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Wake- up call for Ceaseless Agrarian crisis
Highlights
The majority of farmers’ who committed suicides last year were still in the age group of 18 to 45, as many as 3500 young farmers out of 5650 farmers committed suicides in the country, as per the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) statistics, 2014.
The majority of farmers’ who committed suicides last year were still in the age group of 18 to 45, as many as 3500 young farmers out of 5650 farmers committed suicides in the country, as per the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) statistics, 2014.
The startling statistics underscores yet again how dangerous and futile, it has become to take up cultivation as a means of livelihood, besides illuminating yet another sordid reality, as it has become a nationwide phenomenon, but both Centre and State governments have overlooked this state of affairs.
Government aid arrives either too late or is too little to tide over the gargantuan crisis that has hit agriculture and those who earn a living from it. What has queered the pitch further for farmers is the absence of long-term measures in the farm sector, which is still overwhelmingly dependent on the vagaries of nature and a robust monsoon.
Unfortunately, agriculture, the biggest employment sector in the country, gets the least attention from both state and Central governments. In recent years, the economy has undergone a significant transformation, as the share of agriculture in GDP has been falling steadily from 51.8 percent in 1950-51 to 13.9 percent in 2013-14, which indicates a shift transmission from traditional agrarian economy towards dominated one of service sector.
Besides this, as against a target of 4 per cent for agriculture and allied sectors in the Twelfth Plan (2012-17), the growth registered in the first year (at 2011- 12prices) was 1.2 per cent in 2012-13, 3.7 per cent in 2013- 14, and 1.1 per cent in 2014-15. Gross capital formation in agriculture as a percentage of GDP, which was 20.69% in 1993-94, fell to 4.99% in 2011-12 at constant (2004-05) prices. Even in a year of record growth (2006-07), the contribution of the sector actually fell. The state of the sector is, indeed, a matter of grave concern – especially in the context of the size of the population and the ever increasing threat of looming food security.
Even now agriculture happens to be the sole source of income for about 72 per cent of the rural population in India. With the arrival of economic liberalisation in the early 1990, India’s focus has shifted — more and more — to industrialisation and attracting foreign investment. There is nothing wrong in that approach, except that, without addressing the needs of the farmers, India’s growth and progress would remain skewed, besides widening inequality along the rural-urban axis.
Each agrarian crisis has brought with it its attendant problems: farmers quitting their traditional vocation; large-scale migration to towns and cities; steep increase in food prices with hoarders quick to cash in on the scarcity, and governments coughing up huge amounts of money for importing food items.
The overwhelming majority of farmers who took the extreme step of taking their own lives in 2014 were in the prime of their life. They lived off agriculture which was fraught through and through, yet they still soldiered on in the hope and belief that the situation will improve.
The scourge of farmers ending their lives on account of economic distress has for long engaged the attention of various fora across the country. For instance, the High Court of Andhra Pradesh has, recently, in a PIL, asked the Telangana and the Andhra Pradesh states to detail steps taken by them to remedy the situation which is driving farmers to this extreme step. Both states have apparently taken the stand that all that is possible is being done.
Consider the statistics for farmer suicides in 2015, which are even more shocking: In the first six months of this year as many as 1300 farmers in Maharashtra committed suicide. In the state’s Marathwada region alone, the number has crossed 800 till now, prompting the Maharashtra government to adopt Osmanabad, the worst affected district, for its ambitious zero-suicide mission.
A major crisis is brewing in Odisha where 60 farmers have committed suicide in the last two months, owing to crop failure and a mounting burden of debt. With Whitefly destroying two-thirds of Punjab’s cotton produce, farmers are now in dire straits — around 20 farmers of the state have committed suicide.
The endemic agrarian crisis hasn’t escaped the attention of the judiciary. Recently, the Bombay high court took suo motu cognisance of the issue and urged the state government to frame policies keeping in mind the welfare of farmers. More importantly, the court also asked the government to ensure that the benefits and aid offered by it, reach the farmers.
Finally, farmer suicides, like every other issue in contemporary India, has been needlessly politicised, forcing state governments and the Centre to tread cautiously instead of taking bold, new measures to make radical changes in the agrarian sector. The Ministry of Agriculture needs to undergo a self-imposed “one-time-catch up” exercise to remain au fait with the rapidly changing external environment. So should the players in the value chain. No macro-management In addition, there is also no effort at macro-management in important areas of the Centre’s basic functions - such as credit, insurance, research and exim policy (which is currently, at best, stop-go and knee-jerk in nature).
G Rajendera Kumar
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