FARMERS SUICIDES IN INDIA-

A POLICY INDUCED DISASTER OF EPIC PROPORTIONS

January 15, 2012

By The Sanhati Collective

Source:

Introduction

Since 1995, more than 253,000 farmers have been reported to have committed suicides in India, making this the largest wave of suicides in the world. Other than a few conscientious journalists like P. Sainath and Jaideep Hardikar, the mainstream media has largely ignored this historically unprecedented event. Busy with crafting a palatable picture of “shining” India, the mainstream media has neglected its duty to report on the lives and livelihoods of the largest group of working people in India: farmers. The Indian government’s actions on this issue has been equally, if not more, deplorable. Other than making vapid pronouncements and organizing high-publicity visits of Prime and Chief Ministers to the region, the Central and State governments have done little to ameliorate the conditions of the miserable farmers. No wonder then that the abominable phenomenon of farmer suicides continues with unmitigated ferocity. As a reminder that business-as-usual means disaster for theaamaadmiin Shining India, it was recently reported in the press that a fresh wave of suicides have occurred in various states in India in 2011[1].

2. The Aggregate and State-level Facts

To put matters into perspective Sanhati has collected and analyzed farmer suicide data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) for all the Indian states between 1995 and 2010[2]. Figure 1 presents an annual time series plot of the total number of farmer suicides reported in India between 1995 and 2010 at the all-India level and for the top 8 and top 4 states.

Two patterns are visible in Figure 1. First, for the all-India numbers as much as for the top 8 and top 4 states, there is an overall trend of increasing farmer suicides between 1995 and 2010. While it is true, and a welcome development, that there is a break in the increasing trend line in the mid-2000s, the overall figures in the late-2000s are way above the numbers in the mid-1990s. At the all-India level, total farmer suicides reported in 1995 was below 11,000; in 2010, it was hovering around 16,000.

Second, and more problematic, is the fact that the 4 states that account for about two-thirds of the total farmer suicides in the country show a very very mild decline since the mid-2000s. The trend line for these 4 states have basically flattened out since the mid-2000s, highlighting the fact that the states with the highest incidence of farmer suicides have not made much progress. This fact must then temper the optimism, if any, arising from the decline in the all-India numbers since the mid-2000s.

Let us now turn to a more disaggregated analysis of these overall figures by looking at the top 8 and top 4 states, as a group, in some detail. Figure 2 presents the time profile of farmer suicides in the 8 states that have consistently witnessed the largest number of farmer suicides in India, accounting for about 66 percent of the all-India total in 2010 (the recent most year for which data is available at the NCRB website). In descending order of farmer suicides in 2010, the states are: Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh (including Chhattisgarh), Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh. Two patterns are visible in Figure 2.

First, there is an overall trend of increasing farmer suicides in these 8 major states between 1995 and 2010. In 1995 and 1996, these 8 states together had reported a total of 8988 and 11715 farmer suicides respectively; in 2009 and 2010, the corresponding figures were 14431 and 13591 respectively. While the total for these 8 states has declined a little from the phenomenally high numbers in the mid-2000s, the total remains much higher than what was reported in the mid-1990s.

Second, there is a clear division among these 8 states into two groups. The first group consists of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh (including Chhattisgarh), Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh. These 4 states are in a league by themselves, reporting more than 2000 farmer suicides per year over the last two years, and accounting for 62 percent of the total farmer suicides in the country between 1995 and 2010. Most alarmingly, the trend of farmer suicides within these 4 states, accounting for two-thirds of all the farmer suicides in the country in 2010, is increasing over time. While Maharashtra reported lower number of farmer suicides compared to the astronomical highs in the mid-2000s, the others have continued their upward trend. Moreover, even Maharashtra reports much higher suicides today compared to the mid-1990s. Hence, the overall trend in this group of 4 states is increasing over time.

The second group consists of West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh. In recent years, these 4 states have accounted for about 20 percent of all the farmer suicides in the country and have consistently reported between 500 and 1000 farmer suicides every year, with Uttar Pradesh reporting the lowest figures. The trend among these 4 states, for the period between 1995 and 2010, is flat. These states have witnessed some declines since the early 2000s, but that has only brought them to levels that they reported in the mid-1990s. Over the whole period since 1995, these states do not show any significant decline in the number of farmer suicides. The reader’s attention hardly needs to be drawn towards the irony that two of these states, West Bengal and Kerala, had been ruled by “communists” for the whole or significant parts of the period under consideration. The fact that West Bengal figures consistently among the 6 “top” states in terms of farmer suicides flies in the face of all claims by CPI (Marxist) sympathizers that the mainstream left has been more farmer-friendly than other bourgeois political parties in India.

