People & Their Problems

New Delhi, 31 March, 2017

India’s Suicidal Farmers

TREAT MENTAL ABERRATIONS

By Moin Qazi

How many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died? The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind; The answer is blowin' in the wind.--Bob Dylan, Nobel Laureate

India’s economy may be soaring, but agriculture remains its Achilles’ heel, the source of livelihood for hundreds of millions of people but a fraction of the nation’s total economy and a symbol of its abiding difficulties. Farmer suicides are a wrenching affliction that is as tragic as it is complex and is a serious threat to India’s most critical economic sector.

A latest report has very distressing news on the farm front. Despite satisfactory rainfall last monsoon, Maharashtra, India’s most populous State, registered a paltry fall of 5% in farmer suicides to 3,063 in 2016 from 3,228 in 2015. Shockingly, the number of suicides in the last six months after the 2016 monsoon set in was as high as in 2014 and 2015 for the same period.

Farmer suicides rose by 42% between 2014 and 2015, according to “Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India 2015” a report released this January by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). It recorded 5,650 suicides by farmers and cultivators in 2014. The figure rose to 8,007 in the latest data. In the fluid world of statistics, numbers may not always tell a true story. But it does show us where rural India is headed as a society.

 
Currently, the Government does little more than grant compensation to the families of farmers who take their lives, which many consider an incentive. The cash compensation does help them tide over the immediate problem of feeding the family. But there is politics here also. The compensation can be denied if ownership of the land is disputed or if the death is not judged to be linked to indebtedness or the farm crisis.

There is both political apathy and bureaucratic hurdles. From the post-mortem report to affidavits from panchayat clearances and papers from banks, the process is painful and the families are subjected to a literal forensic scrutiny by the bureaucracy, many better off families do not report suicides because of the social reputational hazards attached to these.

For many bereaved families, receiving compensation remains out of bounds. The agricultural department does not accept all suicides as compensation worthy. Its officials say: “If a farmer is unable to clear loans taken for agriculture from authorised banks or financiers, it is considered a farmer suicide by the Government. Loans taken for other purposes, or even agricultural loans taken from unauthorised financial institutions, are not accepted as causing farmer suicides.” After receiving the money, a widow often has to fend off claims from her husband’s family and creditors. Widows forced to repay loans can be caught in a vicious cycle of debt bondage.

The roots of despair have been well researched and documented. They are a toxic blend of: livelihoods drained away by spiraling debt and  predatory moneylenders; soil tired on account of heavy doses of chemical fertilizer, crops and livestock destroyed by drought or unseasonable monsoon rains associated with climate change; plummeting water tables from relentless water mining; loss of agricultural land to development; collapse in cotton prices and growing expenses on genetic-engineered hybrid seeds; total breakdown of agricultural extension support and  near absence of rural mental health services.

Farmer suicides are simply a reflection or a symptom of how fragile the farm economy is. Even a small aberration in weather – unseasonal rains, high winds, dry weather and drought – multiplies the risk factor for farmers, taking it to unmanageable levels. Livelihood security for any farming family, therefore, hangs by a slender thread. The suicide rate for farmers is 48 per cent higher than any other profession.

The abysmal state of mental health care in the country makes matters worse. Most government-run hospitals do not have psychiatric drugs, and visiting a private shrink and sustaining the treatment -- usually a long drawn out affair -- is an expensive proposition for most families. The ignorance and callous attitude towards psychiatric ailments, coupled with social stigma, dissuades most from seeking help. Counseling centres are purely urban phenomena.

There may be some light at the bottom of this abyss, as a grass-root community mental health programme, called Vishram or the Vidarbha Stress and Health Programme, has been engaged in therapeutic counseling of the distressed farmers, which has definitely improved the mental health profile of the farm community. Launched a few years ago, it is designed to establish a sustainable rural mental health programme to address mental health issues in rural India and mental aberrations that abet suicides like alcohol abuse and depression in the agrarian community.

According to an evaluation of the intensive 18-month programme, the prevalence of depression has reduced by 22% in a year, while suicidal tendencies have reduced by nearly 51%.

The programme, implemented with the assistance of an NGO called Prakriti, deploys health workers from within the community, some with no background in mental health. These workers were trained to raise mental health awareness and provide “psychological first-aid”. The programme also included counselors who imparted mental health literacy. The third line of workers consisted of expert psychiatrists, who are qualified to provide medications for more serious mental health disorders.

Dr Vikram Patel, a psychiatrist and professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine is the man behind this programme and wants suicide to be seen as a public health issue. “In India we haven’t done good research on farmers’ suicides and in terms of mental health, this has always been seen as a social issue. But if you look around the world at least 50% of farmers, and adults who kill themselves would have had a depressive disorder or an alcohol use disorder, these two being the main mental health conditions,” he says.

Frontline workers interacted directly with the agrarian population, talking about the “tension” they were experiencing and by raising awareness about the stress episodes they were undergoing and ways to cope with these. For many farmers, sharing and ventilating their toxic thoughts was   cathartic. Since they are drawn from the same community, the healthcare workers are familiar with the environment and therefore better able to empathise with these farmers. They combine their new cognitive skills with traditional wisdom for working out strategies to strengthen the resilience mechanism of these farmers.

Another significant impact of the programme was a six-fold increase in the ratio of people seeking mental care. The proportion of those with depression who sought help rose from a mere 4.2% to 27.2%. This in itself highlights the success of the programme in spreading awareness and raising mental health literacy.  

India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru said in 1947: “Everything can wait, but not agriculture.” But what India is witnessing is exactly the reverse. All the paths of Indian economy are surging ahead. Agriculture is the solitary one that is beating a path back in retreat.

Within this self-perpetuating cycle of misery and no apparent exit door, wrapping a noose around the neck are all-too-friendly exits for men. While their deaths might bring personal escape, these men leave behind crippling emotional, financial and physical burdens, inherited by those left to farm the dust: the women who did not die. ---INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)