People And Their Problems

New Delhi, 27 November 2007

Rising Farm Suicides

ACUTE AGRARIAN CRISIS

By T.D. Jagadesan

Of the 1.5 lakh Indian farmers who took their own lives between 1997 and 2005, nearly two-thirds did so in the States of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh (including Chhattisgarh).

The number of Indians committing suicide each year rose from around 96,000 in 1997 to roughly 1.14 lakh in 2005. In the same period, the number of farmers who took their own lives each year shot up dramatically. From under 14,000 in 1997 to over 17,000 in 2005. While the rise in farm suicides has been on for over a decade, there have been sharp spurts in some years. For instance, 2004 saw well over 18,200 farm suicides across India. Almost two-thirds of these were in the Big Four of “Suicide SEZ” States.

The year 1998, too, saw a huge increase over the previous year. Farm suicides crossed the 16,000 mark, beating the preceding year by nearly 2,400 such deaths. Farm suicides as a proportion of total suicides rose from 14.2 in 1997 to 15.0 in 2005.

The Annual Compound Growth Rate (ACGR) for all suicides in India over the nine-year period is 2.18 per cent. This is not very much higher than the population growth rate. But for farm suicides it is much higher, at nearly 3 (or 2.91) per cent. Powerfully, the AGGR for suicides committed by consuming pesticides was 2.5 per cent. Close to the figure for farmers.

Although alarming, it still does not capture the full picture. The data on suicides is complex, and sometimes misleading. Not just because of the flawed manner in which they are put together, or because of who puts them together. There are other problems, too. Farmers’ suicides as a percentage of the total number of farmers is hard to calculate on a yearly basis. A clear national “farm suicide rate” can be derived only for 2001. That is because we have the census to tell us how many farmers there were in the country that year. For other years, that figure would be a conjecture, however plausible.

But even in 2001, when the farm suicides had not reached their worst, the farm suicide rate (FSR) at 12.9 was much higher than the general suicide rate (GSR) at 10.6 for that year. But the GSR slowed down after that to 10.3 by 2005 even as the total number of suicides went up. It means that the increase in the number of general suicides did not keep pace with the growth in general population.                                                                                           

In 2005, the Big Four or “Suicide SEZ” States accounted for 43.9 per cent of all suicides and 64.0 per cent of all farm suicides in the country. By contract, a group of States with the highest general suicide rates --- including Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal, Tripura and Puducherry --- accounted for 20.5 per cent of farm suicides in India.

To the extent the media have covered the farm crisis, their focus has been on farm suicides in four States --- Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala. Very broadly speaking, that appears to have been right. All have very high rates of farmers’ suicides. Madhya Pradesh though is a major State showing such trends which has received scant attention.

It is important that the figure of 1.5 lakh farm suicides is a bottom line estimate. It is by no means accurate or exhaustive. There are inherent and serious inaccuracies in the NCRB data as they are based on ground data that exclude large groups of people.

The quality of reporting also varies from State to State. For instance, Haryana shows a very low ratio of farm suicides to general suicides. This conflicts with other assessments of the problem in that State. Data from Punjab have also been highly contested by groups monitoring the farm crisis there. However, even in this flawed data, the trends are clear and alarming. But what has driven the huge increase in farm suicides, particularly in the Big Four or “Suicide SEZ” States?

There exists since the mid-90s, an acute agrarian crisis. That’s across the country. In the Big Four and some other States, specific factors compound the problem. These are zones of highly diversified, commercialized agriculture. Cash crops dominate.

Water stress has been a common feature and problems with land and water have worsened as State investment in agriculture continues to decline, even disappear. At the same time, cultivation costs have shot up in these high input zones, with some inputs costing several hundred per cent more. The lack of regulation of these and other aspects of agriculture have sharpened those problems and deepened the agrarian crisis.---INFA

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