To sum up: more than 253,000 farmers have been reported to have committed suicides between 1995 and 2010; the actual number is likely to be higher because of deficiencies in reporting suicides. Four states account for about two-thirds of these suicides: Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh (including Chhattisgarh), Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Another four account for a fifth of all the suicides: West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh. Even though the all-India number of farmer suicides have declined slightly since the mid-2000s, the 4 states that account for most of the farmer suicides have not shown much decline.

3. Data Scepticism?

Faced with these disconcerting facts about the high rates of farmer suicides in Indian states (especially Maharashtra, Madhya Pradhesh, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh), the sceptic will naturally ask: how do we know that these people died primarily due to farm distress, and not due to other reasons? After all the data which are being used in support of the claim are from the NCRB (National Crime Related Bureau) report “Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India.” Surely there are many suicide deaths enumerated in the report which had little to do with agricultural performance?

While admitting that all suicide deaths in the farming community are not due to agrarian crisis, the link between crisis and suicides can be tested if one examines the rate of farmer suicides, and try to discern qualitative changes in its magnitude over time. If the trend value of this parameter has been more or less constant over a long period of time, with only abrupt fluctuations in few years, one can reasonably conclude that the observed high rates of suicides in the farming community may be temporary aberrations caused by idiosyncratic reasons which has little to do with long run phenomena such as agrarian crisis. The suicide rate would eventually converge to the general national trend. On the other hand if there has been a rise in suicide rates among farmers and one observes long run persistence of these high rates, there are reasons to believe that many of the suicides are due to systemic causes related to agriculture.

Srijit Mishra (2006a) of the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR) in Mumbai has calculated these numbers through an interpolation exercise. Table 1 reproduces the relevant data that relates to the suicide mortality rate (SMR) in some select years. SMR is defined as the number of suicides per 100000 population. The table shows a marked increase in the rate of male farmers’ suicide, which appears to be sustained, at least for the periods for which the calculation was made.

Table 1: SMR for Indian farmers, according to sex

Another important parameter in this context is the ratio between farmers’ and non-farmers’ SMR. Table 2 presents data on the ratio of farmers and non-farmers’ SMR for India and a few select states for male farmers.

Table 2: Farmer SMR/Non-farmer SMR of India and select states (male farmers)

Considering mid-1990s as the beginning of the suicide epidemic, it is apparent that at an all-India level the relative SMR of farmers has gone up in the subsequent years. However, the rise is not remarkably high at the national level (rising from 0.77 to 1.03 between 1995 and 2001). At the level of states, Punjab had undergone high suicide incidents in the initial years, but managed to lower the rate subsequently. In Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka there were fluctuations over the years, though the ratio seems to have certainly gone up over the years. But Maharashtra stands out. It has not only had the highest value among these states, a ratio of 2.27 in 2001, but more ominously, the growth seems to have been steady over the years (climbing from 0.82 in 1995 to 2.27 in 2001).

Summary: the evidence regarding the ratio of suicide mortality rate for farmers and non-farmers across Indian states clearly establishes that the spate of farmer suicides can neither be considered a temporary phenomenon, nor can it be considered part of the “ordinary” suicide deaths in the country. Data scepticism about farmer suicides cannot be sustained.

Turning now to an analysis of the factors that underlies the largest wave of suicides in history, we will proceed in two steps. In the first step, we will present the analysis at the aggregate level, looking at macroeconomic factors and policy changes. In the next step, we will present a more disaggregated picture, looking at two cases studies – cotton in Vidarbha (Maharashtra), and coffee & spices in Wayanad (Kerala) – that provide details about the factors at work. The conclusion that emerges from this two step study is the following: farmer suicides is a straightforward case of a policy-induced disaster; policy changes under a neoliberal dispensation (starting early to mid-1980s) leads to the phenomenon of farmer suicides via the route of acute agrarian distress.

4. The Aggregate-level Picture

To understand the macro-level linkages running from policy changes to the phenomenon of farmer suicides, we need to ask: what is leading such a large number of farmers to commit suicides? The simple answer is: agrarian distress. Farmers (and sometimes their family members) are committing suicides due to the acute distress they are facing. Our next question is: what is causing such acute distress among farmers? Large, mounting and unsustainable levels of indebtedness. Which brings forth the next question: why are farmers becoming increasingly indebted? Because their incomes are systematically falling below their expenditures. Thus, we are led to the simple conclusion: to understand the phenomenon of unprecedented farmer suicides we need to understand the patterns and sources of income & expenditures of the vast majority of farmer households.

