FARMER SUICIDES IN INDIA

5.1- Economics

Submitted By-

Ayush Gaur

SM0117012

Faculty in Charge

Ms. Dipakshi Das

NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY AND JUDICIAL ACADEMY, ASSAM

 Table of Contents
1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................... 3

1.1 Overview ............................................................................................................................... 3

1.2 Aim ........................................................................................................................................ 4

1.3 Research Questions ............................................................................................................... 4

1.4 Literature Review .................................................................................................................. 4

1.5 Scope and Limitation ............................................................................................................ 5

1.6 Objectives .............................................................................................................................. 5

1.7 Research Methodology.......................................................................................................... 5

2. THE SUICIDE ECONOMY OF CORPORATE GLOBALISATION .................................... 6

3. WHY FARMERS ARE KILLING THEMSELVES? ............................................................. 9

4. FAILURE OF INSTITUTIONAL DELIVERY OF CREDIT TO FARMERS. ................... 10

5. INDEBTEDNESS: THE MAIN FACTOR ........................................................................... 12

6. TRENDS OF SUICIDES....................................................................................................... 15

7. RECOMMENDATIONS TO STOP FARMERS SUICIDES ............................................... 17

8. CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................... 19

BIBILIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................... 20

2
 1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Overview

Agriculture has always been celebrated as the primary sector in India. India is an agrarian
economy, which means, Agriculture is the pre-dominant sector of the Indian economy. True to
this, even to this day, inspite of the Indian economy opening out to the world and globalization,
close to 70% of the population still depends on agriculture for its livelihood. The secondary and
tertiary sectors in India are growing at rapid rates, still a vast majority of Indians continue to
depend on agriculture. Every plan for the growth of the Indian economy aims at agricultural
development, which is justified because to achieve the growth rates that the economy aims at, it
is important to first address the growth rate of the major sector of the economy. Since the first
Five year plan, India's focus has been on agriculture and after 50 years of Five year plans, where
does Indian agriculture stand?

Thanks to the Green Revolution, India is now self-sufficient in food production, gone are the
days when India had to import even food grains for daily consumption. Indian agriculture has
been making technological advancement as well. Today, a visit to the villages will reveal that
more and more farmers are adopting mechanization for their farming, there is an overall
improvement in the agricultural trends in India. More than 8 percent of Indian farmers have
landholdings below two hectares. These farmers have such a fragmented and small holding, and
others deny them the benefits of mechanization, modern irrigation and other investment-based
technological improvements, thus limiting productivity.

The overarching problem of water scarcity in India adds to this already weakened infrastructure.
Estimates put India‟s groundwater use at roughly one-quarter of the global usage, and needless to
say, it is a quickly diminishing resource for those in rural areas especially. Without access to
water, farmers have relied on seasonal rains for their yield, the unpredictability of which can lead
to either severe droughts or floods that prove to be a recipe for crop failure. Climate change is a
problem that exacerbates these sorts of uncertainties.

Whatever income farmers manage to scrap is meager and depends on factors such as the
prevailing market situation or the cost of greedy middlemen. As a result, profit is rare and this

3
forces small and marginal farmers to take out expensive loans to fund the farming process, thus
they get caught in debt traps.

These same small, two-hectare farmers made up 75 percent of the 5,650 suicides that the
National Crime Records Bureau recorded during 2014; further data points out that in 2,474
suicides out of the studied 3,000 farmer suicides in 2015, the victims had unpaid loans from local
banks. This information suggests that severe socioeconomic adversity, such as crop failure or
debt-burdens, is a predominant cause of farmer suicide.

India‟s agricultural sector accounts for almost 20 percent of the country‟s GDP, making prompt
attention to the tragedy of farmer suicide important not only from a humanitarian point of view
but also an economic one

1.2 Aim

The aim of this research project is to understand the reason why the farmers are committing
suicide.

1.3 Research Questions

 Why farmers are killing themselves?

 What are the trends of suicide?
 What is suicide economy of corporate globalization?
 What are some recommendations to stop Farmer Suicide?

1.4 Literature Review

 Haroon Sajjad, Indebtedness and its causal factors among farmers in Sangroor district,
Punjab: A Household level analysis, SEMANTIC SCHOLAR

This article explains the farmer‟s situation in India and also explains how they are going into
debt trap though the government has taken measures in order to secure the interest of farmer.
This article gives a in depth analysis of farmer‟s situation in India and also provides some
recommendation in order to prevent the farmers from committing suicide. In this article
empirical research has been done which help the researcher in understanding the topic.

