Farmers’ suicides mostly under Congress Regime
By Nantoo Banerjee
If the National Crime Records Bureau of India (NCRB) data is to be taken seriously, on an average over 15,000 farmers commit suicide in India every year and a good number of them for crop failure and many under pressure of high debt burden. The crime records list several other reasons for farmers’ suicide. They include ill health, personal and family problems. The NCRB records since 1995 number 2,96,438 cases of suicides by farmers in the country till 2013. The number represents a little over 11 per cent of total suicide deaths in the country per annum during the period. Considering the fact that around 45 per cent of India’s population live directly on farming, the number is anything but too large or alarming if compared with the other 88 per cent suicide deaths occurring in the country every year out of the remaining population. The largest number of farmers’ suicide cases took place in 2004-05 (around 18,000) when the Congress-led UPA under Mrs Sonia Gandhi ruled the country. Of the last 20 years, the Congress Party was at the helm of the national government for 10 full years. At least 1,60,000 farmers committed suicide during that decade. Why is, then, the Congress vice president, Rahul Gandhi, suddenly trying to make a huge political issue of farmers’ suicides to collect sympathy of this largely impoverished and little educated community? The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) ruled the union government since May 2004 until it lost the Lok Sabha election very badly in May 2014.
Politics apart the suicidal death of such large numbers of poor farmers should be a cause of concern in any society. It is more so if they are linked with economic reasons such as crop failure or crop glut, unremunerative prices of crops, competition from GM crops, pressure from middleman, poor storage facilities, high debt burden and unsupportive government policies. Unfortunately, there exist little such records to link causes of many farmers’ suicides. The governments, state and centre, rarely engaged themselves seriously with farmers, especially those poor and marginal ones with small holdings raising a single or double crop in a year, to find out the suicide reasons and take measures to control such sadly regular occurrences. The measures like loans and interest write-offs are generally taken before elections mainly to woo votes of the farmer community. In practice, the richer farmers make the most of the government doles. Ironically, a section of these farmers, benefitting from government policies, is among powerful politicians themselves. Many of them are linked with forming so-called land banks and taking lands of poor and marginal farmers on mortgage against loans.
Farmers and farm lands are becoming an increasing part of Indian politics although few politicians are concerned about the changing faces of Indian farming and educated children of farmers who are fast fleeing firms for urban jobs. Today, farming in India is getting increasingly mechanized – from preparing land to sowing and reaping – making it less and less employment intensive. Anyway, full-time, round-the-year farming jobs are rare. It is not that politicians are unaware of these changes. But, they conveniently ignore the facts or get them twisted and converted to suit their political objectives, The number of farmers is now over 90 lakh fewer than it was in 2001, according to the census data. This is for the first time in four decades that the absolute number of cultivators is showing a steady fall. As per the Registrar General of India records, based on the last census, cultivators formed the second-largest group at 119 million after ‘others’ and are now less than a quarter of the total workforce, a decline of over 7 percentage points over 2001.
It is surprising that political parties, opposing the new Land Bill, chose to ignore the fact that farming like any other business is becoming increasingly competitive in India. Younger rural people are looking at industry for more secure jobs. What is happening in India is nothing different than in other agrarian Asian economies such as fast growing China, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Like India, all these countries were principally agrarian economies – China till 1980s, Indonesia and Vietnam till 2000 AD. China was the first to industrialize and grew rapidly over the last 25 years to become the world’s second largest economy. Thailand struck a good balance between agriculture and industry. Indonesia and Vietnam are now industrializing at a feverish pace through massive land reform and pro-industry policies. Long before the introduction of the ‘Make-in-India’ programme by the present government, much to the chagrin of the Opposition, China, Indonesia and Vietnam went all out to strengthen domestic production and export to boost their economies and create jobs for their skilled and educated youths. Land acts were changed without opposition not only in Communist-ruled China and Vietnam, but also in democratic Islamic state of Indonesia.
Democratic India and its political parties must grow up. Irrespective of political affiliation, they must show the economic will to fight poverty, malnutrition, destitution, illiteracy, unemployment and high level of frustration leading to suicide bids and not play politics with them ostensibly to protect one community at the cost of the other. Children of old generation political parties, many of whom have gotten into politics under the influence of their parents despite their donning modern liberal education, must work to change the format of the six-decade old Indian politics that chose to ignore the economic strength of the country and the massive growth of smaller nations in the region such as South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia and Indonesia, making them net investors in other countries in Asia and outside. The coming years may witness, a much larger flow of youth from rural locations to urban areas in search of more job opportunities in manufacturing industry and the services sectors. India needs a total relook at its existing policies, including land acquisition, to arrest such migration by organizing many job centres, smaller urban habitats across the country. Economy, not suicides, should be focal point of politics, and not the vice versa. (IPA Service)