India'S
terrible Toll In Rural Suicides
By M. Kailash
29 April 2006
World
Socialist Web
Indebtedness,
crop failure and the inability to pay back loans due to high rates of
interest have led as many as 25,000 peasants in India to commit suicide
since the 1990s, according to official figures. The systematic neglect
of India’s multi-million peasantry, combined with the free market
policies implemented by successive governments, are responsible.
On February 19, Alladi Rajkumar,
a senior parliamentarian from the opposition Telugu Desam Party (TDP)
in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, reported in India’s upper
house of parliament that over 3,000 farmers had taken their lives during
the past 22 months under the Congress-led state government. The deteriorating
conditions of the peasantry were a significant factor in the defeat
of the previous TDP administration.
Andhra Pradesh has become
one of India’s leading areas for investment by global transnational
corporations. Under both Congress and TDP governments, the state has
been largely run under budgetary guidelines formulated by the US firm
McKinsey, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.
While the state has been flung open to the activities of transnationals,
the rural poor have been ignored. Andhra Pradesh has recorded among
the highest number of peasant suicides in the country. From 1997 to
January 2006, over 9,000 peasants took their lives due to the failure
of cotton crops. In 2000, 22 peasants in the Kundoor district sold their
kidneys to settle their debts.
The Punjab has also recorded
a high rate of farmer suicides. According to state government claims,
there were 2,116 cases between 1998 and 2005. Non-government organisations
argue that this figure is a gross underestimate. Inderjit Jayjee of
the Movement Against State Repression told the Indian Tribune on April
2: “Andana and Lehra blocks of Moonak subdivision in Sangrur alone
have reported 1,360 farmer suicides between 1998 and 2005. If all of
Punjab’s 138 blocks show roughly the same level of suicides, the
number would exceed 40,000 for the given period.”
The suicide toll is by no
means confined to these two states. The western state of Maharashtra
witnessed over 250 farmer suicides in Vidarbha district during the six-month
period from June 2005 to January 2006. The agriculture minister in the
national Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government,
Sharad Pawar, told parliament last month that cases of suicide have
also been reported from Karnataka, Kerala, Gujarat and Orissa.
In an interview on November
15, 2005, with the Indian Express, Pawar stated: “The farming
community has been ignored in this country and especially so over the
last eight to 10 years. The total investment in the agriculture sector
is going down... You will be surprised in the budgetary provision, not
more than 2 percent has been allocated for agriculture, where more than
65 percent of the population works... In the last few years, the average
budgetary provision from the Indian government for irrigation is less
than 0.35 percent.” This neglect of irrigation, he said, forced
60 percent of agricultural areas to “depend totally on the erratic
monsoon.”
During the campaign for the
2004 national elections, Congress leaders such as party president Sonia
Gandhi and Manmohan Singh, who became prime minister, shed a few crocodile
tears over farmer suicides. The Congress election manifesto promised
to “liberate the country from poverty, hunger and unemployment”.
In practice, however, the UPA government has proven that its attitude
toward the peasants is no different from its predecessor. The allocation
for the agriculture in its February 28 budget was just 1 percent.
The UPA’s main policy
in rural areas is the cosmetic National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme
(NREGS). The government has pledged that one member of every rural household
will be provided with 100 days of work per year, paid just 60 rupees
($US1.33) per day. Although the scheme was part of the UPA’s so-called
Common Minimum Program (CMP) during the 2004 election, its inauguration
was delayed until February 2006. Moreover, while the initial estimate
for the scheme was 400 billion rupees ($US9 billion) a year, the allocation
in the national budget delivered on February 28 was just 117 billion
rupees.
Rising debts
In 1928, a Royal Commission
report on the plight of farmers under British colonial rule in India
stated that the peasant lives and dies in debt. The same basic rule
holds for most Indian farmers today.
The indebtedness of Indian
farmers rose markedly in the 1990s following the turn by successive
Indian governments to market reforms and the opening up of the Indian
economy to foreign investors. Prior to 1991, 25 percent of Indian peasants
were indebted. Now, according to figures provided in January by P. Sainath,
the rural affairs editor of the Hindu, 70 percent of farmers in the
state of Andhra Pradesh are in debt. In Punjab the figure is 65 percent,
Karnataka 61 percent, and Maharashtra 60 percent.
Government actions have directly
triggered the rise. According to a Reserve Bank of India report in 2003,
World Bank dictates resulted in a steady decline of rural credit to
small and middle peasants from government banks and cooperative societies.
Lending declined from 15.9 percent in June 1990 to 9.8 percent in March
2003. This shift in government policy compelled small and middle farmers
to turn to private moneylenders for loans—at exorbitant interest
rates of 40 percent or more per annum—to purchase seeds, fertiliser
and other agricultural inputs.
“The banks have given
no loans in the past seven years,” Malla Reddy, the general secretary
of the Andhra Pradesh Ryuthu Sangham (APRS), explained. “So many
farmers are forced to depend on sources like these for credit. The same
man advises them on what to buy and then sets the rates for the purchase.”
More and more farmers have failed to earn enough to pay back their loans
and so have fallen deeper and deeper into debt.
Across India, over 43.4 million
Indian peasant families are deeply indebted. Small and medium peasants
are the worst affected. The number of rural landless families increased
to 35 percent between 1987 and 1998 and soared to 45 percent between
1999 and 2000. Between 2003 and 2005, the figure jumped dramatically
to 55 percent.
At the same time, farmers
have faced declining incomes. According to a Ministry of Agriculture
report, the income for West Bengal paddy farmers has fallen by 28 percent
since 1996-97. During the same period, the income of sugar cane growers
in Uttar Pradesh had dropped 32 percent, while in Maharashtra, cane
growers have lost 40 percent.
A steady decline in infrastructure
investment and cuts to state subsidies, together with droughts, floods
and insect infestations have contributed to the growth of rural social
misery.
According to New Delhi-based
agriculture economist Rahul Sharma, the cost of rural production has
gone up by 300 percent since the 1990s, in large part due to government
policies. In Andra Pradesh, the power tariff was increased five times
between 1998 and 2003. As governments have withdrawn support for rural
farmers, prices for farming equipment have skyrocketed.
Due to deregulation, the
quality of seeds has declined. In the past, the Indian government regulated
that the minimum germination rate for seeds had to be at least 85 percent.
Following corporate pressure, the minimum rate was reduced to 60 percent.
Indian peasants have faced
greater global competition due to the deregulation of agricultural markets.
In 1999, the Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP)-led Indian federal government
signed a pact with the United States to grant US producers import permission
for 1,429 agricultural products that were previously prevented from
entering the local market.
The UPA government of Prime
Minister Singh is continuing the free market restructuring of the economy.
During US President George Bush’s visit to India in early March,
Singh signed an agreement that further opens the agriculture sector
to firms such as Monsanto.
These measures will further
exacerbate the already intolerable conditions of Indian farmers.