4
  K. Nagaraj, Farmers’ Suicides in India: Magnitudes, Trends and Spatial Patterns,
MACROSCAN

This article provides a deep insight into the topic. This article analyzes the farmer suicide trend
in India and reason behind the suicide. It also talks about the failure of institutional delivery of
credits to the farmer due to which they fail to buy the requisite elements for their agricultural
purposes. It is because of this reason the farmers are committing suicide because they are not
getting basic livelihood. This article covers all these issues.

1.5 Scope and Limitation

The scope of this project is restricted to understand and to analyze the reason behind the farmer
suicide in India.

1.6 Objectives
The objectives of this project are as follows:-

 To research about reason behind farmer‟s suicide in India.

 To know the trend of suicide in India.
 To know suicide economy of corporate globalization.
 To draw up some recommendation in order to stop this suicides.

1.7 Research Methodology

In this project, the researcher has adopted Doctrinal research. Doctrinal research is essentially
a library-based study, which means that the materials needed by a researcher may be available
in libraries, archives, and other data-bases. Various types of books were used to get the
adequate data essential for this project. The researcher also used computer laboratory to get
important data related to this topic. The researcher also found several good websites which
were very useful to better understand this topic.

5
 2. THE SUICIDE ECONOMY OF CORPORATE GLOBALISATION

The Indian peasantry, the largest body of surviving small farmers in the world, today faces a
crisis of extinction. Two thirds of India makes its living from the land. The earth is the most
generous employer in this country of a billion that has farmed this land for more than 5000 years.
However, as farming is delinked from the earth, the soil, the biodiversity, the climate and linked
to global corporations and global markets, and the generosity of the earth is replaced by the
greed of corporations, the viability of small farmers and small farms is destroyed. Farmers
suicides are the most tragic and dramatic symptom of the crisis of survival faced by Indian
peasants.1997 witnessed the first emergence of farm suicides in India. Rapid increase in
indebtedness was at the root of farmers taking their lives. Debt reflects a negative economy, a
losing economy.

Two factors have transformed the positive economy of agriculture into a negative economy for
peasants – the rising costs of production and the falling prices of farm commodities. Both these
factors are rooted in the policies of trade liberalization and corporate globalization. In 1998, the
World Bank‟s structural adjustment policies forced India to open up its seed sector to global
corporations like Cargill, Monsanto, Syh genta. The global corporations changed the input
economy overnight. Farm saved seeds were replaced by corporate seeds, which needed fertilizers
and pesticides and could not be saved. As seed saving is prevented by patents as well as by the
engineering of seed with non-renewable traits, seed has to be bought for every planting season by
poor peasants. A free resource available on farm becomes a commodity which farmers are forced
to by every year. This increases poverty and leads to indebtedness. As debts increase and become
unplayable, farmers are compelled to sell kidneys or even commit suicide.1 More than 25,000
peasants in India have taken their lives since 1997 when the practice of seed saving was
transformed under globalization pressures and multinational seed corporations started to take
control of the seed supply. Seed saving gives farmers life. Seed monopolies rob farmers of life.

The shift from farm saved seed to corporate monopolies of the seed supply is also a shift from
biodiversity to monocultures in agriculture. The District of Warangal in Andhra Pradesh used to
grow diverse legumes, millets, oilseeds. Seed monopolies created crop monocultures of cotton,

1
Vandana Shiva, The Suicide Economy Of Corporate Globalisation, COUNTER CURRENTS - (October 23, 2019,
12:50PM) https://www.countercurrents.org/glo-shiva050404.htm.

6
leading to disappearance of millions of nature‟s evolution and farmers breeding. Monocultures
and uniformity increase the risks of crop failure as diverse seeds adapted to diverse ecosystems
are replaced by rushed introduction of unadapted and often untested seeds into the market.

