Book ­Reviews Social Change

41(3) 485–505
© CSD 2011
SAGE Publications
Los Angeles, London,
New Delhi, Singapore,
Washington DC
DOI: 10.1177/004908571104100309
http://socialchange.sagepub.com

R.S. Deshpande and Saroj Arora (eds), Agrarian Crisis and Farmer
Suicides, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2010, pp. xxi + 436, `895.

This is the 12th Volume of the series on Land Reforms in India brought out by Lal
Bahadur National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie in collaboration with
Sage. The volume contains 19 chapters dealing with various dimensions of the
agrarian crisis in India and farmers suicides, which have received much attention
in media, government and public in the recent years. The editors, in a well written
and analytical ‘Introduction’, outline the contours of the agrarian crisis and high-
light the main findings of the papers included in the volume. The agrarian crisis is
analysed by them in the light of the long-term structural changes in agriculture. The
declining size and growing numbers of marginal holdings are the dominant fea-
tures of the structural crisis being faced by Indian agriculture. They rightly empha-
sise that agriculture in India operates under a large number of constraints like
weather uncertainties, product and input market imperfections, price fluctuations,
lack of credit facilities, declining size of holding, etc. While asserting that the exter-
nalities of globalisation have contributed to the deepening of agrarian crisis, they
rightly argue that the question of linking the process of globalisation to agricultural
distress is quite complex. They have argued that globalisation should be managed
to ensure that its malignant affects are assessed well in advance and corrective
measures taken in time. The editors conclude by saying that distress in the farm
sector began with agrarian stress created both due to externalities of the policies
and not attending to some of the issues on the policy front. Now it is time to rethink
and put up a policy matrix to deal with the situation.
D. Narasimha Reddy and Srijit Mishra in their paper on ‘Economic Reforms,
Small Farmer Economy and Agrarian Crisis’ make a distinction between ‘agri-
cultural crisis’ which refers to growth performance of the agricultural sector and
‘agrarian crisis’ which is structural and institutional in nature. The continued and
increasing burden of labour in agriculture leads to increasing number of land
holdings of smaller size. By 2003, small and marginal farmers accounted for
86 per cent of holdings and 44 per cent of operated area in the country. Their
small size comes in the way of accessing formal credit and insurance and pre-
vents them from adopting new technology to increase their productivity and

Downloaded from sch.sagepub.com at CAMBRIDGE UNIV LIBRARY on January 2, 2015

486 Book Reviews

income. Small farmers face high transaction costs and low bargaining power in
the input and output markets. The institutional systems have failed to provide
support to the small farmers. The authors feel that the post-reform experience
has been one of retrogression in state initiatives and privatisation of certain
activities.
A critical factor has been the indebtedness of farmers. The share of small farm-
ers in bank credit has been declining. Their dependence is more on high-interest
non-institutional sources of financing. In this situation farming has become a pre-
carious business, which is unable to meet even the consumption requirements of
the small farmers. Analysing the official data on suicides across states the authors
conclude that farmers’ suicides are more in the areas with a predominance of
small holdings, minor irrigation, low share of bank credit to rural areas and low
share of priority sector advances to agriculture. One of the essential solutions for
overcoming the problems of small–marginal farmers lies in the institutional alter-
natives to bringing them under their own collectives. The success of these efforts
will depend upon social mobilisation and capacity-building as the experiments in
states like Andhra Pradesh and Kerala have shown.
A. R. Vasavi takes the issue of structural changes in agriculture further and
contextualises the agrarian suicides. In her opinion the retention of the skewed,
caste-based structures of agriculture, the deep erosion of the heterogeneous agri-
cultural practices, the compounding of the triple crisis (economic, social and eco-
logical) and the marginalisation of the rural poor in the national agenda provide
the larger context in which such suicides are taking place. According to her the
suicides are not just a passing crisis or a form of crises but are symptoms and
expressions of the deeper structural problems of the Indian agrarian system itself
and those of the new models of agriculture. The main features of this structural
problem are the increasing differentiation in economic and social groups in the
wake of green revolution technology, the shift towards commercial crops, agricul-
tural knowledge dissonance, and growing individualisation of agriculture. All this
puts an unduly large burden on individuals leading them to commit suicide in the
face of large debts, loss of crops and loss of face.
In contrast to most of the paper writers A. K. Singhal argues that globalisation
is good for both developed and developing countries as it leads to open markets
and an open economy, giving a chance to everyone to grow. He adds a caveat that
it should not be dictated to by stronger economies without indicating how it can
be ensured. He hails the economic reforms initiated in 1991 as they provided a
major breakthrough for liberalisation of the agricultural sector. While making a
passing reference to the farmers suicides, he focuses on the shortcomings of the
marketing system and argues that an efficient marketing system will ensure a
remunerative price to the farmers, due profit to the middle men and maximum
satisfaction to the consumer.
Several papers concentrate on the experience of individual states like
Karnataka, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Punjab, which have seen a spate of
suicides in the last decade. Muzzaffar Assadi examines the ‘Path of Development

