A FEEDER IS STILL HUNGRY

We live in a country where 70% of the population depends on farming, either directly or indirectly. Around 58% of total employment in the country is through agriculture, also the agriculture sector in our country contributes to around 18% of the GDP, agriculture has been consistently ignored at a steep cost to farmer's lives.

Farmer suicides have been taking place across India for years now, and studies of rural distress reveal the deeply-rooted, tenacious causes, such as lack of irrigation, fragmentation of land, unsuitability of seeds, and inadequate sources of credit.

THE NATIONAL CRIME RECORDS BUREAU  reported that a total of 2,96,438 Indian farmers had committed suicide since 1995. Of these, 60,750 farmer suicides were in the state of Maharashtra since 1995, with the remnant amount spread out in Odisha, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Chattisgarh, all states with loose financial and entry regulations.

Earlier, governments had reported varying figures, from 5,650 farmer suicides in 2014 to the highest number of farmer suicides in 2004 of 18,241. The farmer's suicide rate in India had ranged between 1.4 and 1.8 per 100,000 total population, over a 10-year period through 2005, however, the figures in 2017 and 2018 showed an average of more than 10 suicide daily. There are accusations of states manipulating the data on farmer suicides, hence the real figures could be even higher.

In 2017, 10,655 people involved in agriculture committed suicide in India, according to data released on January 2,2020 by the NCRB. Farmer suicides account for 11.2% of all suicides in India. In 2017, the most number of farm suicides were reportedly in Maharashtra (34.7%), followed by Karnataka (20.3%), Madhya Pradesh (9%), Telangana (8%), and Andhra Pradesh (7.7%).

According to the 2018 National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, the rate of farmer suicides in India has shown a slight change of 10,349 from 10,655. This decrease comes even as overall suicide rates remained fairly constant and rural poverty shot up. In 2018, there were 10.2 suicides for 100,000 Indians, largely in line with the World Health Organization’s estimates of global suicide rates, but 3.6 suicides for 100,000 farmers and farm laborers. Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Kerala reported the highest suicide rates in 2018, as per NCRB data. In 2018, six states, including Bihar, Odisha, and West Bengal reported zero farmer suicides. However, for states such as Odisha and West Bengal, the claim of zero suicides seems implausible. In Odisha, ground reports of farmer suicides including data presented in the assembly, do not match NCRB data. Conversely, other states, such as Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, have tended to report both lower overall suicide rates and farmer suicide rates in recent years. In 2014, around 9.4% of all national suicides were classified as farmer suicides. By 2018, this figure had fallen to 7.7% of the total 134,516 suicides in the country.

CAUSES:- According to Accidental Death  and Suicide in India 2015 Reports (ADSI),

Farmers suicide rate due to-

⇒DEBT (39%)

⇒CROP FAILURE DUE TO NATURAL CALAMITIES (19%)

⇒FAMILY PROBLEMS (12%)

⇒ILLNESS (11%)

⇒DRUG ABUSE OR ALCHOLIC ADDICTION (4%)

⇒MARRIAGE RELATED ISSUE (2%)

⇒POVERTY AND PROPERTY DISPUTE (1% EACH)

⇒OTHER UNKNOWN CAUSES (11%)

⇒LOAN TAKEN FROM MONEY-LENDERS OR NON-FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS (8%)

APART FROM THESE THERE ARE VARIOUS FACTORS LIKE-

ECCENTRICITY OF NATURE:-

When compared to other developing economies, Indian agriculture heavily depend on monsoon, limiting crop diversification to a great extent. 

Thus risks include weather, a week monsoon or even a delayed monsoon, poor soil fertility, pests, and plant diseases, perishability of crops etc. are the major causes for the agrarian distress in India. 

Further, climate change and global warming cause frequent events of drought and flood which further add to their woes.

LAND FRAGMENTATION:- 

There is a huge pressure of population on land led to a low land-man ratio in rural areas. The landlessness and the existence of marginal farming households are the results of decades of land fragmentation initiated after independence. 

Fragmented land holdings result in low productivity and hinder infusion of technology and new farming techniques. The landless or marginal farmers lack the resources to either buy or lease more land or invest in farm infrastructure to compensate for the scarcity of land. And they also lack adequate access to institutional finance.

RISING AGRICULTURE COST:- 

Despite subsidies on power, fertilizers etc. input costs have been rising faster than sale prices, squeezing the meager income of the small farmers and driving them into debt. 

In addition to this, hiring labourers and animals has become expensive and the fixed costs associated with agricultural equipment like tractors and submersible pumps has also been on the rise.

PROBLEM WITH MINIMUM SUPPORT PRICE(MSP):-

Government procurement at the minimum support price (MSP) is supposed to protect the farmers but it mostly benefits the large traders. 

Over 70% of the farmers in India seldom receive MSPs for want of official market intervention. Moreover, the Public Distribution System (PDS) does not have the capacity to undertake procurement operations for 24 crops for which MSP is announced.

Government has increased MSP for Kharif crops for marketing session 2020-21 by following the principle of 1.5 times of the ALL-INDIA weighted average COST OF PRODUCTION.

