At the cost of human life

The National Crime Records Bureau in 2014 recorded farmer suicides in India for the first time and reported a total of 5,650 suicides by farmers, out of which 5,178 were male farmers and 472 female farmers and the number is only increasing. The reasons cited are ‘bankruptcy or indebtedness caused by crop loan’, and some due to ‘family problems.’

Behind every suicide there is an entire story of human loss, with a whole family affected for years to come. As reports of suicides pour in from Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Karnataka and Maharashtra, it appears people barely pay attention to the complex agrarian crisis that will only get bigger and affect every Indian - urban and rural. And, the need of the hour is not just crisis management but dealing with the crisis in itself

“The Maharashtra Government put me on the Farmers’ Distress Management Task Force. How does one manage distress? It should be distress removal task force - Kishore Tiwari of the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti

I sometimes try to recall where it all began.” Usha Ashtekar muses as she contemplates the photographs adorning a wall in her house. Her father Balkishan Ashteka​​r committed suicide six years back, when Usha was a teenager. He cracked under the pressure of debts he could not repay. When the local Sowcar filed a complaint against him, Bal Kishan could not take it anymore, went to the Sowcar’s house and consumed pesticide as the horrified moneylender watched.

“I sometimes try to recall where it all began,” says Usha now. She just remembers that it was late evening when villagers came running to tell her and her brother that their father was in death throes on the street. She recalls happy days before that when she was a pampered daughter and her father delighted in the tinkle of payal on her tiny feet. Of family times spent together.

This is a story that finds replication in almost every second household in Vidarbha. Every village has at least a dozen households that lost a father, a husband or a son to farm distress. Households headed by widows, uninformed, uneducated, unskilled, un-resourced women thrown unprepared into a crisis.

Vandana Mulay is another such woman who lost her husband to debt. With the responsibility of two children and a mentally-disturbed mother-in-law, the 35-yr-old toils day and night. And earns a measly Rs 2000 in a month. Owner of three acres of land and still a labourer. In someone else’s farm.

Where did it all begin? How did a single region come to emerge as the suicide capital of India? Vidarbha’s tragedy is well-known. The calamity has been well-documented. The reasons are many and virtually every stage in agriculture is plagued by problems. Skewed policies, lack of leadership, lack of irrigation, wrong cropping patterns, diversion of water to industries, crop loans, waivers and insurance lacunae, middlemen, fertilizers, pesticides, moneylenders, drought, floods, climate change, indifferent and opportunistic politicians, lack of education, awareness – reasons that one way or the other go to hit the weakest link of the chain, the farmer.

Statistics have long since stopped giving an accurate picture, what with many suicides being registered as accidental deaths or, worse, not recorded at all. The National Crime Records Bureau in 2014 recorded farmer suicides in India for the first time and reported a total of 5650 suicides by farmers, out of which 5178 were male farmers and 472 female farmers. Maharashtra reported 765 and adjoining Telangana 146 suicides, citing reasons of ‘bankruptcy or indebtedness caused by crop loan’. And some due to ‘family problems.’

Behind every suicide there is an entire story of human loss, with a whole family affected for years to come and what the rest of the nation seems to miss is the human cost that agriculture is extracting. As reports of suicides pour in from Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Karnataka and Maharashtra, it appears people barely pay attention to the complex agrarian crisis.

Kishore Tiwari of the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti is a veteran warrior. He is on a relentless crusade to stem the disastrous slide, but his fatigue shows occasionally. “The Maharashtra Government put me on the Farmers’ Distress Management Task Force. How does one manage distress? It should be distress removal task force,” he says wryly. VJAS is based in Pandharkawda in Yavatmal district, a mere 40 km from Telangana border in Adilabad.

The border is just a thin geographic line and the crisis has spread its tentacles well across the entire area, encompassing both the states. Tiwari is a well-known and much-trusted activist in Vidarbha. He not only remembers the farmers and their families by name, he ensures that each family’s issues are addressed to the extent possible. One of those rare activists who’s able to extensively document the tragedy and influence policy, Tiwari manages to keep pessimism at bay when he talks about efforts to prevent suicides.

The Task Force has thus far made many key recommendations including agro-strengthening tax, restoration of farm credit and insurance to farmers; reduction of rate of interest for crop loans to 4%, waiver of interest on loans in distress hotspots, moratorium on debt recovery; sustainable livelihoods for the poor; and a plan for a money-lender free villages with at least one member from a family being a part of an SHG.

