The Hindu Business Line : Death is better than debt

THE number of farmers' suicides in Maharashtra is fast approaching the double century mark. The incidence of suicides is particularly high in the Vidarbha region, blessed with fertile black-cotton soil, and rivers that run with plenty of water for much of the year. The region grows around 15 per cent of India's cotton production. It is famous for its distinctive variety of oranges and abundant forests and mineral wealth.

Farmer suicides all over India are mainly the result of chronic indebtedness — the inability to clear debts and pay interest accumulated over years.

Once a family starts on economic decline, other complications follow — family disputes, illness, alcoholism, and so on. In areas where the lending institutions are from the organised sector, the recovery officers, fully armed with legal powers, take recourse to highly coercive measures to "extort" loan repayment.

Chronic indebtedness, its consequences and the inability to suffer the humiliation of the recovery methods used by lending institutions push the farmers to suicide, from Andhra Pradesh to Punjab.

But last year was an exceptionally a good year for Vidarbha. The cotton crop was good and farmers received unprecedented good prices, thanks to the suspension of the Maharashtra State Cotton Monopoly Procurement Scheme.

The soybean crop was plentiful and fetched as high a price as Rs 1,900 a quintal. Why should such a year of plenty followed by a spate of suicides?

One explanation is that the recovery officers must have smelt a great opportunity to force recoveries. "Farmers have the money," they must have thought. It is only a matter of getting the money out of them. The coercive pressure they brought to bear on them meant humiliation at it worst and, consequently, the suicides.

Recently, I visited the family of a suicide victim in Anandwadi village near Ashti, in Wardha district. In the course of my brief stay there, newspapers carried reports of five suicides by farmers in Wardha, Amaravati and Yeotmal districts. It was not possible to visit all the affected villages. I chose to visit Anandwadi because of its proximity to Ashti.

Ashti is emblazoned in the chronicles of India's freedom movement in an incident associated with a modern-day saint, Tukadoji.

On August 16, 1942, the ryots there attacked the revenue office as also the police chowky, and ransacked and set fire to both premises. Six people were killed on the spot in police firing and four later in the hospital. Ten freedom-fighters were sentenced to death and 55 to life imprisonment. Fortunately, India's Independence came before the sentence could be carried out.

In my earlier visits to Ashti, I have seen the militancy of the farmers who obviously considered it their duty to continue the tradition of the 1942 episode of Ashti. That a farmer living so close to Ashti should have preferred suicide to revolution struck me as rather extraordinary.

The bereaved family lives in a pucca stone house, which was a sign of prosperity in the pre-Independence era. Now it has fallen into disrepair. Grass and plants are growing out of crevices in the walls. The new rich in the village live not too far away, in RCC houses with a decent coat of paint.

The bereaved family in Anandwadi consists of the father, the mother and an elder brother and sister, both married with children, and the victim's pregnant wife.

The family has 14 acres. It has institutional outstandings of around Rs 70,000, besides a large number of loans taken from friends and other farmers as also from loan-sharks at exorbitant interest rates.

The private moneylenders had really not even attempted to make a recovery. The family is held in respect. In this particular village, there was no question of any pressure being exercised by recovery officials of banking institutions or the Maharashtra State Electricity Board (MSEB).

The farmers' organisation is strong. In recent months, its activists have thrown out bank recovery officers as also MSEB wiremen.

The original amount of the bank loan of the victim's family was a mere Rs 10,000. Accumulated interest over the years had swelled the principal seven times. But there was no real pressure to repay.

The disabled father had handed over the family agriculture to the younger son (the victim) as the elder was mentally incapable of taking any responsibility.

The victim had managed to get his elder sister married a couple of years earlier. He got married just four months back. Neither the indebtedness nor the family responsibility was too burdensome by the standards of his society. Then, what could have driven this young farmer of 30 summers to suicide?

Question No 1: The victim was a competent young farmer. What happened to the handsome earnings of last year? Some inquiry brought out that last year's money just disappeared in the large pit of accumulated debts and family needs.

Preference was given to loans taken from family friends and neighbours. That is consistent with the social mores of the village society. There was not much left that could be spared for the organised banking institutions.

Question No 2: The young man must have asked himself, `Why am I the one carrying this burden of the past and responsibilities of the future alone? The father and the elder brother have escaped since mental disease has put them beyond the pale of concern. Why should I not put myself beyond all these worries by cutting off the organ that causes concern?'

He could not, at will, turn lunatic. But he could certainly end it all by a swill of pesticide that is handy in any farmer's house.

There is a heart-rending verse by Bhartruhari, poet laureate of Vidarbha, that translates thus: A poor man, in similar circumstances, goes to the burning ghat and, envying the peace of a dead body lying there, requests it to exchange places if only for a moment; but the shrewd corpse, knowing full well that the death is preferable to poverty, just does not budge.

(The author, Founder of Shetkari Sanghatanais, is a Rajya Sabha member. He can contacted at sharad@mah.nic.in)

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