Tenant farmers bear the brunt of agrarian crisis in Telangana

With the Telangana farmers continuing to end their lives, farmers’ leaders have begun to delve deep into the agrarian crisis.

A study to analyse the issue found that about 70-75 per cent of all those who committed suicide were tenant farmers.

This means that about 1,125 out of the 1,500 suicides reported – after the State came into being – were tenant farmers.

“Tenancy happens at two broad areas. While some landless farmers take about 4-5 acres on rent, some small farmers take 2-3 acres to augment their small chunks. They have to face this additional burden of rental, while others face only crop losses,” Sarampally Malla Reddy, Vice-President of All-India Kisan Sabha, told BusinessLine.

A recent fact-finding study conducted by Rythu Swarajya Vedika and 14 farmers vindicates this argument.

They visited 142 farm families in Telangana that had reported suicides by their bread-winners in the last 16 months.

Warangal, predominantly a cotton-growing district, accounted for nearly half (67) of the 142 suicides, followed by Medak (22) – the district that sent Chief Minister K Chandrasekhara Rao to the Assembly. Karimnagar with 18 and Mahboobnagar with 14 followed.

“We have found that there are 20 mandals where the incidence rate is very high. These mandals witnessed more than 10-20 suicides, reflecting the seriousness,” Ravi Kanneganti of Rythu Swarajya Vedika told BusinessLine .

Malla Reddy said lack of institutional credit to farmers is the root cause of the crisis in the State. “No farmer committed suicide because of a bank loan. All the deaths are happening because of private loans that charge huge interest rates. Only 30 per cent of the credit requirement of a farmer is being met by an institution. They are forced to depend on the private sources to meet the remaining 70 per cent of the credit requirement,” Malla Reddy said.

He put the outstanding private loans in the State at ₹18,000 crore, indicating the seriousness of the problem.

The other reasons that have led the farmers to take the extreme step are unprofitable prices and absence of support systems. “The cost of inputs such as seed and fertilisers has gone up significantly, making it unviable for farmers,” Ravi said.

Srinivas Ranabothu, who co-founded the US-based initiative i4farmers to help farmers in India and toured the crisis-hit villages as part of the fact-finding team, said cotton was at the centre of the crisis.

“They borrowed heavily for the input-intensive crop. But they landed in financial crisis because of the crop failure,” he said.

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