In a region that is marked by water shortage, cultivation of water-intensive crops has hit the farmer hard. As it happened with Kamlabai’s Raobhan’s farm. Owner of a three-acre land, four km away from the nearest water source, Kamlabai was crestfallen when a dry fortnight early this month made her cotton crop wither away and is now waiting to see how her soya bean fares. “Digging a well costs 2 ½ lakh rupees, no one is interested in laying a pipeline from the pond 4 km away. We just look skywards,” she says.

However, her problems are not just with rain. When her husband Raobhan Surpan committed suicide four years ago, she had to forcibly pull her 13-yr-old son out of school and put him in charge of the farm. The burden turned the young boy, now 17, into a subdued, dejected youngster who barely speaks up. When asked if he could go to school when there is no work in the fields, Lakshman gives a pitying look. And answers in a low voice. “Kahan hota, madam? Gaay, bakri kaun paalegaa?” (Who will look after the cattle?)

Kamlabai may yet have her son continue in agriculture, but for many widows in Vidarbha, the future of their farm is a major question. With no irrigation and no capital in hand, the women farmers can neither till the land themselves nor can they afford to engage labour.

“My three children are studying in college. They have rented a room in Pandharkawada and visit me only once in a month. They rarely step into the farm and my son walks by as if it is someone else’s land,” laments Surekha Chauhan, whose husband Rajesh committed suicide six years back. “The farm killed my father, why would I want to be a farmer?” Jeevan, the son, retorts.

​Community response, as is the tendency these days, is emerging from the social media. Many pages and groups have been started, engaging netizens in the cause of the farmers. While some raise funds for families in distress, some organise events. Some bring stories of the calamity-stricken providers while some others espouse the cause of organic farming.

Pages such as i4farmers, StandwithFarmers, Vidarbha Diaries, Raithu Swarajya Vedika are deeply immersed in the cause. Their effort is not just to help individuals but to form a pressure lobby to influence policy with an aim to ultimately make agriculture viable. Interestingly, Non-resident Indians express deep concern.

Most pages originate from the NRI Community. One such page is the Farmers' Day, a group that is aiming to drum up support from about 7 lakh people in a period of three months. The group, led by Sreekanth Kocharlakota, has applied for a Guinness event for Maximum Pledges for a single cause. I4farmers came up with a 20-point action plan, suggesting 20 things that volunteers, anyone interested in the cause, can do to help.

“Farmers are producing record food grains not because of the government but despite the government, not because of the weather but despite the weather,” says Suresh Ediga, an NRI actively engaged in alleviating farm distress in Vidarbha, Haryana and Telangana. “We can't procure food, we can't store it, and we can't distribute it and we wonder why NCRB data shows such a high suicide rate. And why farming is not viable in a country like India.” Suresh, the force behind i4farmers, says.

He has just initiated a call-a-thon to people’s representatives, asking them to consider three demands - Issue of Loan Eligibility Cards for tenant farmers, set up a Farm Income Commission to guarantee a minimum salary or monthly income for farmers and ex gratia of Rs 6 lakh to be retroactively effective since formation of T-Govt.

It is a crisis that is much bigger than we think, warn experts. The farm distress is going to affect everyone sooner than we think, say activists. And yet, urban India remains oblivious to the catastrophe that struck the community which puts food on its plate and to the human cost that rural India is paying.

i4Farmers came up with a 20-point action plan, suggesting 20 things that volunteers, anyone interested in the cause, can do to help

1. Understand the issues leading up to the farming crisis

2. Organise events to highlight farmers issues

3. Organise fund raisers

4. Write, sing, draw or simply express about farmers issues

5. Meet the farmer(s) - Take a trip to the villages and understand the issues better

6 Adopt a farmer family

7. Sponsor a childs education

8. Adopt a village

9. Help setup seed banks

10. Help setup knowledge banks so information can be shared across the farming community

11. Technology solutions to act as tools for the farmers

12. Organise farmer exhibitions to highlight their work

13. Buy local food and help build local communities to buy local

14. File RTI's to extract information about farmer suicides, compensation

15. Understand why crop insurance, drought insurance etc, never reaches the farmer

16. Pressure the government with facts and data

17. Training on alternative livelihoods opportunities

18. Value addition i.e. food processing to help maximize the profits for the farmers

19. Connect the farmer with the consumer directly

20. Reserve December 23, as ‘Farmers Day’ to honour and respect the farmers for their immense contributions

By Usha Turaga Revelli