The Hindu : Driven to desperation

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Sunday, Sep 14, 2003

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Driven to desperation

There has been a spate of suicides by farmers in even fairly prosperous farming regions of Karnataka. PARVATHI MENON on the reasons for this.

THE HUMAN dimension of the agrarian crisis in Karnataka is forcefully highlighted by the phenomenon of farmers, crushed by mounting crop losses and un-repayable debts, taking the extreme step of ending their lives. Suicides amongst farmers, spurred by agrarian distress of one kind or the other, has been a recurrent theme in the State's agrarian sector since 1998.

However, the sudden escalation in suicides this year — over 200 farmers have killed themselves since April and the figure is mounting — represents an alarming new trend. It is not only that the numbers are rising sharply. From being a feature of economically backward, drought-prone regions, the suicide phenomenon is now shifting to relatively advanced agricultural regions. This would suggest the emergence of new agrarian pressures even in prosperous districts that are pulling farmers, the small and marginal among them in particular, into inextricable debt-traps.

While Davangere district has reported the highest number of suicides, 30, since April, Mandya district, Karnataka's sugar bowl and the heartland of the Cauvery irrigation network, comes next with 22 suicides. There were 14 suicides by farmers in Haveri district, which comes under a belt of assured rainfall.

From all accounts, the one factor linking the suicides, whether of a groundnut farmer in Belgaum or a sugarcane farmer in Mandya, is that of pressure from creditors to repay irredeemable debts. The real crisis, however, is perhaps much larger than the tragic and poignant implications of a rising suicide graph. Rural indebtedness appears to be the consequence of iniquities and pressures resulting from specific State-directed strategies in the agricultural sector. This has created the conditions that drive the more vulnerable into hopelessness and suicide. But suicides are committed by a very small proportion of the rural population, the majority of which must continue to live with the pressures of indebtedness, and its fallout on living standards, health, education and income.

While in the last two years, farmers' suicides were largely concentrated in drought-prone districts in north Karnataka, or in drought-prone tracts of districts in central and southern Karnataka, the phenomenon is now spreading to new areas, making its mark upon virtually the whole State, with the exception of the coastal districts.

Mandya district, deceptively lush this season, and green with paddy nurseries and standing sugarcane, provides a good example of the rise of agrarian distress within what is popularly believed to be a region of relative agrarian prosperity. There has been a spate of suicides in the district, with a significant cluster in Maddur taluk, the constituency of the Chief Minister, S.M. Krishna. Mandya district has the highest net area irrigated to net area sown (43.8 per cent) in the State. Yet this district too is experiencing water scarcity.

As any farmer in the district will attest , the releases into the Cauvery canal system have been inadequate in the last three years owing to the low storage levels in the dams. Several farmers have been forced to sink borewells on their land, for which they have taken loans.

The cost of cultivation has increased substantially owing to Government cutbacks in fertilizer and power subsidies. In the case of many crops, the fall in market prices as a result of imports has contributed significantly to making agriculture un-remunerative. For example, the price at which factories buy sugarcane from the farmer has fallen from Rs.1500 per quintal in 1992 to Rs. 1150 at present while input costs have gone up enormously. "The Government is importing sugar at a landed price of Rs.900 per quintal which is less than our price," says V. Ashok, State Secretary of the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS). "Factories are not lifting stocks, nor have they released the money for stocks already bought. The cost of paddy too has fallen from Rs. 700 per quintal to Rs. 500 during this harvest."

With power no longer subsidised, its cost has added significantly to the cost of cultivation. The small farmer is often presented with an ultimatum from the power distribution company to pay his arrears or have his electricity disconnected. On June 1, Shankare Gowda, a 32-year-old farmer from Arechakanahalli village, Maddur Taluk, who committed suicide on September 9, received a bill from the power distribution company for arrears of Rs. 48.000. With the interest waived, his dues were still Rs. 31,000. Gowda pawned his wife's jewellery to repay his arrears, which added significantly to his debt, pushing him three months later to his final act of desperation.

"There are many of us who are as badly off or worse than those who committed suicide. For the last three years we have not had sufficient releases in the canals, and all of us have suffered crop losses. This season's sugarcane crop is doing very badly because there is no water," says B.H. Suresh, who, with his four brothers, owns five acres in Bidirahalli village, Maddur taluk.

