THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: State Planning Board vice-chairman Prabhat Patnaik said here on Saturday that most of the farmer suicides in Kerala were on account of loans from moneylenders and Self-Help Groups (SHGs), some of which also functioned as intermediaries between farmers and banking institutions.

Delivering the keynote address at a workshop on the 11th Five Year Plan, organised by the CPI-led All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), Prof. Patnaik said a study of 630 cases of farmer suicides in the State had shown that the total loan amount taken by these farmers came to only Rs.1.5 crore, which meant that most of the individual farmers had taken loans not exceeding Rs. 25,000. In some cases, the loans were for as small amounts as Rs.5,000. This implied that the farmer suicides were on account of loans taken from moneylenders and, perhaps, SHGs or their individual members. This was confirmation of the original assumptions behind the Debt Relief Commission Bill enacted by the State recently. It also showed that one-time relief or loan waiver cannot touch the moneylenders and that the issue should be addressed differently, he said.

The Planning Board vice-chairman said there were some disturbing trends evident in Kerala today. One of these had to do with the increasing number of landless farmers in the State. The landlessness among farmers in Kerala in 1994 was 6 per cent, implying that 6 per cent of those engaged in agricultural work had no land of their own. The percentage of the landless farmers had now increased to 38 per cent. The extent of unemployment in the State should also be a cause of concern going by the experience of Palakkad and Wayanad districts in relation to the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). In Palakkad, 1,50,000 persons had enrolled for employment under the scheme. In Wayanad, the number was 1,00,000. Even if these were over-estimations and only 50 per cent of those who had enrolled were really in need of employment under the scheme, it would mean that unemployment in Kerala was `grossly underestimated'.

Prof. Patnaik said the farmers in the country, and in Kerala, were now caught in a `pincer situation' of rising cost of production and low prices for the commodities. He came down heavily on the neo-liberal tendency to view the agrarian crisis as a crisis in the agricultural sector and pointed out that while the former perspective saw it only as a sectoral problem that could be addressed with increased investment and corporate farming, the latter perspective, held by the Left, viewed the issue as one of social relations. Granting entry to corporates to the field of agriculture would only aggravate the agrarian crisis as the corporates were primarily concerned about profitability rather than agricultural production. Such a policy would also result in agricultural land being used for real estate speculation. In many parts of the country, farmers were offering resistance to such measures. The Kisan Sabha should work to strengthen such resistance.

In a situation where the State had ceased to play the proactive role it used to play during the Fifties and Sixties to protect agriculture from encroachment by the corporates and the ill effects of global markets, organisations such as the Kisan Sabha should also work for alternatives to remedy the situation that obtained today. The first strategy towards this end should be steps aimed at protecting petty production as it stands today. This should be accompanied by measures to make agriculture viable through group farming, mechanisation and value addition. The advantages of corporate farming can be achieved through group farming or cooperative farming. The State should also try to dovetail the NREGS to the group farming or labour cooperative initiatives so that the labour costs in agriculture can be subsidised using Central funds. The Union Minister for Rural Development had assured the State that the matter would be examined favourably if the Left puts the necessary proposals before the Government. This is being done, Prof. Patnaik said.

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