Reasons and Responses to Farmer’s Suicides in India

India is an agricultural country, with agriculture employing over 70% of the population directly or indirectly and farmer suicides are a huge concern.

According to the Central Government, despite a multi-pronged strategy to increase farmers’ income and social security, over 12,000 suicides have been reported in the agricultural industry each year since 2013. Farmer suicides account for more than 10% of all suicides in India.

Reasons for Farmers’ Suicide

“Bankruptcy” and “Family Problems” are prominent reasons for suicide, accounting for 20.6 % and 20.1 % of overall farmer suicides in 2014, respectively. Other leading causes of farmer suicides included crop failure (16.8 %), illness (13.2 %), and drug/alcohol addiction (4.9 %)

Farmers’ Suicide Statistics

Of all the people who commit suicide in India, 11.2 % are farmer suicides . Between 1997 and 2005, one farmer committed suicide every 32 minutes in India, and 5 out of 29 states were responsible for 10,486 farmer suicides.

Causes of Suicide

Natural Disasters: 

In addition to economic causes, natural calamities are also to blame for farmer suicides. Effective agricultural production is heavily reliant on favourable weather conditions. Farmers are unable to obtain qualitative and quantitative output from firms due to global warming, deforestation, and other artificial factors such as heavy rain, floods, erratic monsoon, droughts, delays in rain, heavy cyclones, and other artificial elements such as reduction in subsidies, fire, accidents, etc.

Erratic monsoon can cause huge damage to the livelihood of the farmers, which often pushes them towards suicide as indebtedness remains unsolved for them after the crops get destroyed.

Rising agricultural costs 

Despite government subsidies for power, fertiliser, and other inputs, input costs have risen faster than sales prices, squeezing small farmers’ little revenue and putting them into debt. In addition, the cost of hiring labourers and animals has risen, as have the fixed expenditures connected with agricultural equipment such as tractors and submersible pumps. The majority of farmers prefer cotton and other cash crops. They are, however, unaware of the significant input costs of such crops. If the crop fails, it creates a great deal of distress. Furthermore, as agricultural prices rise, rural earnings fall, resulting in local farmers not making enough money to cover the cost of shipping their crops to government enterprises in towns.

Most farmers prefer cotton and other cash crops and are unaware of the significant input costs of such crops. If the crop fails, it creates a great deal of distress. As agricultural prices rise, rural earnings fall.

Illiteracy, tradition, and culture

In addition to the issues mentioned earlier, illiteracy, tradition, and culture compel farmers to commit suicide. Farmers do not believe in the necessity of education because of illiteracy and inadequate knowledge. Their decision-making abilities are limited due to a lack of education. Due to a lack of funds and perception capacity, people turn to orthodox and other religious activities, which necessitate more funds. They may take out large loans from private money lenders at hefty interest rates to carry out these activities. In addition, when their daughters marry, farmers must offer a large sum of money and gold to their son-in-law (known as “Hunda”). If the farmers fail to carry out all these customs and cultural activities, they feel frustrated and contemplate death.

Response to Farmer’s Suicide

The government established several commissions to investigate the reasons for farmer suicides and farm-related misery in general. In 2006, Krishak Ayog (National Farmer Commission) visited India’s suicide-prone farming districts and issued three reports with suggestions 2006.

CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility)

Corporate social responsibility must be promoted in the agriculture industry, notably in capacity development, skill development, and the formation of CHCs.

Effectiveness of government response

According to Surinder Sud, the government’s response and aid packages have been mainly inadequate, misguided, and flawed. It has prioritised credit and loans over income, production, and farmer success. Due to anti-farmer legislation, farmers cannot conduct business, sell, or lease farm or agricultural goods. Assistance in repaying outstanding principal and interest benefits money lenders but fails to provide sustainable and good future revenue streams for farmers. To date, moneylenders continue to give loans at interest rates ranging from 24 to 50 %, while the farmer’s income-generating ability has remained low and vulnerable to weather conditions.

Proposed Solutions

• Reducing agriculture’s dependency on nature. Using efficient water management methods and prioritising crop failure prevention.
• Making institutional funding available to all farmers, especially poor farmers
• Monitoring ensures that the poor farmer receives the loan and is not a front for a larger landowner.
• Farmers should be counselled on economic farming methods in a time-effective way.
• Agricultural technological improvements should be made available to disadvantaged farmers as well.
• The government should also attempt to pool small farmers’ lands and convert them into larger tracts of economically cultivable land.
• Small farmers should be counselled and trained on alternative sources of income.
• In certain situations in Andhra Pradesh, farmers commit suicide for their families to receive relief packages. Small farmers should be counselled and trained on alternative sources of income.

Conclusion

Identifying a single defining factor for farmer suicides in India is impossible, especially given the scarcity of specific research. What can be inferred is that a confluence of factors has resulted in a picture of large-scale farmer indebtedness, which, when combined with a volatile ecological climate and socioeconomic landscape, has exposed hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of farmers to a situation of such crushing debt and desperation that many have come to take their own lives. The most often debated cause, Bt cotton, does not appear to have a significant impact, and there is little evidence that mental illness is a component. Rather, an agrarian crisis arises due to a lack of agricultural investment and irrigation improvement, as well as an increase in the use of noninstitutional loan sources.