When Monsanto first introduced Bt Cotton in India in 2002, the farmers lost Rs. 1 billion due to
crop failure. Instead of 1,500 Kg/acre as promised by the company, the harvest was as low as
200 kg. Instead of increased incomes of Rs. 10,000/acre, farmers ran into losses of Rs.
6,400/acre. In the state of Bihar, when farm saved corn seed was displaced by Monsanto‟s hybrid
corn, the entire crop failed creating Rs. 4 billion losses and hence increased poverty for
desperately poor farmers. Poor peasants of the South cannot survive seed monopolies. And the
crisis of suicides shows how the survival of small farmers is incompatible with the seed
monopolies of global corporations. The second pressure Indian farmers are facing is the dramatic
fall in prices of farm produce as a result of free trade policies of the WTO. The WTO rules for
trade in agriculture are in essence rules for dumping. They have allowed an increase in
agribusiness subsidies while preventing countries from protecting their farmers from the
dumping of artificially cheap produce.

High subsidies of $ 400 billion combined with forced removal of import restrictions is a
readymade recipe for farmers‟ suicides. Global prices have dropped from$ 216/ton in 1995 to $
133/ton in 2001 for wheat, $ 98.2/ton in 1995 to $ 49.1/ton in 2001 for cotton, $ 273/ ton in 1995
to $ 178/ton for soyabean. This reduction to half the price is not due to a doubling in productivity
but due to an increase in subsidies and an increase in market monopolies controlled by a handful
of agribusiness corporations. Thus the US government pays $ 193 per ton to US Soya farmers,
which artificially lowers the rice of soya. 2 Due to removal of Quantitative Restrictions and
lowering of tariffs, cheap soya has destroyed the livelihoods of coconut growers, mustard
farmers, producers of sesame, groundnut and soya.

While the “expert committee” report identified “alcoholism” as the main cause for suicides, the
figures of this “scientific” claim are inconsistent and do not reflect the survey. The report states
in one place that 68 per cent of the suicide victims were alcoholics. Five lines later it states that
17 per cent were “alcohol and illicit drinkers.” It also states that the majority of suicide victims

7
were small and marginal farmers and the majority had high levels of indebtedness. Yet debt is
not identified as a factor leading to suicide. The report it is stated that of the 105 cases studied
among the 3544 suicides which had occurred in five districts during 2000– 01, 93 had debts, and
54 per cent victims had borrowed from private sources and money lenders. More than 90 per
cent suicide victims were in debt. Yet a table has mysteriously reduced debt as a reason for
suicide to 2.6 per cent, and equally mysteriously, “suicide victims having a bad habit” has
emerged as the primary cause of farmers suicides.

The government is desperate to delink farm suicides from economic processes linked to
globalization such as rise in indebtedness and increased frequency of crop failure due to higher
ecological vulnerability arising from climate change and drought and higher economic risks due
to introduction of untested, unadapted seeds. This is evident in recommendation no. 4.3.24.3
“The government should launch prosecution on the responsible persons involved in misleading
the public and government by providing false information about farmers suicide as crop failure
or indebtedness”. However, farmers suicides cannot be delinked from indebtedness and the
economic distress small farmers are facing. Indebtedness is not new. Farmers have always
organized for freedom from debt. In the nineteenth century the so called “Deccan Riots” were
farmers protests against the debt trap into which they had been pushed to supply cheap cotton to
the textile mills in Britain. In the eighties they formed peasant organizations to fight for debt
relief from public debt linked to Green Revolution inputs. However, under globalizations, the
farmer is losing her/his social, cultural, economic identity as a producer. A farmer is now a
“consumer” of costly seeds and costly chemicals sold by powerful global corporations through
powerful. Landlords and money lenders locally. This combination is leading to corporate
feudalism, the most inhumane, brutal and exploitative convergence of global corporate
capitalism and local feudalism, in the face of which the farmer as an individual victim feels
helpless.

8
 3. WHY FARMERS ARE KILLING THEMSELVES?

