People's Democracy

Peasant Suicides: Why Kerala Is Different

Prabhat Patnaik

THE last few years have seen a spate of peasant suicides all over the country. The affected regions have included even the cradle of the Green Revolution, Punjab, where the state government has admitted that over 2,000 farmer suicides have taken place over a decade, while actual numbers are likely to be higher. While peasants even in hitherto prosperous mainly foodgrains producing areas have not escaped such a tragic fate, the brunt of the tragedy has been borne by peasant families in southern India, from Maharashtra to Andhra Pradesh to Karnataka and Kerala, who are exclusively engaged in growing cash crops.

NOTORIOUS UNDERESTIMATES

Statistics about the number of peasants in the different parts of the country who have taken their lives are difficult to come by. The official statistics are notorious underestimates. Since official recognition of a suicide makes the victim’s family eligible for compensation, the tendency on the part of bourgeois state governments is to economise on compensation through non-recognition. This is compounded by a number of conceptual problems as well: often the land happens to be in the name of the old father but is cultivated by his able-bodied son; in the event of distress it is the son who commits suicide but this is not recognised as a peasant suicide because the son, not having any explicit rights on land, is not even counted as a peasant. A second problem arises from the lack of appreciation of the fact that the peasant economy is a complete and interrelated economy. If a peasant’s income drops either because of a crop failure or because of a drop in the price he receives, then this manifests itself in the fact that he has to borrow more for his daughter’s wedding or his elderly parents’ medical treatment or other such purposes. And if he commits suicide because he cannot pay back this loan then this is attributed not to any agrarian causes but to his “profligacy” in borrowing for such purposes. Such suicides therefore are not treated with much sympathy and the victim’s family in such cases is often not recognised as being eligible for state government relief. Non-recognition of cases of this sort again keeps down the official number of suicides.

STOPPED IN KERALA

Official data on suicides therefore mean little. Data provided by kisan organisations are far more reliable, but they are not available on a continuous basis for all parts of the country. But on the basis of such data as we have, a remarkable fact emerges, which, surprisingly, has escaped attention till now, namely that Kerala is the only one among the major affected states where peasant suicides have virtually stopped.

Let us take the Wayanad district, which was the worst affected district in Kerala. The numbers of suicides, according to the figures compiled by the Wayanad Karshaka Sangharsh Samiti, were as follows:

2001 – 56
2002 - 96
2003 - 117
2004 - 131
2005 - 86
2006 - 48
2007 – 7 (till date)

Of course seven suicides during 2007 is still depressing, but these occurred in the earlier part of the year. Over the last several months, which are normally the months witnessing the maximum number of suicides, there have hardly been any suicides at all.

By contrast in Vidarbha, which had been one of the worst hit regions in the country and which had attracted much attention because of prime minister Manmohan Singh’s visit there and unveiling of a relief package that was to get generalised later to the country as a whole, suicides continue with depressing regularity. According to figures compiled by the Vidarbha Jana Andolan Samiti, the number of suicides was 1452 in 2006, and 827 in 2007 (till date). In fact the number of suicides after Manmohan Singh’s relief package was launched is an incredible 1695!

Likewise even in Andhra Pradesh which was once afflicted by this tragedy and which is now thought to be free of it because of the non-appearance of any newspaper reports on suicides, the tragedy continues. The figures compiled by the Andhra Pradesh Rytu Sangham are as follows.

2004 – 1709
2005 - 617
2006 - 370
2007 - 522 (till September 23)

What is striking here is that the number which had declined till 2006, has started increasing once again in the current year. Whatever one may say about the accuracy of these figures, they clearly show that with the exception of Kerala, where they have virtually come to an end, suicides continue in every other major affected state.

BRINGING HOPE

The question naturally arises: why have suicides come to a virtual end in Kerala and not elsewhere? There is no doubt that the international prices of a number of cash crops grown in Kerala have firmed up in the recent period, especially after 2004, even though they still remain in most cases below their earlier peaks. But this is true of other states as well. Raw cotton prices have certainly improved even though they fall well below what the peasants have been asking for; suicides in Vidarbha continue nonetheless.

