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Letter from New Delhi
Farmers’
Crisis – Realities of Rural India
--
Atul Dev
This
year the 2nd of October, Mahatma Gandhi’s
birthday, saw a unique event around the world when over 1000
people of Indian origin gathered in small groups at 39
locations in the US to draw attention to the plight of and
show solidarity with the farmers in their ‘homeland’ by
a candle light vigil. They were similarly joined by over
2000 people in similar small groups in 19 locations in
urban India, to participate in the appropriately named event
– ‘Our Food, Our Farmers’. This unique style of satyagraha
would have delighted Mahatma Gandhi even more than the
United Nations’ declaring October 2nd as the
International Day of Non-Violence. Organised by an
international NGO, Association for India’s Development
(AID), they expressed their support to the farmers and their
displeasure with government policies that have resulted in
numerous suicides by farmers in India. The message was
straight -- “Thousands of suicides, hundred of millions in
distress, the farmers' crisis is unacceptable!”
Punjab,
Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra,
amongst others are India’s more prosperous states, with a
rich output of food as well as commercial crops,
industrially vibrant, politically aware, technologically and
financially sound. Yet in their villages the poor farmer or
tiller of the land is taking the easy, but unfortunate, way
out of a serious crisis.
Even
as the organisers are deeply moved by the continuing spate
of farmer suicides, 836 in Vidarbha alone in 2007, they
strongly believe that the underlying causes need to be
addressed to find a long term solution. About a couple of
months ago, I had the opportunity of hearing journalist P.
Sainath, who was awarded the 2007 Magsaysay Award, say at a
function in New Delhi: “The tragic farmers' suicides are
only a symptom of a much deeper rural distress. This is a
result of a decade-long onslaught on the livelihood of
millions by wrong policies of the government. The crisis
goes way beyond the families ravaged by the suicides.” He
was right. In the past few years, over 25,000 farmers have
committed suicide. What is even more shocking is that the
governments have ignored the repeated cries of distress of
the rural masses. Sale of kidneys by farmers, sale of entire
land holdings and suicide deaths of farmers are now common.
Government
policies in the past 15 years have slowly removed support
systems for Indian farmers while promoting unsustainable
high cost agricultural practices that farmers cannot afford.
All this has resulted in the farmers, particularly the
cotton growers of Vidharba in Maharashtra, being unable to
sustain themselves with the government laid down minimum
support prices which do not cover the real cost of
production. The farmers have gone from debt to deeper debt
with no waiver in sight. The farmers have been demanding
waiver of debts and proactive support to low cost
sustainable agriculture inputs as a means to end their
plight. The governments, central or state, have not yet
responded. The end result is the spate of suicides in the
community.
Impracticable
policy decisions, lack of access to affordable credit,
greedy and corrupt middlemen and indifferent official
response are among the factors that have pushed farmers to
this breaking point. When Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh
visited Vidarbha last July, the farmers there hoped that bad
days were coming to an end and their destiny would be
changing. They have been disappointed. As the fresh sowing
season starts, worrying signs are already evident. On the
other hand, the Maharashtra state government claims that the
suicides in Vidarbha have declined due to the implementation
of special relief packages!
Agriculture
in India as well as elsewhere is an uneconomic activity per
se. In USA and Europe, it is supported by government
subsidies. The US and the European Union are subsidizing
their farmers to the tune of $1 billion every single day; we
in India are debating to bring agriculture under income tax
net! The OECD has estimated that subsidising farmers
produces a tax burden of $1,000 a year on each family of the
US, the EU and Japan. But taxpayers there do not complain.
If the American government can act for its farmers, why are
central and state governments in India allowing the farmers
to kill themselves in India?
In
1997, India experienced its first bout of farmers suicides.
The crisis has stemmed from a number of hardships that have
led to the irreversible indebtedness of small and medium
farmers from India’s most productive regions. India’s
agriculture has taken a downward trend due largely to three
main factors -- rising costs of cultivation, plummeting
prices of farm produce and lack of credit availability for
small farmers. Most of these factors can be attributed to
corporate globalisation and unjust free trade policies
implemented by the World Trade Organisation (WTO); and
official indifference and negligence have had their
devastating effect too.
While
nature’s unpredictability has been additionally
detrimental to the welfare of farmers in some regions, these
are challenges that farmers have been able to overcome in
the past. Newer types of seeds and farm inputs, promoted by
multinationals, have converted a once innovative and
knowledgeable community into a community that can no longer
work with the soil they know, but is now dependent on
costly, artificial inputs with which they are unfamiliar.
In
1998, the World Bank’s structural adjustment policies
forced India to open its seed sector to global agri-businesses.
As a result of this adjustment, traditional farm saved seeds
have been replaced with genetically engineered seeds that
are non-renewable, thus requiring repurchase for each
growing season. What was once a self-renewing resource has
now become a corporate commodity and a costly investment
which farmers must make every season. While subsidies may
provide limited assistance to some farmers, growers of
cotton and chilli do not enjoy any government subsidies.
These farmers buy highly priced seeds and pesticides from
private suppliers and if the seeds fail to germinate they
rarely get compensation.
Most
importantly, agriculture must return to a farmer-friendly
policy rather than its current bias towards corporations. It
is only when this ideal is achieved that farmers will regain
control of their own lives, financially and mentally.
Humiliation resulting from harassment by moneylenders is the
main reason for farmers’ suicides.
Nearly
half of Indian farmers are crippled by debt. Average debt of
an Indian farmer household is Rs 12,585. Small farmers in
all regions of the country owe lakhs of rupees because
institutional loans, which have fixed interest ceilings of
no more than 14 percent, only provide for about 10 percent
of their credit needs. The other 90 percent of small to
marginal farmer loans come from private moneylenders who are
infamous for constantly harassing their ‘clients’ in
order to enjoy heavy profits of the 24-60 percent interest
that they charge on their loans. When their crops fail time
after time regardless of the money the farmers have invested
in fertilizers, pesticides and bore wells, there is no
profit to be seen and no conceivable way to repay their
lenders.
It
is therefore not surprising that loans taken from private
moneylenders are the most difficult for farmers to pay.
While some states have attempted to ban exorbitant interest
rates implemented by private moneylenders, their
effectiveness is questionable. This will continue as long as
farmers depend on private loans where there are no written
agreements regarding interest ceilings. When the harassment
persists, many farmers become emotionally fatigued and
consequently end their lives in the hope that the meager
relief package provided by the government will give their
family hope of a better future. Currently, many states offer
financial relief packages only to the families of deceased
farmers who were unable to manage payments on their bank
loans while alive!
Although
India has been a frontline crusader in the global battle to
protect the livelihoods of small farmers, its government’s
response on a domestic level has unfortunately been a
different story. Thus, instead of changing agricultural
policies, officials have made unhelpful recommendations
suggesting that farmers boost their self-reliance and
self-respect. Instead of addressing the root of the problem,
the government attributes the cause of farmers’ suicides
to peripheral problems. Continued ignoring of these facts
will only result in failure to prevent a wave of suicides
next growing season.
(Atul
Dev is a New Delhi based senior freelance journalist. He can
be contacted at: atuldev@airtelbroadband.in)
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