According to 2001 census, total workforce in the rural areas was 310.6 million. The total
cultivators in rural areas were 124.7 million and agriculture workers in rural areas were 103.1
million. This means that out of total workforce of 310.6 million in rural areas in 2001, those
working in agriculture sector either as cultivators or agriculture workers were 227.8 million or
about 73.3 per cent of the rural workforce. The Work Participation Rate (WPR) for rural areas as
per the census data would come to 41.96 per cent, as total rural population was 740.25 million in
2001 and the total rural workers were 310.6 million. But still the proportion of people living
below poverty line in rural areas was 26.07 per cent. The reason for higher proportion of rural
people living below the poverty line, in spite of the fact that a much higher proportion of them
were workers, was that majority of the rural workers might not have been getting enough
income, as the annual earnings of the majority of the agriculture labour in India are so low that
they cannot meet even their minimum consumption needs. 3 The moot question is: can a person
survive even for few days without spending anything on him to sustain his life when everything
required to sustain life is available at a price? Thus, there is a danger signal when the rural
people living under the condition of extreme poverty and deprivation are unable to manage even
the most basic requirements of life like food in adequate quantity, clothing and other daily needs,
resulting in the subsistence borrowing by the rural poor and small farmers. Under these
circumstances it is not a surprise that a considerable number of farmers has committed suicides
in the second half of the 1990s, particularly in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Punjab. The spate
of suicides by farmers in Karnataka is still continuing. Interestingly, four years ago, a British
study had shown that farmers reported a lower prevalence of psychiatric morbidity than the
general population, but were more likely to think that life was not worth living. Dr. Mohan Issac,
a professor of psychiatry at NIMHANS – Bangalore believes that farmers‟ suicides are
multifactored; several factors have been acting in a cumulative manner. Very often, the end
comes due to losing the last straw. Farmers‟ leader Prof. M. D. Nanjundaswamy blames free
imports, falling prices and lack of social security for farmers for this situation.

3
Atul Singh, Indian Politicians Write Off Loans and Farmers Kill Themselves, FAIR OBSERVER (October 23, 2019,
11:45PM) https://www.fairobserver.com/region/central_south_asia/indian-farmer-suicides-india-south-asian-world-
news-latest-32349/.

9
 4. FAILURE OF INSTITUTIONAL DELIVERY OF CREDIT TO FARMERS.

Despite the government setting a target of tripling agriculture credit to nearly Rs. 140,000 crores
in four years and slashing the interest rate to nine per cent from the existing 12 to 14 per cent,
farmers across the country are facing many hurdles in availing farm loans. Cooperative banks put
the blame on the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development(NABARD), stating that
it is not adequately financing them. The sharp cut in the interest rate for farm credit has come in
the wake of severe criticism of banks for consistently slashing interest rates on home and car
loans and extending them on easier terms while keeping the rate high for agriculture and the
terms quite tough. Agricultural credit is disbursed through multi-agency network consisting of
commercial banks, regional rural banks and cooperatives. Of these, cooperatives have emerged
as the prime institutional agency for the dispensation of rural credit, accounting for a share of 41
per cent in rural credit flow for agriculture.4
Despite this, the delay in getting the loan makes the farmers go into the clutches of the
moneylenders where they avail credit at phenomenally high rates. Further, in the context of
overall decline in the interest rate regime in the country, the agriculture is still suffering from
high incidence of interest burden. Till nineties, the ultimate lending rates fixed by the Reserve
Bank of India (RBI) for agriculture and rural development sector were at 10.5 per cent and other
agriculture related activities at 12.5 per cent per annum, while the lending rate for the
commercial borrower was at 16per cent. While the lending rates for the other sectors have
declined considerably in the last decade, the lending rate for agriculture sector continues to be
around 14 per cent.
Another trend, witnessed particularly over the last decade that has been causing a lot of
concern is the steady decline in the rural investment. The growth of commercial banks lending to
the agricultural and allied activities saw a substantial decline in the 1990s as compared to the
1980s. The study revealed that in majority of the cases the farmers become defaulters because
they experience a lot of hardship in getting the loan. They are not certain whether they may avail

4
Atul Singh, Indian Politicians Write Off Loans and Farmers Kill Themselves, Fair Observer (October 23, 2019,
11:45PM) https://www.fairobserver.com/region/central_south_asia/indian-farmer-suicides-india-south-asian-world-
news-latest-32349/.

10
the loan the next time even if they repay the loan in time. Therefore, the balance lies on the
5
policy of banks and not the farmers
The other test of an effective credit system is rural indebtedness. According to National Sample
Survey Organization (NSSO), in 1991-92, of the total debts of Rs. 37,343 crores, 59 per cent
were of rural households with 80 per cent of it going to cultivators. Rural debt went up from Rs.
1,956 crores in 1961 to 6,193 crores in 1981 and to Rs. 22,211 crores in 1991.22 The Alternative
Micro Credit The twin problems of non-viability and poor recovery performance of the existing
rural credit coupled with the failure of financial institutions to deal with poor borrowers in an
imaginative and sustainable way brought up the idea of micro credit into the rural credit scenario.
This alternative combines the strength of the formal banking system with the reach and
flexibility of the informal SHGs to make credit accessible to the rural poor. In December 2003,
the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) constituted an advisory committee to suggest short and medium
term measures to enhance credit flow to the agriculture sector and appointed Dr. V. S. Vyas,
noted economist as its chairman. The RBI decided to strengthen the rural credit delivery system
to ensure a smooth credit flow to the rural sector, especially agriculture. The committee would
identify the impediments in the flow of credit to the disadvantaged sections such as small and
marginal farmers and landless labourers. The committee would also suggest measures to reduce
the rate of interest on agriculture credit given by commercial, cooperative and regional rural
banks and examine the role of NABARD as the apex institution for providing and regulating
credit for agriculture development.

