Small Farmers' Suicide in Odisha (original) (raw)

Political Economy of Farmers' Suicide A Case of Western Odisha

Farmer's suicide was never heard of in the tribal dominated Western Odisha. It takes a different turn when the victim is neither a non-paddy growing farmer nor immersed in big amount of loan. The cause of suicide though may seem same to the outside world, but the case to case analysis shows a distinct pattern of agrarian distress let loose during the neo-liberal reform era. The resource grab that has set in during the new economic reforms, has given a severe blow to the process of grassroots governance. The land dependent village citizens remained at the receiving end of regional disparity, language chauvinism and last but not the least the defunct social welfare programmes like MGNREGS, NSAP and PDS.

Farmers' Suicide: Trends and Trials

Farmer suicides continue to rise over the years reflecting a serious agrarian threat in the country. In the colonial and post colonial period, it manifested itself in the form of peasant unrests and riots occurring in some selected pockets of the country. However, with the onset of structural reforms, agriculture became vulnerable to a number of lop sided market policies that favoured more of the corporate and industrial houses than agriculture. The poor peasants were thrown open to a number of vagaries that they could not overcome. Agriculture became more and more capital intensive and input driven in character. With the negligible support from the government and the market, the poor peasants committed suicides that were reported in a majority of the states across the country. The current article makes an analysis of the post globalization phenomenon affecting agriculture and tries to study the trend of suicide in the country over the years. It makes a case analysis of the state of Odisha where farmer suicides have become an alarming issue for the regional government. The researchers have also made an attempt to discuss the efforts and initiatives taken by the central government, state governments and civil society organizations to bring down the rate of farmer suicide and the safety nets devised for the poor farmers who are prone to the epidemic through various social security schemes and programmes.

Farmer's suicide in india

This paper will inquire the failure of government policies and schemes in tackling the issues of farmers and also provide with the some factors contributing to such issues.

AGRICULTURE: FARMERS'SUICIDE-2011

2010

Haryana farming move on to greener pastures Horticulture, floriculture, vegetable cultivation and fish farming -Haryana's agricultural fields that contributed significantly to the country's Green Revolution are now gradually diversifying to newer areas. Farmers in the State, who are diversifying from the routine wheat-paddy cycle of crops, say they find the new farming activities more beneficial, especially in terms of the returns. "Horticulture crops, vegetables, flowers and fish farming are newer areas that Haryana farmers are getting into," Dhanpat Singh, a farmer based near Kurukshetra town, 110 km from here, said. "The returns in these areas are much better and farmers do not have to wait endlessly to get their payments as most of the produce is sold to the organised sector like the hospitality industry," he added. The farming community in Haryana is exploring newer activities even as the state and its neighbour Punjab remain the foodgrain states of the country, contributing over 70 per cent of the buffer stock of foodgrains, mainly wheat and rice, to the national kitty. Officials of the state's horticulture department say the area under horticulture crops is increasing in Haryana. "The area under horticulture crops in Haryana has reached about 5.64 per cent of the total cropped area due to the state government's drive to motivate farmers to grow them in place of traditional crops," a senior Horticulture Department official said here. During 2009-10, the area under vegetable cultivation touched 300,860 hectares and its production crossed the mark of 40 lakh tonnes. Apart from this, farmers are also taking keen interest in replacing their traditional crops by other commercial horticulture crops like flowers and spices. During the current financial year fruit production up to November of over 1.82 lakh tonnes had been achieved by bringing 2,685 hectares of additional area under fruit cultivation and the total area increased to 44,135 hectares. Over 18.04 lakh tonnes of vegetables were produced by bringing over 2.24 lakh hectares of area under vegetable cultivation. This year, 41,710 tonnes of spices were produced through cultivation over an area of 6,125 hectares. Medicinal plants and flowers were grown over an area of 750 hectares and 5,035 hectares respectively during the same period. This production is much higher than the present national growth rate of eight per cent. The state's fisheries department has set itself a target of increasing fish productivity to 5,500 kg per hectare in 2010-11, officials of the department said here. "The fisheries department has implemented `50 lakh scheme to impart training and financial assistance to members belonging to the Scheduled Castes to enable them to take up fish farming," said a fisheries department official said. Till November, nearly 13,620 hectares of water area had been brought under fish culture as against the target of 17,000 hectares for 2010-11. Fish production of 61,494 tonnes has been achieved during this period against the target of 93,940 tonnes for the whole year. Similarly, over 4,275 lakh fish seeds have been collected against the target of 4,250 lakh fish seeds, he added. (Pioneer, 03/01/2011) Farmers' suicides reflective of death of rural banking HYDERABAD: Since the beginning of December last, 220 tenant farmers in the state have committed suicide or died of shock, crushed by mounting debts and loss of crops. Overall, the farmer death toll stands at a staggering 350-400. Though the fickle weather wreaked havoc, experts believe it's only partly to blame as several other factors have worked against the farming community. While economic expansion continues to bypass the farming community leaving them impoverished and in debt trap, subsidy cuts have made seed, fertilizer, pesticide and electricity more costly. "This desperation is shocking. It puts spotlight on the hardship and growing disparities among the farmers. The ryots feel squeezed as never before," V Vinod Goud, agriculture scientist, Icrisat, observed. New snazzy cars zoom by and cellphones ring loud in the cities and towns, but in the countryside where the farmers toil they hardly get bank loans. "Banks charge 7% interest for cars but take 12% and more on farm tractors. Little wonder 5% of ryot community in the last 3-4 years have shifted to other jobs," rued B Chandra Reddy, vice-president, AP Rythu Sangham (APRS). Though banks were supposed to lend term loans of Rs 54,050 crore to farmers, their target was slashed to Rs 15,652 crore. Curiously, banks do not lend to tenant farmers, while marginal farmers get a pittance. This dichotomy is seen more starkly in AP, which is known as the rice bowl of the country. In East Godavari district where at least 60 suicides were reported in the past two months, a vast majority of the ryots own less than five acres of land. While 75 per cent of the farmers' earnings go into the hands of traders and middlemen, everything else they earn goes to moneylenders and pesticide dealers. "Our farmers get 1.67% subsidy whereas Pakistan offers 28% and China 39% to its farmers," Chandra Reddy revealed. He denied that failed crop alone sparked the suicide. He said unless state-owned banks raise lending to small farmers and extend loans to tenant farmers, the suicides won't stop. Experts said the government education programmes have failed, leaving the mostly illiterate farmers dependent on private moneylenders and unscrupulous pesticide dealers for advice on managing crops. Most importantly, the deaths reveal the collapse of the rural banking system. Short of cheap bank credit, farmers were forced to turn to moneylenders who charge 30-35 per cent interest.

