Vidarbha farmers suicide..

Am back to discuss the state of Indian Agriculture and this time i focus on the much debated Vidarbha farmers suicide which made the Prime Minister to intervene and direct the then Maharashtra government to take up the matter on priority. The incident also forced the then Finance Minister Chidambaram to declare a loan waiver scheme for farmers.

Again i borrow extensively from the trusted words of P Sainath, a journalist of repute on this.

It dates back to 2006 were the six districts of Vidarbha, suicides were the order of the day. Between 2005 June to 2006 June there were 600 deaths.

The Prime Minister announced that he will be touring Vidarbha and then the Maharashtra government began to act. Officials were sent to all parts. A top bureaucrat from Mumbai in Nagpur ordered that suicides 'must stop' by the month-end. How simple that sounds. And if it is, why did they not turn off the tap earlier? Some officials, ordered out into the villages, have phoned journalists to ask: "Where should we go?" Ministers' are visiting places they've never heard of or seen in years. The Prime Minister announced Rs 3750 crore relief package, and since then over 90 suicides have were reported in a single month.

Mr Sharad Pawar, it seems, is the Board of Cricket Control in India (BCCI) chief first and union agriculture minister later. In any case, cricket is more profitable than agriculture. Mr Pawar has missed cabinet meetings on agricultural issues at a time when farm sector crisis was that big but he did make the time to attend meetings on cricket at Doha and Qatar and elsewhere.

The then Chief minister Deshmukh and union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar who is from the state had not even visited a single suicide-affected family or village till they were forced to accompany the PM in June 06. That itself shows how serious the state government and state leaders perceived the situation to be, and it wasn't as if there were no reports. The media was writing about it, local politicians were bringing it up, sections of the bureaucracy knew what was happening. There was simply no response.

Take the minimum support price (MSP). This Congress-NCP came to power in October 2004 on the promise that it would restore the MSP of cotton to Rs 2700 per quintal. Then, within a year, the government drops the MSP to Rs 1700 per quintal. Just restoring it to the pre-2005 level would have saved lives this year. Then, they withdrew the advance bonus of Rs 500 per quintal which would have cost the government Rs 1100 crore a year. Its a decision which costs many a farmers lives. On top of it, the chief minister keeps saying suicides have nothing to do with prices.

Lets look at the way the government fudged suicide figures. Initially, government officials told the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) that only 141 farmers had committed suicide between 2001 and 2004, then they told the Bombay High Court that 524 had committed suicide in the four-year period, in October 2005 they told the NCF that the figure was 309 only for Yavatmal. Two months later, the government told the state assembly that 1041 farmer suicides had been recorded in the period. Then, of course, the PM was given a figure of 1600 plus in six districts, of which 574 had been recorded in the last one year, prior to his visit.

This is almost the same pattern which gets repeated in many states and Vidarbha was just the tip of the iceberg.

Every suicide has a multiplicity of causes, the farmer has been harassed for years in a row, finds himself in a debt trap where he has to take private credit to pay off earlier credit, he is not eligible for fresh bank credit because banks term him a defaulter, he owes money to the moneylender, the seed agent, the pesticide agent, a string of local sahukars from whom he has taken money for medical emergencies or weddings and so on. In such circumstances, any trigger is enough to take the extreme last step: it could a be fight with his wife, or it could be another insult from the moneylender or someone forcibly taking over his land/house for defaulting. What's completely appalling is that local officials record various silly reasons for suicides and the family doesn't become eligible for state compensation, if and when it's given. In Vidarbha, officials who had made excuses for not giving compensation last many months were running around on the eve of PM's visit to hand over the cheques, without any verification.

Many farmers who committed suicide were experienced farmers, who had been at it for years together yet saw no light at the end of the tunnel. They were not novices but had at least 15-20 years of experience of withstanding drought, inhospitable conditions. Many of them had a good elementary education, they had passed Class Xth at least.

Then, there's the new emerging sahukar in these villages. He used to be the agricultural extension officer, now he's the technical expert, he's a lender, also doubles up as agent for seed companies like Monsanto or pesticide companies. He makes money in three ways - he sells seeds and pesticides at higher rates, he charges an usurious two and a half per cent per hundred or 30 per cent per annum on credit extended to the farmer, he also claims the first right on produce and gives low prices to the farmer but sells at higher prices in the market.

Let us focus on the policies of the government. Monsanto made easy money on royalty and technology costs while the Indian farmer was killing himself over the high seed prices. The local seeds were Rs 7 a kilo in 1991, the commercial varieties cost Rs 80-100 per kilo even ten years back. Monsanto seeds cost nearly Rs 3800 a kilo, now they cost about half. Similarly, all input prices were allowed to explode…a DAP bag cost Rs 100 in 1991, it now costs between Rs 480 and Rs 500. Water and electricity costs exploded. Farmers were told that Bt seed would not attract bollworm and they would save on pesticides, but in reality they had to buy pesticides even for the Bt seed and these pesticides cost more than the usual varieties they had used. Then, governments go around depressing output prices and withdrawing advance bonus.

While the US protects its 20,000 cotton growers with subsidies of $4.7 billion in 2004-05, our governments take away support prices and bonuses. The value of crop that year in the US was $3.9 billion. The subsidies meant cheaper cotton in the international market; it destroyed cotton farmers from Vidarbha to West Africa.

Farmer suicides is a matter of shame for our country and should be a matter of top priority for our government. I fully support the loan waiver scheme for the distress farmers provided it reaches the intended beneficiaries. The FM in terms of Stimulus Package to boost sagging economy dolls out huge subsidies to corporate world and then when the same is done for farmers, many raise a great hue and cry which is deploring to say the least. If the Government doesn't pull up its socks now, from being a self sufficient country in producing food grains and cereals we will end up depending on importers for our survival.