5
Vidya Sethy, Rural Credit in India: Problems, Measures and Farm Loan Waiver Scheme, YOURS ARTICLE
LIBRARY (October,24, 2019, 10:05 PM)
http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/agriculture/rural-credit/rural-credit-in-india-problems-measures-and-farm-loan-
waiver-scheme/62868

11
 5. INDEBTEDNESS: THE MAIN FACTOR

There is relationship between credit availability and agriculture productivity. Credit is

undoubtedly the most important factor in the agriculture development. In the wake of WTO
challenges, it is necessary that the credit support to agriculture be enhanced considerably if we
are to compete in the global market. However, it is shocking to learn that rather than increasing
the credit support to agriculture and increasing public investment, the government is doing
exactly the opposite. The farmers‟ suicides across the states are blamed on their indebtedness.
The situation therefore demands that the government should reorient its policy as regards to rural
credit. Studies have shown that even in the most progressive and agriculturally developed states
like Punjab, 78 per cent of farmers have availed credit from non-institutionalized sources such as
relatives, arhtiyas (grain brokers), agro inputs dealers and private moneylenders. 6

The rate of interest paid by the farmers to avail the credit would make the topmost corporate
houses sweat in the winter, as the farmers pay minimum of two per cent per month compounded
rate of interest. The burden of indebtedness in rural India is great, and it falls mainly on the
households of rural working people. The exploitation of this group in the credit market is one of
the most pervasive and persistent features of rural life in India, and despite major structural
changes in credit institutions and forums of rural credit in the post-independence period, situation
is much fragile in most places. The credit market is highly fragmented and regressive.

Moneylenders attend the most urgent-felt needs like consumption, medical aid, emergency
situations, and daughter‟s marriage. In sugar belt areas of Maharashtra, drowning in debt, many
small farmers have had to sell part of their land. The moneylenders are raking these in. They
charge farmers interest at rates anywhere between 36 and 60 per cent, sometime even more. If
the farmers can‟t pay, they just take over the land. Earlier, when government and cooperative
banks came here, moneylenders lost their hold over small peasants. Now they are back with a
vengeance. Sugarcane growers are being squeezed from both ends. Sugarcane prices offered by
factories have fallen by around 25 per cent in the past five years. Around a third of factories have

6
Harsh Aditya, 9 Main Causes of Rural Indebtedness, ECONOMICS DISCUSSION (October, 24, 2019, 11:45 PM)
http://www.economicsdiscussion.net/debt-2/rural-indebtedness/9-main-causes-of-rural-indebtedness/21600.

12
not even paid farmers the Minimum Support Price. Production costs have risen by around two
thirds in the last five years. 7

There have been huge hikes in power, irrigation and other overcharges due to economic
liberalization. Scenario is same in Western UP, the other sugarcane growing area in the country,
where labourers from Bihar also migrate during harvesting season. Big farmers hire them in
groups. As factories do not pay in time, these migrants in turn do not get their full wages. The
exploitation of the migrant workers and factories and by the big farmers. Trapped in a cycle of
debt, most of the small farmers use up their income to pay the loan. An obvious and accepted
problem faced by Indian farmers is that they often do not get a fair price for their produce. A
disproportionately large fraction of the price that the consumers pay does not go to the farmers,
but is appropriated by middlemen and traders.

This problem arises mainly because farmers cannot directly reach consumers, and they have to
depend on middlemen or traders to market their products. By definition, traders are agents who
buy in one market and sell in another. The markets where they buy and those where they sell are
separated either spatially or temporally, or both. An incident of spatial trade takes place when the
trader buys form a producer at the local village market and sells to a wholesaler in a distant city
market. Inter-temporal trade takes place when the trader buys at one time, say in the post-harvest
period, and sells at another point of time, say in the pre-harvest period. In the first case, the
farmer cannot reach the distant city market because of the lack of an appropriate network.

