From killing fields to smiling fields

M.S. Swaminathan
The Hindu, 17 October

The focus in dealing with the agrarian crisis should shift from suicide relief to suicide prevention.

A recent ruling by the Bombay High Court that the Maharashtra government should come forward with a concrete proposal to end the era of farmers’ suicides, provides a unique opportunity to revisit the packages introduced from time to time to prevent those engaged in a life giving profession from taking their own lives. The Government of India sanctioned last year about Rs.17,000 crore to bring relief to 31 farmer suicide-prone districts of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, K erala and Maharashtra. So far, over Rs.9,000 crore has been spent. However, farming-related suicides continue, particularly in Maharashtra’s Vidharbha region. Consequently, articles on the “the killing fields of Vidharbha” continue to appear in the international media, with moving pictures of the widows and children of the victims of the agrarian crisis.

An expert group led by Professor R. Radhakrishna of the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research has identified the inadequacies and inappropriateness of several components in the packages introduced by the Central and State governments that seek to stop the suicides. Some of the major conclusions are:

The design of the relief measures is not based on the felt needs of households;

There is a lack of region and household-specific flexibility built into the packages;

Implementation structures tend to be fragmented and there is little convergence and synergy among the different components.

The media have highlighted the futility of some of the interventions such as providing cross-bred cows without arrangements to provide fodder and feed, and expensive hybrid seeds in rainfed areas without considering the coping capacity of the families in the event of crop failure due to monsoon aberrations. The extension service is ineffective, leading to the moneylender becoming an extension-cum-input supply agent. The packages of technology, services and public policies made available to farm families are often not tested for their social, economic and environmental sustainability.

There is concern about such suicides leading to socio-cultural changes. For instance, research carried out at Oxford University suggests that imitative suicides occur when suicidal behaviour is portrayed as a natural or understandable response to problems such as indebtedness. Unfortunately, social support systems are tending to disappear — leaving the affected persons with a sense of isolation and hopelessness. The gram sabhas should discuss this issue and evolve a community-centred psycho-social and economic support system in every village. Pain and sorrow can be reduced by the care and concern manifested in the form of social counselling.

Ending the “debt deaths”: Extinguishing bush fires is not enough; the causes underlying frequent and continuing bush fires in the form of farmers’ suicides have to be eradicated. Two years ago, the National Commission on Farmers recommended an integrated farmer life saving and farming renewal programme. This involved credit and insurance reform and literacy, loan waivers in the case of small and marginal farmers to an extent of Rs.25,000, and loans at 4 per cent interest. Another recommendation was a credit cycle of four to five years in the case of rainfed agriculture to take into account aberrations in monsoon behaviour. Reinstatement of the advance bonus of Rs.550 a quintal in the case of cotton growers was also recommended. Other recommendations included raising the import duty for highly subsidised foreign cotton to 60 per cent, restructuring farming systems through the promotion of cultivation of fodder and grain jowar, desi (arboreum) cotton, soybean, pulses and soil health-enhancing leguminous crops, and adoption of crop-livestock (dairy cattle, sheep, goats and poultry) integrated production systems. The formation of Hope Generation Teams comprising scientists and scholars from agricultural and animal sciences universities and home science colleges was another recommendation.

Credit should be available in a holistic manner, responding to the needs of healthcare, domestic consumption and farm operations. The financial inclusion programme being implemented in Wardha district by State Bank of India and Bank of India should keep this need in view. In order to insulate both banks and farmers from losses, the agricultural insurance system should be revamped and made effective and affordable. Insurance should cover crop losses arising from both meteorological and marketing factors. Claims should be settled promptly by streamlining the verification procedure.

Strengthening livelihood and income security: Loans that led to suicides were often taken to adopt high-cost technology in the expectation of higher returns. The resource-poor farmer has little coping capacity to withstand the shock of a crop failure. Similarly, loans have been taken to dig tubewells, which have sometimes failed. Low or no risk technologies are the need of the hour. There is need for proactive advice on land use planning based on likely meteorological and marketing scenarios. Scientific organic farming will reduce debt load, because of the substitution of market purchased inputs with home-grown ones. Steps to provide crop life saving irrigation need to be stepped up. Remote sensing technology should be used to help farmers spot borewell sites.

