Farmer Suicides in India

I propose to shortly put out a brief analysis of the farmer suicide syndrome in India for purposes of discussion in response to Chandra's recent comment on the poverty issue that is being discussed in this blog.

The growing numbers of farmer suicides in India is a tragic topic -- in an environment of a rapidly growing economy, involving complex political, social and economic issues --- especially in the area of rising disparity in incomes in rural India per se and between rural India and Urban India.

There are many reasons that lead farmers to commit suicide but perhaps the most prominant of those are those which affect farmer incomes and increases his indebtedness to money lenders.

These include:

-- crop failures due to irregular and inadequate rains, drought or flooding; lack of crop insurance in terms of coverage and products that are cost effective;

-- lakc of access to working capital due to failure of the formal credit system and/or fully used up credit rating and eligibility with local money lenders and family friends;

-- farmers' resultant inability to buy inputs such as seeds, fertilisers, draft power and water;

-- serious problem of spurious or poor quality seeds and fertilizers that are sold in the market fradulently using brand names; severe land fragmentation and resultant uneconomic farm sizes;

-- slow progress on land reform; large number of land-less labor exacerbated by lack of employment opportunities in rural areas;

-- ineffective implementation of public employment guarantee schemes; and

-- undeveloped and inefficient marketing infrastructure; and government procurement and support price policies though prima facie helping some farmers, leading to serious market distortions and inequalities.

Small and marginal farmers' economic situation is additionally exacerbated by age-old social enviornment that involves payment of huge dowries in marriages of daughters, and huge expenditures on obligatory feeding of village communities in the event of a death in the family. An integrated social safety net for farm households is yet to emerge in India.

Nevertheless, the problem of accurate statistical assessment of farm suicides remains: we really do not know how serious is this problem vs. other suicides in rural areas and those in rural areas vs. urban areas.

Or is there much media hype on this issue -- especially for political reasons? It is well known that the issue of farmer suicides led to the fall of the government of Chandrababu Naidu during AP's last assembly elections -- Mr. Naidu's remarkable work on modernizing the provision of public services did not help.

At the national level, BJP which made a big story of "India Shining" during the last Loksabha (Parliamentary) elections ended up in losing power at the Center on account of farmer perception that they were not getting a fair deal in an otherwise growing economy. All this seems to suggest that India's programs for rural areas are screwed up in many dimensions, excerbated by fast-melting social support framwork at the village level that was in the past readily accessible to farm families. The village communities generally did not allow a hunger death to occur among them.

We need to get back to all these issues but with a constructive effort toward nailing down an approach that is practical and capable of implementation not only with more efficient and effective public sector involvement but with greater community ownership and involvement.