In the second case, he cannot hold his stocks from the busy post harvest season to the lean pre-
harvest season due to immediate cash requirements and lack of credit. So, in both the instances
he has to depend on the trader, who in turn makes full use of this dependence to reap
supernormal profits. Of course, such supernormal profits would not be possible if there were
sufficient competition among traders. Unfortunately, in many Indian agricultural markets such
competition is absent and markets are controlled by a small number of traders who manage to
earn oligopolistic profits. In fact, a survey data indicate that while producers actually make for
the crop like potato, when costs of their inputs like labour are taken into consideration, the

7
Haroon Sajjad, Indebtedness and its causal factors among farmers in Sangroor district, Punjab: A Household level
analysis, SEMANTICSCHOLAR (October, 25, 2019, 8:45 AM)
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9469/fa284bcfe8c87912e9677784803813324610.pdf.

13
traders, in particular the larger ones, earn huge profits Study has shown that following are some
of the reasons for the increasing suicides among farmers:

1. Failure of institutional credits for small and marginal farmers.

2. Withdrawal of government intervention from safety nets such as fair price shops (FPS),
and the exclusion of poor and indebted from the food distribution system.
Increasing cost of agriculture inputs like seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, etc.
3. Reduced price of agriculture produces.
4. Increasing dependence of small farmers on moneylenders, at rates of interest from 24 to
60 percent per annum, sometimes even more.
5. Cumulative crop loss.

14
 6. TRENDS OF SUICIDES

Even though suicides have existed since time immemorial, a scientific debate about the
process of suicides began only during the last decade in Indiaand three to four decades back in
industrialized countries. India stands fourth in the rate of suicide in the world. During 1989-99,
the population of the country increased by 21.5 per cent, while the reported suicides increased by
32.5 per cent as per the data from National Crime Records Bureau for the same period, clearly
showing higher growth in suicide rates in the country. The incidence of suicides increased from
40,000 in the year 1967 to 110,000 in the year 1999 recording an increase by 175 per cent.
Karnataka had no history of farmers committing suicide when crops or market failed, although
there were agitations of farmers in the past. The first incidence of farmers‟ suicide, which
attracted considerable attention of media and public, was reported on 12 December 1997 when
Mr. Shivaraj Mainalle of Siddeshwar village in Bidar district committed suicide.

A few studies were available on this first phase of suicides in Karnataka. Suicide is not
increasing only in India or Karnataka, but all over the world as shown in table 6.1 and graph 6.1.
It has increased from 10 to 16 per lakh during 1950 to 1995.37 Within two decades suicide rate
in India has increased from 40 to 115 per lakh, i.e., more than two times increase as shown in
table 6.2 and graph 6.2. Suicide rates across India are shown in the map. The suicide rate in India
in the year 1999 was 11 persons per lakh of population per year with 110,000 reported suicides
according to a study by the National Institute for Mental Health and Neuro Sciences.38
Karnataka with 12,488 suicides, stood third among the states in India during 1999, next only to
West Bengal and Maharashtra. Major causes of suicides noted in the study are illness (20 per
cent), family problems (20.6 per cent), poverty (2.6 per cent), disappointment in love (3.4 per
cent), and examination failures (2.1 per cent). However, causes were not known clearly in more
than 50 per cent of the cases as shown by table 6.3.

The scientific studies on suicides of farmers in the United Kingdom included farm owners,
tenants, and managers consisting of 84 farmers out of 526 deathsreported between 1979 and
1990. It concludes, “The most common combination of causes for suicide was mental health,
work, finance and family or partner. Most suicides were the endpoint of a series of difficulties
developed over a time rather than a response to an acute crisis and in this respect farmers were

15
no different from other people who committed suicide.” The typical newspaper headline linking
suicide in farmers was “stressed, misunderstood and lonely,” linking suicide of farmers to
financial problems,social isolation and low status in the United Kingdom. According to the
study, farmers are one of the occupational groups at greatest risk of suicide in England and
Wales. Most of the suicide reports from the United States of America were reported as related to
farming crisis in 1980s. Reports of suicides in general do occur in Islamic countries like
Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, etc. although suicide is condemned in Islam. According to a
study, 45 per cent of depressed patients in Pakistan showed suicidal psychopathology, which is
common among females. 8

