India's Agrarian Crisis

Her Husband Took His Own Life. She Will Pay the Price All Her Life."
The Farm Crisis and 100,000 Indian Widows

By P. SAINATH

WHEN JAYALAKSHMAMMA finishes her 12 hours of labour - on those days she can find work - she's entitled to less than a fourth of the rice given to a convict in prison. In fact, the rice she gets on average for a whole day is far less than what the incarcerated offender gets in a single meal.

Jayalakshmamma is not a convict in prison. She's a marginal farmer whose husband H.M. Krishna, 45, killed himself in Huluganahalli village of Mandya district four years ago. This district was among the worst affected by the farm suicides of 2003 in Karnataka. In this State, her BPL (below the poverty line) card entitles her to only four kg of rice (and a kg of wheat) a month. True, those four kg are subsidized by the State. But she cannot afford to buy a lot more than that at prevailing market price. She is also one of over 100,000 women across India who have lost their husbands in suicides arising from the farm crisis these past 14 years.

"Four kilograms a month means about 135 grams a day," says T. Yashavantha, who is from a farming family of the same district. He is also State vice-president of the Students Federation of India. "Even an undertrial or convict gets more." What's more, they get cooked rice. She gets four kg of grain. Jail diets in the State vary according to whether the prisoner is on a "rice diet," a "ragi diet" or a "chapati diet." Jail officials in Bangalore told The Hindu "those on rice diets and doing rigorous imprisonment get 710 grams of cooked rice per meal. Those on non-rice diets get 290 grams of rice. Undertrials and those doing simple imprisonment [who are on rice diets] get 505 grams of rice per meal."

The convict doing rigorous imprisonment does eight hours of labojr.

Jayalakshmamma does 12 or more. "But her entitlement is 45 grams per meal if she has three a day," points out Mr. Yashavantha. She doesn't have the time, though, to make comparisons. Her daughter now works at breadline wages in a Bangalore garment company. "At most she can send us Rs.500 in a year," she told us at her village. This leaves her son and herself at home. Their joint entitlement on the BPL card would yield 270 grams per day. That is: they would together still get less rice than even a prisoner on "ragi diet" gets - 290 grams or more.

They own around 0.4 acres and had leased two acres before Krishna's suicide. "On the former we grew vegetables. On the latter, we had sericulture. Vegetable prices have been terrible. Once, we got Rs.1 a kilo for tomatoes. And water costs came to Rs.9,000 (or Rs.70 per hour) over six months." Now they have only the 0.4 acres. "We also sold all our livestock after his death." They have been paying off his loans and most of the compensation they received appears to have gone this way. "My boy Nandipa grazes the goats of others but there's no daily income from it." Instead, they will share the offspring of the animals - if any - with the owner. "I myself make Rs.35 a day working this off-season."

"I wanted Nandipa to study. But he was in despair. Three years ago, then aged 12, he ran off to Bangalore and worked in a hotel. There he was beaten by the owner. He ran away, took the wrong train and landed up in Mumbai. After a while, he was brought back."

"All widows have problems. But those bereaved by the farm crisis suffer worse," says Sunanda Jayaram, president of the women's wing of the Karnataka Rajya Ryuthu Sangha (Puttanaiah group) "Even after losing her husband she has to maintain his father and mother, her own children and the farm - with no economic security for herself. And she is saddled with his debts. Her husband took his own life. She will pay the price all her life."
In Bidarahosahalli village, Chikktayamma's state exemplifies this. Her husband, Hanumegowda, 38, killed himself in 2003. "The debts are all we're left with," she says, without self-pity. "What we earn won't pay off even the interest on loans to the money lenders." She's struggled to educate her three children - who might be forced to drop out though all want to study further. "The girls should study, too. But later, we'll have to raise lots of money for their marriages as well."

One girl, Sruthi, has done her SSLC exams and another, Bharathi, is in the second year of her pre-university course. Her son Hanumesh is in the 8th standard. Her husband's mother and a couple of other relatives also live in this house. Chikktayamma is the sole breadwinner for at least five people. "We have only 1.5 acres [on part of which she grows mangoes]. So I also work as a labourer when I can for Rs. 30 a day. I had a BPL card but they [the authorities] took it from me saying `we'll give you a new card.'" It never came back, says Mr. Yashavantha. "Instead, they gave her an APL [above the poverty line] one."

In Huligerepura, Chenamma and her family grapple with a debt of over Rs.2 lakh left by her husband Kadegowda, 60, who took his life four years ago. "Sugarcane just sank and it crushed him," says his son Sidhiraj. "We have only three acres," says Chenamma. "It's hard to generate a living from that now." But she and her sons still try. And the family plans to shift to paddy this year.

In Thoreshettahalli, Mr. Yashavantha's father, Thammanna, a farmer for decades, says the farm crisis is biting deep. "Most cane growers are not recovering the cost of production. Input costs go upwards, incomes downwards. Also, some 40 borewells were drilled in this village last month but only one succeeded. People are giving up. You will find farmland lying unused even during season."

What about self-help groups? Jayalakshmamma has paid an initial amount "but the group has not yet launched. And I cannot afford the Rs.25 a week. Nor the 24 per cent interest each year." Chikktayamma cannot think of making such payments regularly. "The SHG concept is a good one," says KRRS leader K.S. Puttannaiah. "But in some cases, they've also become moneylenders. Meanwhile, after the initial compensations, the State has no plan for widows and orphans of farm suicides. When have they even thought about it?"

"Remember, these and all other farm women are breadwinners and have always been so," says Ms. Jayaram. "Yet, they have no land rights and no land security. Even in agricultural labour, they are paid far less than men. Those widowed by the suicides are in constant tension. There are debts hanging on their heads which they did not incur. There are daughters whose marriages are pending. The pressure is unending." It is. But all the three women and many more like them in Mandya stand up to it with incredible resilience and still try to run their farms and feed their families with dignity and respect.