4.1. Stagnant Revenues
Why has income from agricultural production been dwindling? Quite simply because revenues have been stagnant (or falling) while costs of agricultural production have gone up. Revenues have been stagnant because of a complex set of factors. Let us take them up one by one.

First: yield (i.e., crop output per unit of land) growth of most crops have stagnated. This is the direct result of the increasing pressure on cultivable land: the total area under cultivation has declined while the number of operational holding have increased, implying that each operational holding is now much smaller than in the early 1960s. Between 1960-61 and 2003, the total number of operational holdings increased from 50.77 million to 101.27 million. During the same period, the total operated area declined from 133.46 million hectares to 107.65 million hectares. Thus average operated area declined from 2.63 hectares to 1.06 hectares. (NSSO,Some Aspects of Operational Land Holdings in India, various issues)

On top of this is the fragmentation of each holding into multiple plots. Thus, the declining size of operational holding, along with continued fragmentation, has meant smaller production units in terms of land area. This constrains the ability to use improved technologies of production, and has been one of the main reasons behind the stagnation of yield growth.

Second: due to the neoliberal policy orientation and the neglect of the rural sector, agricultural research and extension services have virtually disappeared from the country; thus new and better crop varieties have not reached the farmer. Along with this, irrigation (surface water) infrastructure has been neglected, and soil improvement and management efforts have been drastically curtailed. Compounding this has been the excessive use of fertilizers in several areas of the country that saw the so-called Green Revolution. All this has led to degradation in the quality of the soil, and contributed to the stagnation of crop yield growth.

Third: gradually doing away with import restrictions has meant a flood of low price agricultural imports (the low prices from US and European countries being supported by massive subsidies in those countries). By a perverse turn of policy, the minimum support price (MSP) for many crops have been kept below market prices. Both these factors have put downward pressure on crop prices, especially for smaller farmers who lack storage and transportation facilities (and have to sell to the local trader right after harvest).

4.2. Rising Costs of Cultivation

Let us now turn to costs of agricultural production and see why they have been rising over the past two decades. One of the main reasons behind the rising costs of cultivation is the gradual change in crop patterns that have been directly and indirectly induced by policy changes. Lifting of export restrictions and entry of multinational corporations have encouraged to farmers that they could shift from traditional crops (like rice, wheat, pulses, etc.) to cash crops like cotton, potato, tomato, etc.

Cotton is the quintessential crop that lies entwined with the wave of farmer suicides. So, let us take a closer look at cotton. Production of cotton requires large capital outlays, large in comparison to typical earnings of farmer households. Seeds need to be bought from the market every year (because of restrictions put in place by the MNCs selling the seeds); large quantities of fertilizers and pesticides are also needed (whose prices are increasing because of reduction of subsidies). Cotton cultivation (like most other cash crops) is very water intensive. Since, during this same period, provision of irrigation was being systematically reduced, farmers had to make investments in bore well (tube well) technology to secure the supply of ground water. This involved substantial outlays, most of the time a sum that was far beyond the reach of the average farmer. Taken together, these factors implied increasing costs of cotton cultivation.

Most of the time, these costs (especially the large outlays required for tube wells or even the buying of seeds, fertilizer and pesticides that was part of the cotton cultivation package) could only be met with credit. The credit was provided by the same agency (often a branch of some MNC like Monsanto) that sold the seeds, the fertilizer and the pesticide, along with the knowledge that was required to carry out the cultivation. With such interlinked markets, there was a serious conflict of interest in the sense that the agency would almost always “advise” farmers to use much more than the optimal quantity of inputs.

4.3. Rising Essential Expenditures

The same neoliberal policy framework that reduced subsidies on fertilizer anddiesel(and petrol), let the irrigation infrastructure gradually go to the dogs, opened up the import and export of agricultural crops, increased the cost of electricity, also reduced the rural component of development expenditures. For instance, gross fixed capital formation in agriculture as a share of GDP declined from 3.1% during the late 1980s to 1.6% during the last part of the Ninth Plan period. Again, and probably more relevant for our purposes, the share of plan expenditures devoted to the agricultural sector fell from 13.1% to 7.4% during the same period (GOI, 2006, pp. 37). This meant that the burden of health care, social security and educational expenditures now fell on households, including poor farmer households.