A STUDY ON CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF FARMERS SUICIDES IN INDIA.pdf

Research Journal of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, 2016

ABSTRACT This paper study on the causes and consequences of farmer’s suicide, where in the recent past massive suicides were going on in India mostly in Maharashtra and Telangana State. Since Independence in India the contribution of agriculture share to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been declining, which itself shows that the government and administration had collectively deliberately neglected the agriculture sector. Every Indian feels proud to say that we live in a very large agricultural society where more than 65% of the families depend on this sector. But it is extremely brutal and negligence of government because there was no structured administration and very less in number of human resource in agriculture & its allied sectors to assist, sustain and encourage farmers to overcome the difficulties they face in farming. Services like soil test, proper guidance, crop information, productive seeds, new agriculture techniques, and awareness on mixed crop cultivation were not provided minimally to the farmers. The study analyzed and understood that most of the suicide farmers in India are the farmers who practiced only one crop cultivation and are not aware of mixed crop farming. Also, due to less concentration on courses of agriculture and its allied sectors which is resulting insufficient human resource personal and poor utilization of mechanizations in agriculture sector. Giving more priority to agricultural courses like diploma in agriculture, farm mechanization and others will help the farmers in future in resolving these issues. Key words: administration, agriculture officers, services, agriculture courses.

Farmers Suicide in India -Causes and Remedies

Nowadays the problem of farmers' suicides is one of the vital concerns that need to be addressed by the Government. Considering the paramount importance of this issue, the NCRB, for the first time, has collected detailed data on farmers' suicides. Farmers include those who own and work on field (viz. cultivators) as well as those who employ or hire workers for field work/farming activities. Days after attributing the record number of farmer suicides in 2015 to poor disbursement of credit, which left them at the mercy of usurious money lenders, the Centre on Tuesday shared with Parliament grim statistics highlighting how the situation remains unchanged in 2016, months. This paper focused on the causes and remedial measures to curb the problem of farmers' suicide in India. There is a wide array of factors that has led to the increasing spate of farmer suicides in India. The lands are not as productive as before, the markets are failing, the debts are piling up, and the pests cannot be kept at bay. More than an economic problem, this has now assumed political and humanitarian dimensions, especially since the past decade.

Agrarian Crisis and Farmer's Suicides in India

2009

The larger agrarian crisis has two dimensions. On the one hand, there is a livelihood crisis that threatens the very basis of survival for the vast majority of small and marginal farmers as also for agricultural labourers. On the other hand, there is an agricultural developmental crisis that lies in the neglect of agriculture arising out of poor design of programmes and allocation of resources and having resulted in declining productivity and profitability (Government of India 2007, Reddy and Mishra 2009).

An analysis of farmer suicides in India

Agriculture is the backbone of human civilization and as such no one can underestimate its importance. India is an agrarian country with around 60% of its populace depending directly or indirectly upon agriculture. But today Indian agriculture is going through a harsh period. The farmers find it very complicated to m ake their both ends meet. The suffering of farmers is due to several factors like the changing nature of agriculture, economies of production, policies of the government and the ongoing reforms.With the liberalization and importation of genetically modified seeds, the seeds-which were resistant to diseases and other problems used by farmers earlier were replaced the seeds which high yielding but very fragile, disease prone and fertilizer dependent. To employ these seeds farmers were forced to take loans. When crops failed they find it very difficult to pay back the loans they have incurred to grow crops and carry on, result was ending one's life-the suicide. This deep rooted agrarian crisis is deep-rooted in the path of capitalist development pursued by the Indian state. This paper tries to highlight the role of capitalism in farmer suicides using the secondary sources of data.