People's Democracy

ON FARMERS’ SUICIDES

THE 31st all India conference of the All India Kisan Sabha expresses its anguish at the unprecedented wave of distress-induced suicides among farmers in different parts of India. More perhaps than any other social phenomenon, suicide has come to represent in the public eye the depredations of liberalisation and imperialist-led globalisation in the countryside.

Without entering in detail into the grim numbers in this regard, we note that state units of the Kisan Sabha estimate that more than 5,000 farmers committed suicide in Andhra Pradesh since 1998, more than 3000 committed suicide in Maharashtra, about 1,000 farmers committed suicide in Punjab from 1998 to the present, and about 5,000 committed suicide in Karnataka over the same period. It is estimated that 488 farmers committed suicide in Wayanad District in Kerala between 2001 and 2005.

The farmers who committed suicide cultivated a range of crops. There are among them cotton cultivators and cultivators of various other cash crops. At the end of the last kharif, farmers cultivating irrigated paddy also took their own lives, as illustrated dramatically by the suicide of Gurudev Singh, who, unable to sell his paddy for a week, strangled himself to death in the market in Nidala in Kapurthala district.

While every such death is a tragic individual reality for grieving families and loved ones, there are important common features to the farmers’ suicides. These farmers invested heavily in inputs – biological inputs, electricity, machinery, and other components of fixed and variable costs. These costs have risen sharply in the period of liberalisation, and are especially onerous when the farmer invests in seeds produced by private companies, particularly multinational corporations. The farmers were often the victims of plain cheating – they were sold spurious seed and other inputs by unscrupulous traders. Since 1991, farmers have had to witness the massive withdrawal of the formal sector of credit from the countryside, and have had to borrow from the informal sector at usurious rates of interest for their production and consumption needs. Finally, when they reaped a harvest, neo liberalism and the new trade regime robbed them of prices that could even cover their costs, let alone earn them a livelihood. Where the output itself is destroyed by pest, disease or natural disaster, the farmer was un-indemnified  by any system of insurance, and inadequately compensated, if at all, by the state. It is the stark reality that, for many in our society and in such a situation, suicide appears as the alternative of last resort.

In dealing with the issue of farmers’ suicides, the National Commission on Farmers has recommended that the agrarian situation in every state be studied and that action be taken to introduce long-term sustainable livelihoods in farmers’ distress “hotspots”. It has also recommended the establishment of farmers’ distress call centres.

The 31st all-India conference of the All India Kisan Sabha endorses the recommendations of the National Commission in this regard, and demands that

·        An ex gratia payment be made to the families of suicides and that their debts and other liabilities be waived;

·        More institutional credit be provided to peasants, and at a 4 per cent rate of interest, as recommended by the National Commission on Farmers;

·        A comprehensive crop insurance scheme be implemented for all crops and to which all peasants have access;

·        The procurement system be strengthened and minimum support price (MSP) be introduced for all crops; and

·        Stern action be taken against suppliers of spurious inputs.

The 31st all-India Conference of the All India Kisan Sabha appeals to peasants in different parts of our country to not take the extreme step of suicide. The personal or social alternative is not suicide, but unity of the working people against liberalisation and imperialist-led globalisation, and the struggle for decent standards of living and a better society. Suicide is no way; struggle is the way!