A Study of Trends and Magnitude of Farmer Suicides in India

A large proportion of rural masses have not benefitted from the economic growth that took place after 1991. In fact, liberalization has brought about a crisis in the agricultural sector which has pushed many small and marginal farmers into debt and in many cases to suicides. The phenomenon of farmer suicides is especially worrisome for India because nearly half of the Indian population is dependent on agriculture for livelihood. Agriculture, the backbone of Indian economy, contributes about 17.4 percent to India‘s GDP while it engages nearly 48.9 percent of country‘s total work force, either as cultivators or as agricultural labourers (Economic Survey, 2015-16). According to a recent study, more than 3,00,000 farmers have committed suicides between 1995 to 2014 in India. Farmer suicides account for 11.2% of all suicides in India. On an average, one Indian farmer committed suicide every 32 minutes between 1997 to 2005, and since 2002 this has come down to 30 minutes. The farmers‘ suicide rate in India which ranged between 1.4 to 1.8 per 1,00,000 total population over a ten year period from1995 to 2005 has increased to 14.5 per lakh in 2011.

Ganpati and Venketoa Rao analysed farmers suicides in some parts of Tamil Nadu in 1966 and recommended that the distribution of agricultural organic-phosphorus compounds be restricted. Nandi in 1979 noted the role of freely available agricultural insecticides in suicides in rural West Bengal and suggested that their availability be regulated. Hedge studied rural suicides in villages of northern Karnataka over 1962 to 1970 and stated that the suicide incidence rate to 5.7 per one lakh population. Reddy, in 1993, reviewed high rates of farmers‘ suicides in Andhra Pradesh and its relationship to farm size and productivity. Recently, a large number of studies have been conducted to make an in-depth analysis of farmer suicides in India. The Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai has produced a study of farmer suicides in Maharashtra (Dandekar, 2005), the National Institute Of Rural Development conducted research of farmer suicides in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka( Vidyasagar and Suman Chandra, 2003). Others who have studied different aspects of farmer suicides include Sridhar (2006), Vaidyanathan (2006), Gill and Singh (2006), Jermi (2007), Mitra and Shroff (2007), Mishra (2008), Nagaraj (2008), Sainath (2009), Sheridan (2009), Despande and Arora (2010), Das (2011), Dongre and Deshmukh (2012), Kennedy and King(2014), Nagraj (2013) and so on.

realities of farmer suicide rates in India. However, the specific objectives are as follows: (i) To make an in-depth analysis of the reasons behind farmer suicides in India. (ii) To find out the magnitude of farmer suicides in India. (iii) To analyse the trends of farmer suicides in India.

(i) The problem of farmer suicides is not an all-India phenomenon. (ii) The suicide rate of farmers has been lower than that of non-farmers. (iii) The rate of suicide is higher among male farmers than female farmers.

The present study is analytical in nature and is based on secondary data. The primary source of data for analyzing the phenomenon of farmer suicides in India has been the Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India (ADSI), an annual publication of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). The NCRB has collected detailed data on farmer suicides for the first time during 2014. According to NCRB, farmers include those who own and work on field (viz. cultivators) as well as those who employ/hire workers for field work/ farming activities. The researcher has heavily relied on the official data compiled by the National Crime Records Bureau. This study is divided in five sections. Section I is introductory in nature, in which review of literature, objectives, hypotheses and methodology is given. A probe into the causes of farmer suicide is attempted in section II. The magnitude of farmer suicide between 1995 and 2014 is presented in section III whereas the trends of farmer suicides during 2014 are given in section IV. The whole study is concluded in section V.

Various reasons have been offered to explain why farmers commit suicides in India—including crop failure, drought, floods, debt, use of genetically modified seeds, illness and drug abuse, family problems a, government policies etc. However, there is no consensus on what may be the main cause but ―farm-related reasons get cited only around 25% of reasons for suicides and studies consistently show greater reliance on informal sources of credit amongst farmers who commit suicide.‖ A recent study conducted in 2014 show that there are three specific characteristics associated with high risk farmers: ―those that grow cash crops like cotton and coffee; those with marginal farms of less than one hectare, and those with debts of three hundred rupees or more.‖ (Sainath, 2005) found that ―drought, lack of access to credit, failure of cotton cooperatives to pay farmers, rising input costs and falling prices have plunged farmers into mounting debt.‖(name) According to NCRB (2014), the main causes of farmers suicides are indebtedness (20.6%), family problems (20.1%), and crop failure (16.8%) as can be seen from Table-I. However, attributing suicide to a single reason is too simplistic. In fact, suicide is a complex phenomenon. It arises out of an amalgamation of factors, hence, cannot be attributed to a single reason.