Most suicide attempts were from young adults and married women. In Sri Lanka suicides and
attempted suicides have become a public health priority. The suicide rates went up from 18
persons per lakh of population in 1971 to 40 persons per lakh in 1996 compared to 11 persons
per lakh in India. Acute pesticide poisoning is a major public health problem. The Government
of Sri Lanka has set up a Presidential Task Force to investigate into the high rates of suicidal
deaths. The problem of suicides was most serious in farming communities, particularly among
the new settlers in dry zones of north-central regions, irrigated by a huge dam built in 1970s.
China is one among the suicide-prone countries. The striking aspect of suicides in China is the
high incidence of suicides among young women in rural areas. Malaysia has reported a suicide
rate of 10 persons per lakh population. In a country having 55 per cent of Muslims, 34 per cent
Chinese and 9 per cent Indians, the suicide rates among the ethnic groups are higher among the
Hindus, particularly of South Indian origin.

8
K. Nagaraj, FARMERS’ SUICIDES IN INDIA: MAGNITUDES, TRENDS AND SPATIAL PATTERNS,
MACROSCAN (October, 27, 2019, 8:40PM),http://www.macroscan.org/anl/mar08/pdf/Farmers_Suicides.pdf.

16
 7. RECOMMENDATIONS TO STOP FARMERS SUICIDES

Whatever may be the long-term impact of globalization and WTO regime on Indian
agricultural commodities in the last few years, it has had an adverse impact on the income of
farmers. This is compounded by the cut in the agricultural and power subsidies and increase in
the cost of cultivation. Notwithstanding our self-congratulatory performance in Cancun, the rich
farmers in the US and Western Europe will continue to enjoy large subsidies leaving their poor
brethren in India in the lurch. No year offers to the farmers of India cheers because of the
alternate scourges of drought and floods. Poor farmers are forced with a Hobson‟s choice. They
have to choose between a deluge and a drought as nature‟s inevitable fury year after year.
This has been the ordeal before and after the Independence with the so-called crop insurance
scheme still remaining a mirage. The new farm policy, while promising a lot for those who dare
venture into agro business, offers little hope for millions of marginalized farmers who wait for
the elusive drops to moist their parched fields, or one stabbed on back by the sudden floods. In
Karnataka, the continuous drought for the last three years and the consequent failure of crops has
no doubt further contributed to the misery of farmers and their indebtedness. The Karnataka
government responded by announcing a package of Rs. 856 crores to deal with the situation. It
includes compensation of one lakh rupees for every affected family and relief in payment loans.
The State government also issued an ordinance banning usury and declaring exorbitant interest
rates illegal. These measures may sound fine on paper, but are they really effective? First, let us
consider the payment of compensation. 9
According to the guidelines framed by the government, a family will be eligible only if the
farmer who committed suicide owing to inability to repay the loan has borrowed it from a bank
or a credit institution recognized by the government will be eligible. It is well known that
suicides are caused more by the inability to repay loans to private moneylenders rather than to
banks. Over half the number of claims have been rejected on grounds of ineligibility. The ground
realities seem to have been ignored. Secondly, the ordinance issued to overcome the problem of
usury is not likely to free the farmer from the clutches of the greedy moneylenders. The long arm
of law can catch only the registered, and not the unregistered, financier. The latter does not enter

9
Harichandana Devalla, Farmer Suicides – how can we prevent them?, CIVIL SERVICE INDIA (October, 26, 2019,
10:25 PM ) https://www.civilserviceindia.com/subject/Essay/farmer-suicides.html.