Social Change, 41, 3 (2011): 485–505

Downloaded from sch.sagepub.com at CAMBRIDGE UNIV LIBRARY on January 2, 2015

Book Reviews 487

and Politics in Karnataka’. He puts the agrarian crisis of the state in a longer per-
spective and says that the beginning of the agrarian crisis requires to be located
much earlier to the beginning of events of suicide, which goes back to the 1980s
when the terms of trade were going against agriculture. In his opinion farmers’
suicides were the result of sharpening agrarian crisis emanating from the capitalist
development in agriculture. The process of globalisation added to the crisis. Ana-
lysing the Karnataka experience he observes that the period saw a rolling back of
the state, failure of the cooperative sector and adoption of new technology. The
situation was aggravated by severe drought. Cumulative crop failures, inadequate
rainfall, drying up of institutional credit, increase in cost of production, declining
prices of agricultural commodities and exclusion of large numbers of farmers
from the safety net, threw the farmers into the clutches of private money lenders
who charged exorbitant interest. Significantly, most of those who committed sui-
cide had borrowed money from money lenders.
R.S. Deshpande and Khalil Shah analyse farmers’ suicides in the context of
globalisation and agrarian crisis with particular reference to Karnataka state.
While arguing that any attempt to shy away from the trade-led growth policy may
land us in another bad situation, the authors draw attention to the theoretical and
practical issues in measuring the impact of globalisation on growth of different
crops and regions and on domestic policy. The decline in the growth rate of agri-
culture in states like Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Punjab was
associated with the spate of farmers’ suicides along with other factors including
advent of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), GM varieties, price collapse and
spurious seeds. The authors analyse the data on suicides in different states and
refer to the multiple explanations of the phenomenon including economic, social
and psychological. One of the aggravating factors has been the decline in the sup-
port system that was being provided by the family and the village system. Changes
in the pace and composition of agricultural credit also emerged as a significant
issue in the context of farmers distress in various parts of the country. Karnataka
has a larger density of indebted farmers than the country and the intensity of
indebtedness is also higher. The absence of a well functioning input and output
market for agricultural commodities strengthened the role of the middlemen and
that of the non-institutional credit market. The absence and decline of public sup-
port institutions also aggravated the situation. In the end the authors give a brief
account of recent policy initiatives of the state government, without critically
assessing the effectiveness of these initiatives.
M. S. Sidhu also looks at the agrarian crisis in India vis-à-vis globalisation. He
starts by examining the trends in exports and imports of agricultural products
since 1991. He draws attention to two prominent features of the Indian economy,
that is, the declining size of the holding and declining net sown area per agricul-
tural worker. The author then proceeds to discuss indebtedness across states with
particular focus on Punjab. Unlike most of the other paper writers Sidhu boldly
asserts that agrarian crisis in India has its roots within the economy and globalisa-
tion alone is not responsible for it.