One big difference between Kerala and the other states which perhaps explains why suicides have stopped in Kerala and not elsewhere, is that Kerala has set up a Debt Relief Commission, which at this very moment is engaged in a case-by-case scrutiny of the magnitude of debt and the requisite relief in the Wayanad district. The important thing about the Commission is not the actual amount of relief it has provided (in any case the amount it has at its disposal from the current year’s budget is Rs 130 crore, which, even though large relative to the size of the state budget, is paltry relative to the size of the debt); the important thing is that it has brought a measure of hope to the distressed peasantry. And it is this hope, that something at last is being done for them, which has prevented peasants from taking the ultimate drastic step. For this very reason however one cannot be complacent about the end of suicides in Kerala. Any dashing of peasant hopes and any reversal in their fortunes because of a lowering of output and prices will once again revive the dismal saga of suicides.

REASONS FOR CONCERN

There are at least four reasons for concern here. The first arises because of the nature of the central government’s relief measures. These measures, leaving aside the ones relating to investment and output-stimulation, focused mainly on interest relief. They did not touch the issue of providing assured remunerative prices which is at the centre of the crisis. But even in the matter of interest relief, those who were the “beneficiaries” of 2004 relief measures, were excluded from its purview. Now, the 2004 relief measures were actually no relief measures: all they did was to reschedule debt, which means that the date on which a debt had to repaid to a bank was postponed, but during the period of postponement the peasants were required to continue paying compound interest which got added to the debt that had to be eventually paid. And yet this niggardly measure of dubious relief was considered sufficient to exempt all its so-called “beneficiaries” from the “interest relief” announced by Manmohan Singh. As a result, in the case of Kerala, against NABARD’s own estimate that interest relief of around Rs 750 crore had to be given, if 2004-“beneficiaries” were not exempted from its purview, only around Rs 219 crore have been given to date. The bulk of the remainder cannot be given owing to the central government’s insistence that any “beneficiary of 2004-relief” is ineligible for interest relief. This fact continues to subject the peasants to a massive burden, which the Debt Relief Commission can scarcely alleviate. Outstanding debt continues therefore to hang like a Damocles sword over the peasantry.

The second reason for concern is that NABARD is threatening to stop providing refinance to the State Co-operative Bank (SCB) because of its high ratio of “non-performing assets”, reportedly around 26 per cent. In such a case, the SCB will not be able to provide agricultural loans including to small and marginal farmers. The fact that the State Cooperative Bank may in the past have made loans of dubious quality to political favourites of the UDF is no reason for denying credit to the poor and marginal farmers. When we talk of NPA we are after all not talking about the NPA on account of loans to such farmers (for to deny them credit on this argument defeats the very purpose of relief); we are talking about NPA consisting of loans to other segments. To deny credit to farmers on account of this, and to force them to borrow from moneylenders instead, is cruel and absurd. But this is precisely what a government-controlled bank is threatening to do in the regime of “neo-liberalism”. Contrast this with the Bank of England’s coming to the rescue of British commercial banks, caught with high NPAs owing to the sub-prime loan crisis of the USA. Neo-liberalism dislikes only peasants, not finance capital.

The third source of concern arises because of the central government’s penchant for entering into Free Trade Agreements with other Asian economies many of which grow the same commercial crops as Kerala but at lower costs of production because of the relative youth of their plantations. Such FTAs may benefit the manufacturing sector, i.e. the large Indian industrial capital, but they do so at the expense of the peasantry and petty producers. Not only is there no system of compensation of the losers by the gainers, such as even elementary bourgeois economics demands as a condition for such a move, but state governments are not even consulted when the commerce ministry goes on its FTA-signing spree. But every such signing brings misery to the Kerala peasantry.

The fourth source of concern is the appreciating rupee, which depresses the peasants’ prices. Now that both Kamal Nath and Chidambaram have made it clear that the government will do nothing to stem the appreciation of the rupee, the only logical possibility that remains for an alleviation of the distress of the peasantry is if the speculators bring the rupee down. But because of their “herd instinct”, when they do so, the rupee will crash, which will bring misery to the peasants in another form, through high input costs and industrial consumer goods prices, which will have escalated owing to the high import prices of oil and other essential commodities.

In the epoch of “globalisation” associated with the hegemony of international finance capital, peasants and petty producers necessarily face a crisis. Suicides were caused by this crisis. The LDF government’s ameliorative measures have brought suicides to a halt for the present. But the logic of “globalisation” remains. The only resistance against that logic is when the peasants move away from suicides to struggles.