He has taken loans for Rs. 2.5 lakhs for agricultural expenses and medical costs for his son who had a kidney ailment.

Channamma, a 68-year-old woman who committed suicide on September 7, owned just half an acre of irrigated land, but had mortgaged it to a moneylender. "There has been no water for irrigation on her land for the last one and a half years," her neighbour, V.K. Girish, told The Hindu. "Her sugarcane dried up and the paddy crop was doing very badly."

Unlike large farmers who have more easy access to institutional credit, the small farmer depends for most major expenses on informal sources of credit. It is not uncommon to find a small farmer with less than two acres of land owing the moneylender between Rs. 50,000 and Rs. 70,000, whereas the debt to a bank or cooperative society is rarely more than Rs. 10,000. Channamma, for example, owed Rs. 8000 to the Seva Sahakara Sangha Cooperative Bank while she owed Rs. 43,000 to the moneylender. Her creditors were putting pressure on her. Forty-year-old Puttaswamy Gowda from Bidirahalli village, who committed suicide on September 9, owed private moneylenders over Rs.50,000. "The moneylenders used to come like elephants, 10 to 15 of them together and harass him," Puttaswamy's wife Ratnamma recalls. "Our crops were failing, I was doing coolie work, and we did not have the money to even repay the interest," she said. The moneylender is a shadowy figure, a `farmer-like-us,' whose name is never mentioned, not even by the family of the person who has committed suicide. The standard rate of interest is between 30 and 40 per cent, which goes up to 60 per cent if the loan is for a short period of up to a month.

The direct and indirect impact of liberalisation policies on agriculture, and the withdrawal of all forms of Government support have exposed those dependent on agriculture to the fluctuations of the market. Desperately poor families have been struck off the Below Poverty Line (BPL) category and are ineligible for subsidised food. For anything above the most basic health care, the poor must seek expensive private medical care in the nearest town or district centre. The very process of living has become loan-dependent. Even the traditional village support networks are disintegrating under the pressures generated by the new market-oriented dispensation.

The reaction of the Karnataka Government to the recent spate of suicides has been two-fold. The first is an attempt to downplay its significance and to accuse the Opposition parties of politicising the issue. Out of the 208 reported cases, only 156 have been placed before the Government committee set up to decide compensation eligibility. Of these, 93 have been rejected by the committee. Thus only 63 out of 208 cases have been declared "genuine". The second is the announcement of a Rs. 880-crore drought relief package which includes interest waivers on cooperative bank loans, input subsidies for seeds and planting material, price support for select crops, waiver of outstanding power dues on agricultural pump sets, and land revenue remissions. It has announced a compensation package of Rs. 1 lakh for the families of those who have committed suicide. By its own admission, it has however actually disbursed cash to only 20 families.

The State Government also issued the Karnataka Prohibition of Charging Exorbitant Interest Ordinance, 2003, banning usury. The Ordinance makes illegal the charging of an interest rate above 21 per cent in the case of an unsecured loan and 23 per cent in the case of a secured loan. It is only the registered moneylender who is likely to be affected by such a measure. The Ordinance is unlikely to have any impact, particularly in the absence of other measures, on usury in the agricultural sector. The rural moneylender, usually a landlord himself, is rarely registered.

In August 2001, the State Government constituted an Expert Committee under the chairmanship of G.K. Veeresh to study the phenomenon of farmers' suicides and recommend measures to arrest the trend.

The committee submitted its report in April 2002. The report was criticised for having identified "alcohol-related problems" as the main reason for suicides. Nearly 14 per cent of total suicides by farmers between 1996 and 2000 were due to "alcohol-related problems" according to the report.

However, the report identified `economic factors' such as indebtedness, loss of business, crop failure, borewell failure, as together accounting for 34 per cent of all suicides.

The Committee made some very general recommendations on how to arrest the trend. It suggested the creation of a `Farmers Welfare Fund' to meet the "social consumption needs" (a term not explained); a Farmers Welfare Department for coordinating development programmes; the creation of a pension fund for `senior farmers'; the provision of cash compensation to families of suicide victims, and so on.

The measures to arrest the suicide rate amongst farmers by the Government have made little material difference to the environment within which desperate individuals take the decision to end their lives. Suicides are the manifestation of a larger agrarian crisis to address which a purposive, targeted and implementable strategy that deals with the causes of indebtedness needs to be put in place.

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