Source: Report of National Crime Records Bureau, 2014 Indebtedness is, in fact, the major cause but it is not only due to farm-related issues as commonly believed. Many studies found that healthcare, marriage costs, education costs and other personal non-productive expenses significantly contribute to farmers‘ indebtedness. All India Debt and Investment Survey, 2013 revealed that outstanding loans for health reasons have doubled from 3 percent in 2002 to 6 percent 2012. The rise in borrowing for meeting expenditure on illness has become a major factor in the lives of farmers because they lack savings and public health care in India is substandard. According to latest NSSO data, more than half of India‘s rural population uses private healthcare, which is four times as costly as public healthcare and cost more

farmer. India spends only 1.3 percent of its GDP on healthcare and faces a healthcare crisis, especially in rural areas. This crisis is likely to be aggravated due to a reduction in healthcare budget recently. Besides this, media coverage is also held responsible for increasing rate of farmer suicides in India. Irresponsible media reports of suicides trigger imitative suicides (Bennet & Daniel,2002). The risk of imitative suicides is the highest during the first three days of reporting and levels off after about two weeks. There are several regions in India such as Vidarbha and Bundelkhand, which gain notoriety for widespread suicides. There is evidence to suggest that the farm suicide outbreak in India could indeed be a contagion, where farmers are committing copy-cat suicide (WHO, 2014) Apathy of political will, absence of alternative income opportunities, and absence of suitable counseling services in rural areas further aggravated the problem.

III.1: Annual farmers‘ suicide incidence rate data on 1,00,000 farmers basis, depend on estimated total number of farmers for that particular year. Estimates for total number of farmers in India vary widely. Some count the total number of cultivators, some include cultivators and agricultural labourers in their definition of total farmers, while others include anyone engaged in any form of farming and agriculture activity. Estimates for total number of farmers in India, for 2011, ranged from 95.8 million (38%) to 263million (22%) to 450 million (38%), out of a total population of over 1.2 million). Others estimate the total number of farmers in India to be about 600 million i.e. nearly 50% of total population). The different estimates of total farmers have led to different suicide incidence rate estimates on per 1,00,000 farmers basis. However, the reliability of official statistics has been questioned by many researchers. K. Nagraj suggests that official statistics may be overestimating the number of total farmers in India, and undercounting the total number farmer suicides every year. On the other hand, Tom Brass suggests that official census and surveys in India systematically underestimate the total number of people engaged in agriculture in India. III.2: Farmer suicides account for 11.2% of all suicides in India in 1999 whereas it was highest in Lithuania (38.4%) followed by Russian Federation (32.1%). According to a recent study, more than 3,00,000 farmers have committed suicides between 1995 and 2014 in India. On an average, one Indian farmer committed suicide every 32 minutes between 1997 to 2005, and since 2002 this has come down to 30 minutes. The farmers‘ suicide rate in India which ranged between 1.4 to 1.8 per 1,00,000 total increased14.5 per lakh in 2011. If we look at the data for two decades since 1995 the highest number of farmer suicides were recorded in 2004 when 18,241 farmers committed suicides. But since then the number of suicides by farmers was gradually falling as can be seen from table II. However, in 2014 it increased to 12360 from 11772 in 2013, constituting an increase of about 5percent.

Source: Report of National Crime Records Bureau, 2014

Table III presents farmer suicide rates in the broader context of the few occupational groups for which suicide rates are computed on the basis of available data.(Mayer 2016)*.

In 1997, suicide rate was highest among unemployed- 27.2 per lakh, followed by civil servants- 22.3 and retired persons-14 per lakh. All these categories had higher suicide rates than that of farmers (12.98) in 1997 but since then by 2011 the rate of farmer suicides increased to 14.5 per lakh whereas all other occupations had fallen below that of farmers. Patel claimed that suicide deaths in India among

agricultural labourers and landowning cultivators. Even across professions in rural areas, suicide among agricultural workers including farmers in India is not more frequent than any other profession.

If we examine farmers suicides by gender, as can be seen in Table-III, farmer suicide rates among male were only slightly higher (13.2) than those of females (11.2) in 1997. But by 2011,the rates had significantly diverged; male rates had risen to 14.6 while rates for female farmers had fallen to 5.4, three years later in 2014, male suicide rates had fallen sharply to 6.3 per lakh, that of female to 1.4 as reported by NCRB,2015. Table –IV: Farmer Suicides by Gender

Out of 12360 suicides during 2014, as per the definition of NCRB Report, 2014 farmer suicides were only 5650. A detailed study of this report reveals many important facts and clears some myths related with farmer suicide in India.

The all-India level data cannot reveal important state-level variations. The analysis of state-level data for the year 2014 shows that that the problem of farmer suicides is not an all-India phenomenon rather it is much concentrated in a few states. 89.5% of the total farmer suicides in the country were reported in five states viz. Maharashtra (45.5%), Telangana (15.9%), Madhya Pradesh (14.6%), Chhattisgarh (7.8%), and Karnataka (5.7%) as can be seen in Table-IV.

