The agricultural sector is still India’s largest employer as 58 per cent rural households depend on it for their livelihood. And yet, since the early 1990s the country has seen a spate of farmers’ committing suicides, nearly 300,000 have taken their own lives until 2014. Shockingly, over 14,000 killed themselves in 2011alone, 47 per cent higher than the national average of all deaths caused by suicides.
Stories from across semi-arid rural India, be it Rajasthan, Maharashtra or Andhra Pradesh reflect a now-recurring narrative of an agrarian crisis replete with crop failure, topped by people moving out of farming due to increasing systemic vulnerability to climatic and non-climatic risks. Only farmers with irrigation infrastructure, access to wells, engines to pump water and pipes to channel it can weather dry spells.
Undeniably, there is a growing desperation in rural India which is manifesting in various ways —— from farmers suicides across the dry-lands to violence in tribal-dominated areas and sporadic riots. These incidents are symptomatic of a deeper problem: One of shrinking work options and the undermining of existing farm-based livelihoods by erosive policies and rapid natural resource degradation.
Notably, these farmers and their families are victims of India’s longstanding agrarian crisis. Compounded by economic reforms which have opened Indian agriculture to the global market leading to increased costs while reducing yields and profits for farmers, to the point of their great financial and emotional distress.
As a result, smallholder farmers are often trapped in a cycle of debt. During a bad year, money from the sale of cotton crop might not cover even the initial cost of inputs, let alone suffice in paying the usurious interest on loans or provide adequate food and necessities for the family.
Often the only way out is to take more loans and buy more inputs, which in turn leads to even greater debt. Thus, indebtedness is a major and proximate cause of farmers’ suicides.
Notably, among the serious issues faced by Indian agriculture: One, over 55 per cent are dependent on agriculture but contribute only 14 per cent to the GDP. Two, more than 80% are marginal and small farmers who have fragmented landholding and inadequate irrigation making it difficult for them to sustain farming.
Three, there is lack of institutional credit as nearly 40 per cent of all loans come from informal sources. Consequently, marginal landholding households suffer the most with only 15 per cent credit coming from institutional sources like Government, cooperatives and banks. For households with over 10 hectares land the ratio is 79 per cent.
Last, there is uncertainty about output which is due to weather and lack of market linkages, appropriate application of fertilisers, agrochemicals etc. Moreover, World Bank data shows that only 35 per cent of agricultural land is irrigated, thus over huge 65 per cent farming depends on rain, on which the Government has no control.
Besides, small and marginal farmers also do not have access to institutional credit as most depend on village moneylenders who provide crop loans and pre-harvest consumption loans. The superior bargaining power of these traders and middlemen means that prices received by farmers are low.
Alongside, higher farm labour input prices, depleting ground water resources and higher generator prices add to their woes. Subsidies, once a linchpin of India’s economic policy have dried up wherein the farmers now need to either compete or go under. To compete, many have turned to high-cost seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, which now line the shelves of even tiny village shops.
Environmental activist Vandana Shiva believes genetically-modified seeds, specifically, those sold by agricultural behemoth Monsanto, are driving farmers to lose control of their own farming practices. She claims the company’s proprietary policies which forbids farmers from planting, selling or accidentally growing seeds from its patented crops increases frustrations and pushes farmers to the brink. Shiva and others of her ilk dub Monsanto seeds as “suicide seeds.”
A Syracuse University’s professor contends that farmer suicides should be attributed not only to agricultural practices but also financial ones. He notes, farmer suicides were concentrated in five of India’s 28 States, primarily those which offered the least institutional credit to farmers, forcing them to take private loans at interest rates, as high as 45 per cent
Importantly, there is glib talks on restoring soil quality, rationalisation of aquifer use, protecting forests as catchment areas or securing land and livelihood of the tribal poor. Forget the so-called green concerns often ridiculed as Luddites’ fad, there is no gainsaying the big thrust on agriculture rings astoundingly hollow.
The suicidal fertiliser subsidies continue, encouraging farmers to use chemical fertilisers in larger quantities thereby triggering rapid soil degradation. There is no talk or funds yet to try natural alternatives to revive the dying fields.
Thanks to Monsanto taking over the seed market, other cotton seed varieties have died on the vine and are hardly available anymore in cotton growing regions like Maharashtra’s Vidarbha and other regions.
Significantly, we must keep in mind that farmers have been growing cotton for centuries and were always able to eke out a living with conventional seeds, which are suited to the region and don’t need much water, because there isn’t any.
However, it is erroneous to assume that farmers are passive victims of a hostile system. Agriculturists across India use ingenuity to exploit the politico-legal institutional landscape, negotiating a fast-changing environmental and climatic landscape on one hand and the eroding socio-cultural base and changing aspirations on the other.
They use experience and indigenous knowledge systems, local safety nets as well as available State-sponsored subsidies and ICT-based weather forecasts to manage risks and meet personal goals. They do this in spite of relief packages and loan waivers, not as a result of them.
And herein lies the opportunity, our policies miss out on: Boosting this ingenuity with a robust policy architecture to enable them adapting to current and emerging problems in rural India.
Recall, Nehru said in 1947, “Everything can wait, but not agriculture.” Indeed the First Five Year Plan focused on agriculture. Now, after 66 years, things are not what was dreamt by the first Prime Minister. The benefits of addressing the problem were understood long ago.
An old Thirukkural quotation poetically illustrates: “Tireless farmers, learned men and honest traders constitute a country. Wealth, large and enviable, and produce free of pests make up a country. The hallmark of an ideal land is where people voluntarily pay all taxes.” India needs an economic movement that starts in villages, not one that by-passes them! —— INFA