42 Days, 99 Farmer Suicides...

Medha Patkar was 'arrested' because the police said she was attemptingsuicide. By that count, 435 farmers who have committed suicide in Vidarbharegion alone since June 2005, must be criminals. DA says depression and lure ofRs one lakh for the family is the reason. But what about the state whichabdicated its responsibility and left them to die in the first place? 77 farmers killed themselves in March. April,they say, is the cruelest month. The toll in the first 11 days? 22 so far, andcounting...

The Vidarbha Jan Aandolan Samiti has a weird pastime: it counts thenumber of farmers who kill themselves in that region. Past ten months’ toll:435.

Does it make sense, this counting of the dead in India’s poorest, voicelessregions? What is VJS trying to achieve? So many of them die just like flieseveryday, can we prevent their dying? Can we give them money? Can we, say,sponsor a family? Can we repay their debt? Can we talk to the bank? Can we makethe government give them money or talk to the bank?

Why then do we write about them?

I eat, because I was lucky to be not born as Jadhav’s daughter. But wouldn’tJadhav’s daughter also be entitled to relief from the Rs 1070-crore packageannounced in December by the Maharashtra government for west Vidarbha cottonfarmers? That’s one of the reasons the district administration (DA) says manyfarmers are killing themselves: Just to get the money. Rs 1,00,000/- for a humanlife. Cheap, isn’t it?

But, VJS counters, nobody there has got any money so far.

The DA also says that many farmers are killing themselves because ofdepression. Here, they could be partly right, because if I had a debthanging on me for a few years and couldn’t think of any way to repay it frommy paltry income, I too would be really depressed. Unfortunately, the DA in thesame breath vehemently denies that the deaths have anything to do with debt. Andthat is probably going a bit too far.

So what exactly is happening in Vidarbha according to the government? Birdflu? A depression epidemic? Opposition conspiracy? All of the above?

The National Sample Survey Organisation carried out a situationassessment survey, commissioned by the agriculture ministry, of farmers over2002-03. The results were brought out last year in five volumes: Indebtedness offarmer households; Access to modern technology; Some aspects of farming;Consumption expenditure of farmer households; and Income, expenditure andproductive assets.

The facts have created a stir in interested circles. Perhaps the DA doesn’tfall in those circles.

Not having the SAA micro figures for the affected districts, I’ll give heresome figures for farmers in Maharashtra, a state that also has a substantialrich farming community. The average annual cultivation income is Rs 15156, 30per cent higher than the national average of Rs 11628. The average cultivationexpenditure is Rs 10793, leaving a 40 per cent margin in the activity. But theaverage farmer’s annual consumption expenditure is Rs 32268. This is far aheadof his total income of Rs 29556, which is actually higher compared to thenational average of 25380. Is he just spending more? Surprise, the consumptionfigure is actually less than the national average of Rs 33240!

This Rs 2712 gap is much higher for farmers who are more disadvantaged bothsocially and economically as well carrying an old debt. So how have they beenfilling it up? By borrowing from banks or moneylenders, selling land, becomingmigrant labour. Post-survey, the three successive droughts and other seeds andprice-related complications in cotton haven’t helped matters. If anything,these figures will have worsened in 2005!

The SAS also finds that farming in India has become so uneconomic that 40 percent of our farmers want to get out of the stranglehold of the land. They alsodon’t get 40 per cent of the price that city consumers pay for their produce.Even close to 60 years after independence, half of rural credit is supplied bylocal moneylenders at prohibitive rates. The poverty of land and work is simplyunprecedented in the backward regions. The sheer despair that leads thesehelpless people to death can never be felt by city people, who can easily secedefrom an inefficient administration and surround themselves with private servicesand barred gates.

So what has been the government doing? The UPAgovernment has been pushing irrigation schemes in the two budgets. The currentbudget also seeks to arrange cheap loans to farmers. The government’s concernis understandable: after all, it is during the current Prime Minister’s tenureas finance minister that there was a severe cut in agriculture plan investment.A mistake that pushed bulk of the farming community towards a living hell. Infact, we should hang our head in shame that even with smaller averagelandholding, China revolutionised its agriculture while India couldn’t repeatits green revolution experience.

None of this will unfortunately be done overnight or in a couple of months.It cannot be done. So before anything else, some fire-fighting measuresare needed for the distressed areas, not just announcements of big reliefpackages, which, if I were a farmer, I‘d think was being done with an eye tothe polls. Who monitors these relief packages anyway? If the DA’s reaction isany indication, is it any wonder that such relief never reaches the rightpeople? The job at hand is so immense, so massive that it’s shocking why itwas not even started in the past 15 years of reforms.

There is definitely no time to lose if the UPA seeks to keep its human faceintact. Last month, 77 farmers committed suicide in Vidarbha, the highestmonthly toll so far. The agriculture ministry’s headcount for the country inthe last five years is a scandalous 9000! The governments had better hurry up.The toll is 22 already for the 11 days of this month. Very soon, there may notbe anybody left to help.