Social Change, 41, 3 (2011): 485–505

Downloaded from sch.sagepub.com at CAMBRIDGE UNIV LIBRARY on January 2, 2015

488 Book Reviews

Neelima Deshmukh, in her paper, focuses on the cotton growers of Vidharbha,

where a large number of farmers’ suicides have taken place. Cotton growing farm-
ers suffer from a number of constraints. The unseasonal rains destroyed almost the
entire area under cotton cultivation during the winter of 2003. The market for cot-
ton suffers from several deficiencies. The Maharashtra State Cotton Cooperative
Marketing Federation failed to procure cotton in adequate quantity. The relief
package did not benefit all categories of farmers as only those farmers with less
than `25000 loan got the benefit of interest waiver. Also the package was confined
to only the worst affected six districts.
The paper by Revathy and Galab concentrates on the experience of Andhra
Pradesh. The authors blame the changes in the state policies in the wake of eco-
nomic reforms and deliberate closure of institutions providing support to the
farmers as responsible for agricultural crisis. The trend towards commercialisa-
tion of agriculture in the face of rising input prices and low output prices affected
viability of agriculture and added to the risks which the farmers face. The authors
point out that the incidence of suicides is high in the dry land regions of Northern
Telangana, Rayalseema and South Telangana. This may be attributed to the
increased aspirations of the farmers from these regions.
G. Sreedhar examines the issue of suicides in the context of the drought prone
Ananthpur district of Andhra Pradesh. The agrarian economy of the district pri-
marily revolves round groundnut and the fortunes of farmers are closely associ-
ated with fluctuating returns from the crop due to low and uncertain rainfall. With
the help of case studies of the farmers who had committed suicide, the author
concludes that there were multiple risk factors at work that forced the farmers to
the extreme step of suicide including indebtedness, crop failure, severe health
problems, marriage of daughters, disputes within family and addictions. The
intense pressure and humiliation from moneylenders for repayment of loans
forced a few farmers to commit suicide. The implementation of relief packages
for the victims’ families provided immediate succour but was not effective in
rehabilitating them on a sustainable basis.
T. Prabhakar Reddy also analyses the cases of farmers’ suicides in Andhra
Pradesh with the help of secondary data and a study of families of the selected
farmers who committed suicide. The author shows that declining public invest-
ment in agriculture has resulted in neglect of agriculture for the last 10 years.
Further, failure of rainfall, mounting costs of inputs, excessive dependence on
money lenders, high cost leased in land and the absence of a minimum support
price for agricultural produce contribute to growing poverty and indebtedness
among farmers, sometimes compelling them to commit suicide.
Among the northern states Punjab has received largest attention in the context
of farmer’s suicides. Gopal Iyer and Saroj Arora, in their article, have concen-
trated on the experience of Punjab. They have referred to a number of field stud-
ies, including their own study, which throws light on farmers’ suicides in the state.
As the study shows farmers’ suicides is a regular phenomenon and have been tak-
ing place earlier too. However, the incidence of suicides sharply increased in the

