the
development of a rain shadow area apart from planning
scientific cloud seeding.
Various other state
governments are now announcing new irrigation schemes as
well as special financial packages aimed at farmers.
Karnataka has announced a Rs 9 billion drought relief
package which includes interest waivers on cooperative
bank loans, input subsidies for seeds and planting
material, price support for select crops and the waiver
of outstanding power dues on agricultural pump sets. The
state government has also issued the Karnataka
Prohibition of Charging Exorbitant Interest Ordinance,
according to which it is illegal to charge an interest
rate above 21% in the case of an unsecured loan and 23%
in the case of a secured loan.
The central
government, too, has jumped on the bandwagon and is
expected to announce various relief measures for the
farming sector in the forthcoming national budget on
July 6. The communist parties, which support the United
Progressive Alliance government in New Delhi led by the
Congress Party, have asked for a freeze on the recovery
of all rural debt for one year to give farmers some
much-needed confidence. They also want a comprehensive
law to be enacted to free farmers from indebtedness. The
central government has already announced a major package
for farmers to increase farm credit from institutional
sources by 30% and coverage of an additional 5 million
farmers in this fiscal year.
According to Food
and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, the loss in yield
or output per hectare and farmers' suicides were
directly linked to the lack of credit. "A sizeable
section of farmers are defaulters. Avenues will be
explored to provide them credit for facilitating
purchase of better inputs," he has said. He regretted
that the economical reforms process had bypassed
agriculture and added that the government would look
into the issue of allowing freer inter-state movement of
grains.
The Reserve Bank of India, the country's
central bank, has relaxed norms governing bad loans in
the agricultural sector in a move aimed to help farmers
in distress and to increase the flow of credit. After
restructuring an old bad loan, a farmer would be
eligible for a fresh one, the central bank said. Banks
would also be encouraged to go in for one-time
settlements with small and marginal farmers who have
been declared defaulters.
At first look, all
these measures seem well-intentioned and if carried to
their logical conclusion, should definitely benefit
farmers, the constituency they are aimed at. The danger
lies in their being initiated by the political class. As
has always happened in the past, there is the fear of
fund leakages and good intentions going astray as a
result of various political parties playing the game of
one-upmanship.
Around 350 million Indians are
employed by the farm sector. Media statistics alone
cannot truly portray the tragedy that is being enacted
in farms all across the country. The present crisis did
not come overnight. Wrong central and state government
policies over the past two decades, along with little
investment in agriculture, have reduced the once-proud
Indian farmer to the status of a beggar. The panacea
lies beyond politicians merely scoring brownie points
and making capital out of a desperate situation. What is
urgently needed is for governments to take steps to
provide a genuine healing touch to a badly scarred
community.
Perhaps that touch can be provided by
Manmohan Singh himself. Finding the situation getting
out of his control, Chief Minister Reddy rushed to New
Delhi over the weekend. "The Prime Minister has agreed
to visit two districts of Andhra Pradesh early next
month," he told journalists on Sunday. "He will
personally interact with the distressed farmers." It
will be his first trip out of the national capital since
taking over as prime minister in May.
(Copyright
2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