However, there are many states which have reported not a single case of farmer suicide during 2014. To name a few- Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Delhi, Bihar, Jharkhand and Arunachal Pradesh. The main conclusion that emerges from the analysis of the data for the whole country is that the problem of farmer suicides is not a country-wide phenomenon rather it is concentrated in a few central and southern states. Patel found that southern states have ten times higher rates of suicides than some northern states.*58 But this should not lead to the inference that the agrarian crisis is also concentrated in these few states. The general state of low farm income, stagnation of the rate of capital accumulation, declining rate of the agricultural growth, etc. suggest that the phenomenon of agrarian and rural distress is far more widespread. (Basu 2016)*epw

To examine the suicide rates for different categories of participants in agriculture, the detailed breakdown of data was provided in the Report of NCRB, 2014 which is given below in Table-V.

Source: Report of National Crime Records Bureau, 2014 The suicide rate for all cultivators including agricultural labourers is 4.3 per lakh during 2014. For all farmers, the rate is 4.9 per lakh; for tenants the over-all rate is 3.1 and for agricultural labour 4.0 per lakh.

Age-wise and sex-wise data is presented in table-VI. Majority of victims belong to the age group of 30 to 60 years accounting for 65.7% of total farmers suicides during 2014.Farmers committing suicides are below 18 years are only one percent whereas 10.2% farmers are above 60 years.

Source: Report of National Crime Records Bureau, 2014

As per land holding, farmers have been classified in four categories, viz. ‗Marginal Farmers‘- having less than 1 hectare of land; ‗Small farmers‘ having 1 to 2 hectare of land; ‗Medium farmers‘-having 2 to 10 hectare of land and ‗Large farmers‘ having more than 10 hectare of land. Land holding status of farmers who committed suicides revealed that 44.5% and 27.9% of victims were small farmers and marginal farmers respectively, they together accounted for 72.4% (4095 out of 5650) total farmer suicides. 53.1% and 14.5% of small farmers who committed suicides were reported in Maharashtra (1135 out of 2516) and Telangana marginal farmers, 39.7% and 25.5% respectively of farmers‘ suicides were reported in Maharashtra (627 out of 1579) and Madhya Pradesh (403 out of 1579). However, in Maharashtra around 47.3% of total farmer suicides were committed by ‗well-off‘ farmers during 2014.

V.1: The analysis of trends, magnitude and causes of farmer suicides in India reveal many important facts. Suicide is a complex phenomenon hence attributing suicide to a single reason is too simplistic. Farmer suicides have become so rampant in the country that the phrase sounds more like a growing epidemic. More than three lakh farmers, including both cultivators and agricultural labourers, have committed suicide in India between 1995 and 2014. This is roughly equivalent to a shocking figure of one farmer suicide every 30 minutes. Hence, it is an alarming issue to be looked into with great concern and introspected with extreme delineation. There is a wide array of factors that has led to the increasing spate of farmer suicides in India. Although rural indebtedness and family problems are major causes of suicides among farmers yet crop failure, health related issues, property disputes, drug abuse and alcoholism also contribute significantly to the rising phenomenon of farmer suicides in India. The severity of problem of suicides increased among farmers, relative to other occupational groups, after 2001. The rate of farmer suicides which ranged between 1.4 to 1.8 per lakh of population till 2005 has increased to 14.5 per lakh in 2011. The suicide rate is much higher among male farmers than female ones. The marginal and small farmers holding less than 2 hectare of land constitute 72.4% of total farmer suicides but surprisingly, in Maharashtra around 47.3% of total farmer suicides were committed by ‗well-off‘ farmers during 2014. Majority of farmers committing suicides belong to the age group of 30-60 years. V.2: The in-depth analysis of state-level data suggests that the problem of farmer suicides is not an all-India phenomenon rather it is much concentrated in a few states namely, Maharashtra (45.5%), Telangana (15.9%), Madhya Pradesh (14.6%), Chhattisgarh (7.8%), and Karnataka (5.7%) during 2014. It is a harsh reality that Maharashtra which is one of the highly developed states in India, ranking first in terms of GSDP in 2014-15 and Madhya Pradesh, a recipient of prestigious ‗Krishi Karman‘ Award for the last three consecutive years for its outstanding performance in agriculture sector stood first and third respectively in case of farmer suicides during 2014. Indian agriculture still suffers from low crop- yield per hectare, low-level of farm income, heavy dependency on monsoon, falling water-levels, stagnation of the rate

warehousing facilities, successive crop failures, a distorted market, poor procurement prices of crops, laws that stifle private investment and lack of appropriate research. The approach with mere emphasis on credit-expansion or loan-waiving in isolation from above-mentioned factors will not help agriculture. A more pro-active role in creating and maintaining reliable irrigation and other agriculture infrastructure is necessary to address farmer distress and agrarian crisis in India. The development discourse and public policy have to move out from piecemeal approaches that get reduced to income or yield. They should have a livelihood and quality of life focus.

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Professor in Economics, Institute for Excellence in Higher Education (IEHE), Barkatullah University, Bhopal (MP) India