Social Change, 41, 3 (2011): 485–505

Downloaded from sch.sagepub.com at CAMBRIDGE UNIV LIBRARY on January 2, 2015

Book Reviews 489

period from 1998 to 2006. The economic factors have emerged as the most impor-
tant causes of suicides consisting of economic distress, indebtedness economic
crisis and crop failure. Social factors like marital tension and alcoholism also
played their role. The constant pressures by lending agencies to repay the loans
emerged as an important precipitant social factor for committing suicide. The
authors plead for a relief package to the farmers’ families in Punjab also on the
lines done in the southern states.
Anita Gill looks at the phenomenon of farmers’ suicide in Punjab in the light of
the performance of agriculture and structural change in workforce in Punjab.
Unlike most of the other papers she supports her analysis with hard data on terms
of trade of agriculture and trends in net income per hectare from agriculture in
Punjab and minimum support prices received by farmers. Referring to the high
incidence of indebtedness of farmers in Punjab she draws attention to the fact that
non-institutional sources of credit account for nearly the same amount of credit as
the institutional sources. The informal sources, particularly commission agents
entrap the farmers into interlinked contracts, which engulf the farmers in a debt trap
often leading to suicide. The author calls for a multi-pronged strategy to deal with
the problem which should begin with immediate relief to the kin of suicide victims
and move on to long-term measures address the problem of the agrarian crisis.
G. S. Kalkat looks at the agrarian crisis in Punjab and points out that agricul-
tural growth in Punjab has slowed down from 5 per cent in the 1970s to 4.6 per
cent in the 1980s and to 2.5 per cent in the 1990s and further to 1.9 per cent in the
2000s. Productivity gains in the rice–wheat cropping system have slowed down
reaching a plateau. During the period 2000–01 and 2004–05 the Minimum Sup-
port Price (MSP) of wheat and rice was almost frozen while input costs continued
to increase squeezing the net profits of the farmers. Kalkat draws attention to the
fact that non-institutional lending in Punjab is enormous and puts a heavy burden
on the farmers. Studies show that majority of farmers committing suicide were
heavily indebted, though there were other predisposing factors. The author makes
a plea for reviving growth in farm incomes and increasing public investment in
agriculture. He suggests a programme for agricultural rejuvenation through con-
servation of soil and water resources, reduction in cost of cultivation, improving
access of institutional credit to small farmers, improving small farmers’ capacity
to adopt high-value enterprises, meeting emergent needs of credit, education of
farmers and social reforms to reduce drug abuse, etc.
Recognising that heavy dependence on non-institutional credit is the main rea-
son associated with farmers’ suicides, Ravikesh Srivastava advocates credit
through participatory management. The author supports his argument with the
data gathered for Agricultural Diversification Project in UP to show that the
performance of the participatory credit management through farmers self-help
groups is exceptional in providing a savings-based mechanism for inter-group
credit to meet household needs.
Srinivasan Santhanam in his paper discusses the details of the Prime Minister’s
relief package for farmers in selected drought affected districts. The paper goes on

Social Change, 41, 3 (2011): 485–505

Downloaded from sch.sagepub.com at CAMBRIDGE UNIV LIBRARY on January 2, 2015

490 Book Reviews

to discuss the initiatives taken by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural
Development (NABARD) to increase the flow of credit to rural areas. The author
suggests a comprehensive strategy for sustainable agriculture.
In an important contribution Gyanmudra analyses the behavioural and social
dimensions of farmers’ suicides. Theoretical literature has been reviewed by her
and conclusions are drawn from a field study of 60 farmer households, where
suicide took place in the Ananthpur district of Andhra Pradesh. Among the behav-
ioural factors which influenced farmers’ suicide the following factors stand out:
depression, absconding before suicide, mood disorder, alcoholism, personality
disorders, immediate provocation by family or society and shared state of mind
about suicide. According to the author improved detection, referral and manage-
ment of behavioural disorders are an important step in suicide prevention.
Empowering primary health care staff in this direction is an important step. Con-
tinuous community dialogue is needed to integrate individuals and families within
the community and strengthen existing networks and coping mechanisms.
Meeta Rajivlochan and M. Rajivlochan address the issue of how to provide a
level playing field for the small farmer. They are critical of the present strategy
which focuses on big business, the private sector and contract farming as a solu-
tion to the knowledge gap and setting up of big irrigation projects by government
as a solution to the infrastructure gap. They plead for empowering the small
farmer by providing knowledge and health inputs and enabling him to find his
own solution so as to survive as a constructive unit of the economy.
In the final chapter the editors suggest the way forward. They have made many
valuable suggestions for improving the relief package to the families of the sui-
cide victims, packages of relief to farmers facing acute debt burden and address-
ing problems of marginalised rural persons, sustainability of small farm
agriculture, measures to address the issue of land reforms to avert landlessness
and marginalisation. The measures for meeting any such distress should be imple-
mented through support systems for the farmers.
The papers contained in this volume make valuable contribution to the litera-
ture on agrarian crisis. Besides throwing light on the causes of suicides in differ-
ent states, the papers also address the larger issues associated with the agrarian
crisis in the country. While some authors trace this crisis to the new economic
policies associated with the reforms introduced since 1991, some trace the origins
of the crisis to the introduction of the green revolution technology in the country.
The primary lesson that emerges from the volume is that the phenomenon of
farmers’ suicides should be understood in the context of the deeper agrarian crisis
existing in the economy. Indian agriculture, dominated as it is by the small land-
holders, has been working under multiple constraints like limited access to insti-
tutional credit and knowledge about new technology, imperfections in the input
and output markets, weather fluctuations, etc. The changed economic and policy
scenario has further added to the precarious nature of agriculture and exposed the
farmers to increased risks associated with commercialisation of agriculture and
introduction of new crops and technologies under market-driven development

