https://iproxy.inflibnet.ac.in:2113/journal/2022/5/commentary/farmers’-suicides-india.html

Despite the declining share of agriculture in the gross domestic product (GDP), it continues to be an important sector of the Indian economy (Arora 2013), which absorbs a signifi cant section of the nation’s workforce (Nair 2021). An alarming phenomenon since the mid-1990s is the increasing number of reported deaths amongst Indian farmers by suicide. As per the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report, the number of farmers’ suicides has registered a sharp increase during the six years (2010–16), which was three times that of the preceding decade (2000–10).Undoubtedly, the Indian government has taken various steps over the years towards this problem, but the response and relief packages have generally been ineffective, misdirected, and flawed. The antifarmer laws constrained the farmers’ scope in doing business, leasing or even selling farm products. The government continued to postpone the problem of debt relief by failing to understand the problem. The procurement prices of wheat, paddy and other agricultural produce have been much less during the National Democratic Alliance government than the price received by farmers during the United Progressive Alliance’s tenure. Agricultural policies in India have been less favourable for farmers as they are being formulated without farmers’ consultation, food policy analysts or agricultural experts. Though the Prime Minister’s Rehabilitation Package was introduced in four states during 2006, there were no clear-cut guidelines for disbursement of ex gratia besides information asymmetry among farmers about the quantum of interest waived under the package. The Agricultural Debt Waiver and Debt Relief Scheme (ADWDRS), 2008 is often considered to be an imprudent policy as it created adverse effects on the banking habits of borrowers and could not reach the real needy, small and marginal farmers. Though the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) was designed to take care of the limitations of the National Agricultural Insurance Scheme, farmers contended that it is designed to benefit the private insurance companies as premiums are compulsory with hidden clauses, implying the policies often do not payout. The poor awareness about the Soil Health Card (2015) and absence of a proper monitoring body led to a certain degree of failure of the scheme.Though the government has tried to bring technology to the farm through various initiatives and schemes post-green revolution period, the spending on research and development in agriculture remained less than 1% of GDP. The phase of demonetisation-related decline in food prices, insisting farmers to sell perishable crops at very low prices, added to the farmers’ agony. High price variability of the non-procurement crops continued to be an issue for farmers’ earning, though the government had promised 50% above A2 cost of production for all the crops in its budget (2018–19). The recent budget promised about raising the amount of agricultural credit from 15 trillion in 2020–21 to 16.5 trillion for 2021–22 (Bera 2021), however, the interest subsidy on loan in the current budget is 2% less than the budget 2020–21. Though the Atmanirbhar Bharat economic package for agriculture infrastructure was timely and appropriate initiative, getting it fully implemented will go a long way in strengthening the farm gate infrastructure. Aspiring budget 2021–22 also plans for making funds available to Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMCs) and integrating more mandis to e-National

Agricultural Market (e-NAM), however, implementation bottlenecks need to be removed before scaling up the e-NAMscheme beyond the existing e-NAMs. Though the government is concerned about rising public spending for purchas-ing grains and pulses at minimum sup-port prices (MSPs), however, past experi-ences suggest that announcements of higher MSPs have not always resulted in increases in farmer incomes as procure-ment was limited to cotton, paddy, and wheat in few selected states. Against this backdrop, the present study made an attempt to draw an interstate com-parison of farmers/cultivators2 (or sim-ply farmers hereafter) suicide in India during 2014–20 and the possible causes of suicide in India with data published by the NCRB.

