The Hindu Business Line : <I>Farmers' suicides </I>

Farmers' suicides in India have been a recurring phenomenon, at least since 1997, and of late have assumed grim proportions. The number of deaths reported in the last 10 years has exceeded 30,000, and almost all States have been affected at one time or another, some accounting for a dozen or more deaths daily. The situation in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Orissa has been going out of control, with Kerala, Karnataka, Punjab, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh not far behind.

The causes are plain enough, and have been confirmed by investigations by official and non-official agencies. The combination of rising cost of cultivation of most agricultural commodities as a direct result of the vaulting prices of essential inputs such as seeds, fertilisers and pesticides and cost of transportation to markets, low returns on investment and hassles in getting the needed credit in time from government-established channels has proved lethal.

The farmers find that their sense of honour (unlike that of cheats and criminals in high places!) leaves them no recourse but to take their own lives to escape the cruel torment they have to suffer daily at the hands of loan sharks to whom they get heavily indebted without resources to meet their obligations.

Strangely, the response of the Central and State Governments, or even of the National Farmers Commission, to the tragedies being enacted on such a large scale over such a long period has been inadequate as well as insensitive. What the farmers are crying for is an immediate solution for their mounting indebtedness, whereas the bulk of the Government's allotment goes for re-capitalising scam-ridden cooperative banks, and implementing assorted schemes for agricultural development and rural infrastructure.

The latest package for Vidarbha is also of the same pattern, with the affected families getting very little out of it, thereby creating conditions for more suicides. Alas for the farmers!

B. S. RAGHAVAN

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