Social Change, 41, 3 (2011): 485–505

Downloaded from sch.sagepub.com at CAMBRIDGE UNIV LIBRARY on January 2, 2015

Book Reviews 491

process. The situation has been compounded by the inertia of the public policy
and shrinkage of state support to agriculture. It is hoped that the volume will force
the policy makers to change their policy stance and come out with a comprehen-
sive and strong package of support to deal with the crisis that Indian agriculture
faces along with economic and social support systems at the ground level to deal
with the deep distress of farmers, which often forces them to resort to the ultimate
step of suicide.

Ajit Kumar Singh

Director, Giri Institute of Development Studies,
Lucknow
[email protected]

Raj Sekhar Basu, ‘Nandanar’s Children’: The Parayans’ Tryst with

Destiny, Tamil Nadu 1850–1956, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2011,
pp. 424, `895.
DOI: 10.1177/004908571104100310

The author’s title for the book is significant. Nandanar was a lower caste saint of
Tamil Nadu belonging to the Parayans, one of the three major ‘depressed com-
munities’ or Scheduled Castes of the state the other two being the Pallans and
Chakkilians. According the legend, interpreted by the Christian missionary, Rev.
A. C. Clayton, utilising data available in the Tamil literary classic ‘Periapuranam’,
Nandanar who was subjected to severe social segregation by the upper castes,
managed to became a respected saint of all castes because of his devotion to god
Shiva, an upper caste deity after undergoing an ordeal by fire. In the Periapuranam
story, ‘bhakti’ (devotion to god) is triumphant. Nandanar’s body becomes a focus
of reconstitution of religious relationships. The argument is that caste differences
do not matter as long as religious devotion existed!
The history and development of the three Adi-Dravida communities of
Parayans, Pallans and Chakkilians in present day Tamil Nadu state is an under-
studied subject and the author is to be complimented for taking up a pioneering
and path-breaking study of the history and politics of the Parayan community
from 1850 to 1956. The author is Reader at the Department of History at the
University of Calcutta.
There have been few researches on the Parayans of Tamil Nadu. Many years
ago, Sathianathan Clarke pointed out the need to contribute to the process of
remembering and recollecting the lost history of the Parayan community. The
author makes a significant contribution to this process. His study is based on
extensive research into historical, political, ethnographic and other sources
of information available in different parts of Tamil Nadu, New Delhi and
elsewhere. It traces the transformation of the Parayans from an ‘untouchable’ and
socially deprived and down-trodden community to a politically prominent force

Social Change, 41, 3 (2011): 485–505

Downloaded from sch.sagepub.com at CAMBRIDGE UNIV LIBRARY on January 2, 2015