There is need to provide multiple livelihood opportunities like livestock-rearing, as well as non-farm occupations in areas such as biomass utilisation and post-harvest technology. Cotton biomass offers opportunities to produce high value products such as absorbent cotton, cottonseed oil and charcoal. There has to be an integrated on-farm and non-farm livelihood strategy. Income security depends largely on output prices and the market. Low and uncertain returns are among the important causes for farmers’ despair. As a single step, assured and remunerative prices for commodities will help end “debt deaths.” Here, there is much to learn from the U.S., which ensures that cotton farmers stay alive, irrespective of the criticism of other cotton growing countries on the scale of subsidy given. Market reform should be designed to ensure better and more stable income for farm commodities. Central and State governments and financial institutions could establish a contributory price stabilisation fund to end distress sales when crops are good, and where no arrangements exist for a minimum support price.

Since technology is the prime mover of the economic and ecological well-being of farm families, the technology package recommended should be a low-cost, low-risk one so as to safeguard income security. A good example of a pro-small farmer technology is the development by the Central Institute of Cotton Research (CICR), Nagpur, of a Bt cotton variety with bollworm resistance and excellent agronomic qualities. Its approval has been deferred by the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee on debatable grounds. Commercial companies will only breed and market hybrids in order to prevent farmers from keeping their own seeds, leaving the task of breeding varieties to institutions of public good. The CICR Bt cotton variety has the added advantage of being a locally adapted strain. Once this becomes available for cultivation, farmers can keep their own seeds and need not buy hybrid seeds at high prices. We need more pro-small farmer technologies of this kind.

Based on consultations with the widows of farmers who have taken their lives and women farmers as a whole, the M.S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) has launched, in partnership with a range of government and non-governmental institutions, the Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran Pariyojana (women farmers’ empowerment programme). It has the following action points.

Education of the children of affected families up to high school level;

“Hands on,” personalised and custom-built training, reaching the woman where she is, at whatever level, and responding to individual needs and circumstances;

Formal training in relevant areas at a capacity building and mentoring centre proposed to be established at Wardha;

Promoting the biovillage model of soil healthcare, water harvesting and management, crop diversification and value addition and introduction of improved post-harvest technology to ensure work and income security;

Fostering lateral learning among farming communities by arranging visits to villages where effective community management of water harvesting and budgeting is prevalent, as for example in Hiware Bazaar, a village in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra which has achieved improvement in average farm earnings by a factor of 20 during the last 15 years (Hiware Bazaar panchayat received the first National Water Prize in September this year);

Information and skill empowerment through satellite-linked village resource centres sponsored by the Indian Space Research Organisation, and through computer aided and Internet-connected gyan chaupals (village knowledge centres), managed by farmers;

Organising operational groups of women farmers at the village level and promoting their collective voice through a federation of mahila kisans, with three support groups of experts, dealing respectively with technology, finance and market linkages and comprising the best available expertise in the public and private sector.

Recent data reveal an increasing feminisation of agriculture, with women now constituting over 70 per cent of the farm workforce. The Vidharbha Women Farmers’ Empowerment initiative, therefore, has a large extrapolation domain. The greatest bottleneck in implementing programmes designed for women farmers is that they lack the title to the land. This is a serious impediment to helping them. Their late husbands’ land is often taken away by male members in the family, while they themselves are forced to work as labourers. This needs be redressed.

Every major calamity provides an opportunity to strengthen our capacity to face future calamities. Hereafter, the focus in dealing with the agrarian crisis should shift from suicide relief to suicide prevention. It is estimated that nearly 1.5 lakh Indian farmers committed suicide between 1997 and 2005 due to economic collapse. There is no political, economic, technological or social excuse for this. Indifference to the plight of the women and children left behind and a patronage approach to solving such problems are leading to the persistence of the killing fields. If we start addressing this issue through women farmers, including the widows, the government packages will acquire a human face. The crops as well as the men and women who cultivate them will then begin to regain their smiles.