Peasant Suicides:
Why Kerala Is DifferentBy Prabhat Patnaik
31 December, 2007
Countercurrents.orgThe 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.
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