According to survey conducted by THE NATIONAL SURVEY OFFICE(NSSO) in the 70th round in 2013, only 6% of farmers are able to sell their produce at MSP.

AGRICULTURE MARKET:-

Lack of enough cold chain and storage infrastructure and processing capacity result in a huge post-harvest loss.

 Uncertainty with the price of the produce is a major concern. Many farmers continue to be at the mercy of the trader. 

Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMCs) is also unfavourable since the farmers have to sell their produce via auctions in regulated markets controlled by cartels of licensed traders. These cartels fix low purchase prices, extract large commissions, delay payments etc.

INEFFECTIVE GOVERNMENT RESPONSE:-

The government’s response is focussed on credit and loan, rather than income, productivity, and farmer prosperity. 

Loan waiver or the assistance in paying off outstanding principal and interest helps the money lenders, however, failed to create reliable and good sources of income for the farmer.

MEASURES TAKEN BY GOVERNMENT:-

In recent years, the Central government has taken various measures like the PM Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), PM Krishi Sinchai Yojana (PMKSY), electronic National Agricultural market (e-NAM), Soil health card, Neem-coated urea etc.

 Agriculture is a major component of Priority Sector Lending (PSL), and the target for bank lending to agriculture has been revised upwards every year. 

In addition to food subsidy under PDS, the government also provides fertilizer subsidy year after year.

Create parallel marketing infrastructure by upgrading the existing 22,000 rural haats into gramin agricultural markets. These mandis will be exempted from the APMC regulations to enable the direct sale to consumers and bulk purchasers.

SHORTFALL ON GOVERNMENT SCHEME:-

Most of the agricultural development schemes focus mainly on boosting crop productivity and production = disregards the negative impact of higher output on prices in a surplus situation. 

PMKSY aims at enabling farmers to install solar water pumps to irrigate fields. It is ironic since the government seeks to install tube wells while being worried about depleting groundwater. 

PMFBY gives protection against crop failure, but farmers are facing market failure for which they do not have any cover.

Government is yet to resolve the concerns of farmers who produce crops that are outside the MSP. Procurement is restricted to major crops such as paddy/rice and wheat.

External trade policy is focussed more on managing inflation than on maintaining the price line to safeguard the farmers’ interests.

An export opportunity is generally denied for agricultural products by imposing import and export limits, which makes it harder to sell the surplus produce in the country = fall in the price level.

SOLLUTIONS:-

Location-specific policy for irrigation with the identification of suitability of irrigation facilities required to protect farmers from the adverse impacts of climate change. It must be supplemented with timely completion of canal irrigation projects and timely advice on the weather.

Technological interventions that update farmers about sowing and harvesting time and extension services can help prevent misfortunes.

Crop diversification should be implemented to reduce crop failure rates across the country.

Long-term leasing of farmland without withdrawing the land ownership can be implemented. This is in line with Niti Aayog’s Model Land Leasing Act i.e., no change in ownership, no tenancy rights, and the land reverts back to the owner on the expiry of the lease.

The government policies should encourage integrated pest management that combines, biological, chemical, mechanical and physical means to combat pests with a target to eliminate/considerably reduce the need for pesticides.

Ensure that institutional financing is available and accessible.

The focus has to be shifted from farm income to farmers’ income i.e., boosting farmers’ earnings through the expansion of job opportunities in and around rural areas.

The long chain of intermediaries between the farm and the consumer should be reduced as they negatively impact farmers’ income.

Increased storage and processing capacity can reduce post-harvest losses, ensure price stability and protect farmer interests.

Commodity options (rights to buy or sell) in agricultural products can protect the farmers from the vagaries of distress sale during the periods of bumper harvests. This will ensure farmers the post-harvest prices at the time of planting the crop itself.

CONCLUSION:-

Farmers’ suicides are increasingly becoming a public health crisis in India. As agriculture is a relatively stressful occupation managed predominantly by small and marginal farmers with smaller operational holdings, stress factors have a severe impact on farmers’ health. Suicide is not a discrete event caused by a sudden tragedy; it is rather an outcome of long-term accumulation of various stresses over a period of time. A key aspect of any suicide prevention strategy is our ability to understand the suicide process and manipulate the predisposing, protective, and precipitating factors so as to prevent the suicide. As a field-oriented profession directed towards farm households, extension services play a crucial role in preventing farmer suicides – by assisting farmers in understanding the stress and suicide process, identifying vulnerable groups,  creating community-based institutions to educate and help farmers, along with policy changes to help vulnerable groups.

Farmers have given so much to this land, for them, it's there everything that they could lose or earn, the land is like a mother to them, they are born from it, nurtured from it and can even die for it.

We need a doctor, policeman, lawyer once in a while but we need farmers thrice a day, so we should show some humanity and respect to our feeders because they are not the common as we think.

We could do our part by buying the farmery product directly from them and should show some humanity towards them because "Farmers lives matters a lot"

 REFERENCES:- National crime records bureau, live mint, economic times, India today, Hindustan times, down-to-earth, the wire.