anti-caste

AGRARIAN CRISIS: NEARLY 200,000 PEASANT SUICIDES SINCE 1997

Self-Slaughter Every 30 Minutes by P. Sainath (Counterpunch)

“There were at least 16,196 farmers’ suicides in India in 2008, bringing the total since 1997 to 199,132, according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).

“The share of the Big 5 States or ‘suicide belt’ in 2008—Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh—remained very high at 10,797, or 66.6 per cent of the total farm suicides in the country. This was marginally higher than it was in 2007 (66.2 per cent). Maharashtra remains the worst state in the nation for farm suicides with a total of 3802. (This is just 40 short of the combined total of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.) The all-India total of 16,196 represents a fall of 436 from 2007. But the broad trends of the past decade reflect no significant change. The national average for farm suicides since 2003 stays at roughly one every 30 minutes.”

See also:

Farm suicides: a 12-year saga by P. Sainath (The Hindu):

“Every suicide has a multiplicity of causes. But when you have nearly 200,000 of them, it makes sense to seek broad common factors within that group. Within those reasons. As Dr. Nagaraj has repeatedly pointed out, the suicides appear concentrated in regions of high commercialisation of agriculture and very high peasant debt. Cash crop farmers seemed far more vulnerable to suicide than those growing food crops. Yet the basic underlying causes of the crisis remained untouched. The predatory commercialisation of the countryside; a massive decline in investment in agriculture; the withdrawal of bank credit at a time of soaring input prices; the crash in farm incomes combined with an explosion of cultivation costs; the shifting of millions from food crop to cash crop cultivation with all its risks; the corporate hijack of every major sector of agriculture including, and especially, seed; growing water stress and moves towards privatisation of that resource.”

And see earlier posts on the agrarian crisis and mass peasant suicides.

P. SAINATH ON THE AGRARIAN CRISIS

Neo-Liberal Terrorism in India: The Largest Wave of Suicides in History (Counterpunch)

"[T]he neoliberal model that pushed growth through one kind of consumption also meant re-directing huge amounts of money away from rural credit to fuel the lifestyles of the aspiring elites of the cities (and countryside, too). Thousands of rural bank branches shut down during the 15 years from 1993-2007.

"Even as incomes of the farmers crashed, so did the price they got for their cash crops, thanks to obscene subsidies to corporate and rich farmers in the West, from the U.S. and EU. Their battle over cotton subsidies alone (worth billions of dollars) destroyed cotton farmers not merely in India but in African nations such as Burkina Faso, Benin, Mali, and Chad. Meanwhile, all along, India kept reducing investment in agriculture (standard neoliberal procedure). Life was being made more and more impossible for small farmers.

"As costs rose, credit dried up. Debt went out of control. Subsidies destroyed their prices. Starving agriculture of investment (worth billions of dollars each year) smashed the countryside. India even cut most of the few, pathetic life supports she had for her farmers. The mess was complete. From the late-’90s, the suicides began to occur at what then seemed a brisk rate.

"In fact, India’s agrarian crisis can be summed up in five words (call it Ag Crisis 101): the drive toward corporate farming. The route (in five words): predatory commercialization of the countryside. The result: The biggest displacement in our history."

AGRARIAN CRISIS DEEPENING

Report: Over 16,000 farmers committed suicide in India in 2007 (The Earth Times)

"Most of the farmers in Maharashtra, who are engaged in cotton cultivation, had committed suicide owing to crop failures and falling prices.

"Although the national total represented a slight fall from 17,060 in 2006, the broad trend remained unchanged, the report said, adding that the total farmer suicide toll in the country since 1997 stood at 182,936.

"Besides Maharashtra, southern Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and central Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh states report nearly two-thirds of the farm suicides in the country.

"According to Indian Agriculture Ministry officials, the main cause of the suicides is indebtedness. Many farmers who work on small land holdings have taken loans from private lenders who charge up to 120 per cent annual interest from the farmers."

See also:

anti-caste: AGRARIAN CRISIS IN INDIA: A SUICIDE EVERY 32 MINUTES (November 17, 2007)

And see:

the Indian Together page on farmer suicides

AGRARIAN CRISIS IN INDIA: A SUICIDE EVERY 32 MINUTES

Neoliberalism's Price Tag: 150,000 Farm Suicides in India from 1997 Through 2005 by P. Sainath (Counterpunch)

"But what has driven the huge increase in farm suicides, particularly in the Big Four or 'Suicide SEZ' States? 'Overall,' says Professor [K.] Nagaraj [of the Madras Institute of Development Studies], 'there exists since the mid-90s, an acute agrarian crisis. That's across the country. In the Big Four and some other states, specific factors compound the problem. These are zones of highly diversified, commercialised agriculture. Cash crops dominate. (And to a lesser extent, coarse cereals.) Water stress has been a common feature - and problems with land and water have worsened as state investment in agriculture disappears. Cultivation costs have shot up in these high input zones, with some inputs seeing cost hikes of several hundred per cent. The lack of regulation of these and other aspects of agriculture have sharpened those problems. Meanwhile, prices have crashed, as in the case of cotton, due to massive U.S.-EU subsidies to their growers. Or due to price rigging with the tightening grip of large corporations over the trade in agricultural commodities.'

"'From the mid-'90s onwards,' points out Professor Nagaraj, 'prices and farm incomes crashed. As costs rose - even as bank credit dried up - so did indebtedness. Even as subsidies for corporate farmers in the West rose, we cut our few, very minimal life supports and subsidies to our own farmers. The collapse of investment in agriculture also meant it was and is most difficult to get out of this trap.'"

WOMEN AND THE AGRARIAN CRISIS

Sorry plight of India farm widows (BBC)

"Mr Kelkar [a cotton farmer who hung himself out of despair over debt] had often talked farmers out of taking their lives in the state's cotton growing belt of Vidarbha where, on average, one farmer commits suicide every eight hours.

"In other words, three women become widows here every day.

"Mr Kelkar's wife, Indira, is now one of them.

"She is left with the mammoth responsibility of paying off his debt while looking after their four children."