Evidences and Discussion The suicidal statistics of farmers’ in India reveal that there has been an increase in the percentage share of farmers’ suicide in total suicides of the country from 4.29% to 5.99% between 2014 and 2015 with a gradual steady fall in the percentage share from 4.79% in 2016 to 3.65% in 2020 (Appendix 1, p 15). During 2014–20, though the percentage share of farmers’ suicide in the total number of suicide has declined marginally in India, the fi gures are still high. A number of socio-eco-nomic suicides-inducing factors have been emphasised in the literature. In-creased indebtedness and farming-relat-ed issues (crop failure, natural calami-ties, inability to sell crop, etc), beside family problems and illness, has possibly led to the increase in the percentage of farmers’ suicides in India between 2014 and 2015. A closer look at the overall sui-cide data also shows that the percentage of suicide following indebtedness in-creased in India during 2014–15, with a gradual oscillating fall in percentage during 2016–20 (Appendix 2, p 16). Sev-eral scholars have traced a mounting burden of debt and poverty as respon-sible for the farmer suicides (Suri 2006;Sarma 2004;Assadi 1998; Jeromi 2007; Sidhu et al 2011; Mohanty and Shroff 2004; Verma 2011).The family problems and illnesses also remained as other prominent cause of overall suicide in India, during the ref-erence period. Kuchay (2021) reported debt and crop failure continued to be the major cause of farmers’ suicide in recent years too. As per NCRB estimates, 20,638 farmers ended their lives due to the mo-tioned reason during 2018 and 2019. The increased number of suicide cases from poverty, unemployment, illness between 2019 and 2020—possibly because of the damage to agricultural crops (perishable and semi-perishable) at the farms fol-lowing prolonged national lockdown during the fi rst wave of lockdown in the wake of COVID-19 with limited access to market and transport to sell farm prod-uct—resulted in loss of farmer’s income. There was acute scarcity of farm labour-ers to help with harvesting and procure-ment of winter (rabi) season crops, espe-cially in Punjab and Haryana, following pandemic-induced national lockdown, restricting movement of labourer and their reverse migration to native places (Guha et al 2020). The Indian agricultur-al sector made satisfactory growth dur-ing 2020, owing to healthy monsoon and the continuation of agricultural activi-ties despite the lockdown following the outbreak of COVID-19. However, the pan-demic added fuel to the fi re by increasing the distress of landless farmers as they could not even fetch the benefi ts from income support schemes, Pradhan Man-tri Kisan Samman Nidhi. Amongst the Indian states, the num-ber of farmer suicide was highest (2,568 persons) in Maharashtra followed by 898 persons in Telangana, and 826 per-sons in Madhya Pradesh in 2014. Though there has been some decline in the num-ber of farmers’ suicide in Maharashtra during 2014–20, the state continued to have the largest number of reported cases with a fi gure of 2,567, followed by 1,072 and 564 persons in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh (AP), respectively, in 2020. During 2014–18, the number of farmers’ suicide cases was high in Maharashtra, Telan-gana and Karnataka with AP entering the list since 2019 only. The high farmers’ suicides in Maharashtra have been attrib-uted to cotton farming in drought-strick-en districts under unirrigated condition (Prasad 1999; Mishra 2006) pushing the farmers into a low-yield and high-debt trap (Suri 2006; Talule 2011) beside ex-ploitative interest rates charged by mon-eylenders on farm loans (Parchure and Talule 2012) with the non-institutional sources operating without any valid moneylending licence. Others have at-tributed it to an increase in the cost of cultivation, besides crop failures (Mohanty and Shroff 2004; Wadke 2018) and high price of seeds propagated by multina-tional companies (Vaidyanathan 2006). Talule (2020) reported the absence of drought mitigation mechanisms, market failure, lack of timely state intervention, and the absence of an effective procure-ment system insisted the farmer to sell at price below MSP were responsible for the farm crisis in 2014–16. There is brutal in-justice regarding categorisation of sui-cides as eligible and ineligible in Maha-rashtra, whereby the ineligible suicides are not eligible for state compensation. The initiation of lockdown by the govern-ment during the fi rst wave of COVID-19 clubbed with harvesting time of grapes in Maharashtra, posed challenges for the farmers in the state as they were compelled to sell grapes at one-fi fth of the normal price. Concluding Remarks From the preceding discussion, it can be understood that though the percentage share of farmer suicides in the total sui-cides has declined marginally in India during 2014–20, the fi gures are still high with Maharashtra continuing to have most number of reported suicide cases, among the rest of the Indian states. Other states with relatively high incidence of suicide are Telangana, Karnataka, and AP with indebtedness and crop failure continuing to be the major cause of tragedy. Though the union and state governments took various initiatives to address the issue, they were either ineffective, or misdirect-ed and fl awed in many cases.In view of the complexity and multi-dimensionality of the problem, it needs the attention of the union and state govern-ments to address the issue squarely. Revi-talisation of the rural credit market is necessary for the availability of affordable credit with proper regulation of private credit. Instead of temporary solutions like board loan waivers or relief packages

to suicide victims’ families, the way for-ward would be to glimpse on the issue from a historical perspective. Policies that increase non-farm employment op-portunities in rural areas should be ac-companied by improving water availabil-ity, thus facilitating crop diversifi cation. Of course, the success of diversifi cation will work only if the current system of pro-curement, based on the MSP, is changed in favour of new crops. Improving access to psychosocial care and treatment of poisoning cases should be priority in pub-lic health interventions. With the recent decision of the government to repeal the three farm laws, a law promising guaranteed MSP is the need of the hour. The target of doubling farmer income by 2022 is a healthy aim of the present government, but may be a Herculean task against the backdrop of continuously falling farmer’s income since 2011–12. There is a need for the revival of institutional arrangements for credit, extension, and marketing. Serious attempts are necessary for rejuvenating the agricultural sector with large investments in rural infrastructure, research and technology in the long run.