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Farmers’ Suicides in AP – The Cause And Cure

GVVSDS Prasad is Secretary, Andhra Pradesh Sarvodaya Mandal, Hyderabad, India. He can be reached at apsarvodayamandal@yahoo.com.

While indebtedness and a hysteria-like situation are cited as reasons for farmers’ self killings, the deeper reasons lie in the fact that the farmer is uprooted from his native agricultural practices. GVVSDS PRASAD makes a case for self-reliance and going back to nature.
The farming community in India is going through an unprecedented crisis. The food givers to the nation find it difficult to survive and choose death as an answer to their problems. While the phenomenon of farmers’ suicides has become a national problem, its acuteness is felt more in the state of Andhra Pradesh. The wrath of the farming community resulted in the defeat of the Telugu Desam government which ignored the issues of the farming sector.

Since the Congress government assumed power in May, 2004, close to 500 farmers ended their lives in Andhra Pradesh. It has become a hot topic of discussion everywhere. 

The new government provided free power to the farmers, declared a moratorium on loans, announced packages for giving succor to agricultural operations and also announced ex-gratia compensation to the families of deceased farmers. These measures could not see any decline in the spate of suicides.

Several reports were pouring in everyday pointing out to the reasons for these suicides. There were arguments that all the reported deaths are not farmers’ suicides but brought under the category by the press. That discussion is not significant here as the fact remains that farmers are resorting to the extreme step unable to cope up with the pressures farming has now imposed on them.

Farmers’ indebtedness was pointed as the main culprit for these deaths. Year after year, the indebtedness went on mounting with increasing demands, and threats of money lenders who account for 80 % of lending (only 20% is catered to by the banking sector). Successive crop failures due to the drought situation and not being able to get fair prices at the market put the farmers’ balance sheet in the negative. Further analysis was given explaining the reasons for these crop failures – spurious seeds, adulterated fertilizers, insecticides and pesticides, failure of bore-wells etc.

Erratic rains and drought situations have been recorded by history. But we have not heard of farmers’ suicides in the past as we do now. It is also difficult to accept the argument that any one would commit suicide just because of indebtedness. In many other enterprises, people do invest borrowed funds and it is likely that they occasionally fail in their ventures and are consequently unable to meet their commitment to their creditors. The lenders make all efforts to recover their dues together with interest and put pressure on the borrower which can assume different forms. But their rights are limited to the amount due to them or the property mortgaged or hypothecated for securing the loan but not to the person as an individual. They can not resort to any unlawful method to recover the loan. Hence it is difficult to believe that indebtedness is a reason good enough to prompt the farmer to resort to terminate his life. 

Some even argue that the increase in farmers’ deaths is due to a hysteria kind of situation. One farmer commits suicide, which seems as an answer to another farmer for his problems. So, an atmosphere of encouragement to deaths is created. There is also a school that believes that government compensation to the families of deceased farmers is also a reason for such deaths. While each of these arguments can provide superficial reasons for these self killings, the deeper reasons lie in the fact that the farmer is uprooted from his native agricultural practices.

Next Page: The Underlying Causes

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