17
into any written (if at all written, not registered) agreement before lending to the farmer and is
bound to continue usuries, and the needy farmer will continue to depend on this for cash
requirements. The third issue that requires careful scrutiny is the Crop Insurance Scheme,
intended to take care of cases of crop failure and provide genuine relief to the affected farmers.
The scheme seems to be facing hurdles. The General Insurance Corporation rejected several
claims as fraudulent. The issue of farmers suicide cannot be looked in isolation, but from the
broader perspective of the agriculture scenario in the country.
Following are some suggestions and recommendations to alleviate the present situation.
 To sustain the family of the deceased, all the financial help should be provided as „Fixed
Deposit‟ in the bank, with quarterly payment of interest.
 A comprehensive Agricultural Insurance Scheme should be launched. Specific attention
should be given to cover cash crops – like cotton, sugarcane and edible oils.
 Organic farming should be promoted to avoid or minimize the cost of pesticides and
fertilizers.
 Biodiversity must be the basis of production to reduce vulnerability to climate and
markets.
 Strongest action under Indian Penal Code should be taken against suppliers and
manufactures of spurious pesticides.
 Likewise, the suppliers of spurious/inferior seeds must be punished.
 Seed supply must be maintained as a public god to protect farmers‟ rights.
 Integrated Pest Management (IPM) should be popularized among farmers.
 Institutionalized Credit System to the farmers must be simplified.
 Moneylenders charging the exorbitant rate of interest must be punished.
 Gram Panchayats should evolve a mechanism to identify the indebted and suicide prone
farmers and help them to overcome the crisis.
 Extension agencies with a vision of eco-friendly sustainable development should guide
the farmers to make the efficient use of water, electricity, pesticide and other inputs.
 The role of commission agents, traders and intermediaries should be minimized to
facilitate the farmers to fetch maximum price of their produce.
 Agriculture policy needs to shift from its current bias of „corporates first‟ to „farmers
first.
18
 8. CONCLUSION

According to a study on suicides of farmers in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, a trend is seen
towards food crops making way for commercial crops in most of the areas where suicides have
occurred. This involves purchase of wider range of inputs with ready cash. Most of the suicides
are by small and marginal farmers who fall into the trap of private moneylenders. If the crop is
good, the price of the produce goes down, and they do not reap the benefit. If it fails, they
become indebted. If the crop fails continuously, they become more indebted forcing the farmers
to commit suicide. It is time to adopt policies, which are realistic and aimed at short term as well
as long term solutions. In the first place, strategies must be devised to enable the small and
marginal farmers greater access to institutional credit and discourage them from the shylocks
tempting them with informal credit. Farmers need to be educated to adopt proper crop-mix.
The Cauvery water dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu is mostly caused by the
obsession of farmers in both the States with cultivating paddy and sugarcane, which require huge
quantities of water. There is a need for shift in the mindset from a commodity-centered approach
to an entirely new cropping or farming system based on integrated natural resource management.
We need to develop a comprehensive policy taking into account all the related aspects – agrarian
reforms, rural credit system, agricultural insurance, crop changes, employment opportunities and
the role of Panchayat Raj Institutions. There is a need for the total revitalization and revamping
of the farm sector and rural financial institutions to ensure average per cent age of sustainable
growth per annum for the sector; otherwise the ambitious target of eight per cent growth rate per
annum during tenth plan (2002-2007) would remain a dream.

19
 BIBILIOGRAPHY

1. Harichandana Devalla, Farmer Suicides – how can we prevent them?, CIVIL SERVICE
INDIA https://www.civilserviceindia.com/subject/Essay/farmer-suicides.html
2. K. Nagaraj, FARMERS’ SUICIDES IN INDIA: MAGNITUDES, TRENDS AND SPATIAL
PATTERNS,MACROSCANhttp://www.macroscan.org/anl/mar08/pdf/Farmers_Suicides.pdf
3. Haroon Sajjad, Indebtedness and its causal factors among farmers in Sangroor district,
Punjab: A Household level analysis, SEMANTICSCHOLAR
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9469/fa284bcfe8c87912e9677784803813324610.pdf.
4. Harsh Aditya, 9 Main Causes of Rural Indebtedness, ECONOMICS DISCUSSION
http://www.economicsdiscussion.net/debt-2/rural-indebtedness/9-main-causes-of-rural-
indebtedness/21600.

5. Vidya Sethy, Rural Credit in India: Problems, Measures and Farm Loan Waiver Scheme,
YOURS ARTICLE LIBRARY
6. http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/agriculture/rural-credit/rural-credit-in-india-problems-
measures-and-farm-loan-waiver-scheme/62868
7. Sanket Suman, Problems of Agricultural Credit in India, ECONOMIC DISCUSSION
http://www.economicsdiscussion.net/agriculture/problems-agriculture/problems-of-
agricultural-credit-in-india-with-suggested-remedies/12852
8. Vandana Shiva, The Suicide Economy Of Corporate Globalisation, COUNTER CURRENTS
- https://www.countercurrents.org/glo-shiva050404.htm
9. Atul Singh, Indian Politicians Write Off Loans and Farmers Kill Themselves, FAIR
OBSERVER https://www.fairobserver.com/region/central_south_asia/indian-farmer-
suicides-india-south-asian-world-news-latest-32349/.

20