P. Sainath is the rural affairs editor of The Hindu and the author of Everybody Loves a Good Drought. He can be reached at: psainath@vsnl.com.


India's Agrarian Crisis
No End To Farmers Suicides
by Devinder Sharma; June 28, 2004

Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y.S.Rajasekhar Reddy is in a quandary. Ever since he took over as the chief minister more than a month, on May 14, more than 300 farmers have committed suicides. This was the official death toll in the suicides register till June 25. Unofficially, the death toll is estimated to be much higher.

The spurt in farmers suicides, which unfortunately has failed to move the state as well as the Congress-led Coalition at the Centre, is the outcome of the utter neglect and apathy of the erstwhile Chandrababu Naidu's government in Andhra, voted out after nine years in power. The situation in several other states, including the frontline agriculture states of Punjab and Haryana, and even in the left-ruled West Bengal and Kerala is no better. Thousands of farmers have ended their lives in the past few years. What has meanwhile baffled the new government is that the spate of suicides shows no signs of ending even after it announced a series of routine packages - free electricity and more credit -- aimed at relieving farmer's misery.

The package also includes an ex-gratia payment of Rs 1 lakh each to the next of the kin of the deceased, and Rs 50,000 for a one-time settlement of the loans of indebted farmers. The erstwhile government too had started paying an ex-gratia grant of Rs 1 lakh to the affected families after suicides were initially reported in 1997-98. After giving the assistance to some 250 farmer families, the payments were stopped on the plea that such an ex-gratia would prompt more farmers to take their lives. The Congress, then in the opposition, had stepped in by collecting donations for providing assistance to the grieving families.

Although the newly-elected government of Andhra Pradesh (and followed closely by Tamilnadu) have moved in quickly by announcing free power to farmers, what is more depressing is that the governments are clueless of the reasons that forces farmers to commit suicides. Nor is there any effort from the so-called distinguished agricultural scientists, economists, and social scientists to come out with proposals to put an end to this shameful blot on the country's image. The reason is obvious. No one has the political courage to point a finger at the real villain -- industrial farming model that shifts the focus on cash crops and thereby plays havoc with sustainable livelihoods.

Mr N Chandrababu Naidu in Andhra Pradesh was swept away by a tidal wave of the angry farmers. The small and marginal farmers, in tandem with the landless labourers, who constitute nearly 80 per cent of Andhra's 80 million people, gave their verdict: the industry-sponsored economic reforms are anti-poor. In Karnataka too, where the farmers suicide rate is equally high, the over-emphasis on technology had only alienated a large percentage of farming populations from economic growth and development. Both the States had relied heavily on the British consultancy firm, McKinsey India Ltd., to draw the blueprint for economic reforms. In adition, McKinsey's services are also being utilised by West Bengal for re-designing the economic model of growth.

Blindly aping the World Bank model of agriculture (as suggested by McKinsey India Ltd.), Karnataka and Andhra had pumped in huge finances to push in an industry-driven agriculture that has not only exacerbated the crisis leading to an environmental catastrophe but also destroyed millions of rural livelihoods. The biggest tragedy being that both the States had turned into a national capital of shame for farmers' distress, visible more through the increasing rate of suicides in the rural areas. Making available cheap credit to these marginal farming communities, as has been announced by the Finance Minister, will not be helpful. What these poor and marginalised need immediately is income support.

In reality, Andhra as well as Karnataka were only making it smoother for the industry to move into the rural areas. APs Vision 2020 document talked of reducing the number of farmers in the state to 40 per cent of the population, and did not have any significant programme to adequately rehabilite the remaining 30 per cent of the farming population. The objective was to promote the commercial interests of the agribusiness companies (read foreign financial institutes and international bankers) and the IT hardware units. All benefit would have accrued to these companies in the name of farmers. In fact, these two sectors, along with biotechnology, were being heavily subsidised in the name of efficiency and infrastructure whereas the poor farmers were being divested of the their only source of income - their meagre land holdings.

Andhra in reality was fast turning into a BIMARU state (an euphemism for backward states). Thousands of farmers were migrating every season looking for menial jobs in the urban centres. Mofussil newspapers in the heartland of the cyberstate - that's how Mr Naidu wanted the state to be called - were full of advertisements inviting people to mortgage their gold and silver belongings. Livestock deaths and the plight of dalits and other landless and marginalised no longer adorned the headlines. Farmers were asked not to produce more rice (the staple food) as the State had no place to stock it. Farmers suicides had become so common that Mr Naidu had actually sent team of psychetrists to convince them against taking their own lives.

Believe it or not, daily wage workers in AP can still be hired at a price that their counterparts in Bihar would scoff at. And yet, the ignorent media despised the maverick political leader Laloo Prashad Yadav for taking his state - Bihar - to economic backwardness whereas Mr Naidu was showered by all kinds of accolodes. Such was the extent and level of poverty that AP also topped the country in the percentage of women entering prostitution and trafficking. Mr Naidu on the other hand ignored the writing on the wall and went about holding web conferences with his bureaucracy much to the chagrin of the national media, which painted him as the poster boy for economic reforms.

The Naidu model has failed. It also means failure of the McKinsey's model of economic development. To talk of 'Naidu Plus', as some economists have said, indicates the level of arrogance among a school of economic thought that refuses to see anything except the industry.

No wonder, newspapers have already quoted the secretary general of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), Mr Amit Mitra as saying "economic initiatives in the IT and services sector should be extended to the rural areas and to such industries as food processing and rural industry". Unfortunately, the industry refuses to accept that it was because of its own over-indulgence that Mr Naidu paid a heavy price. In addition, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the newly emerging biotechnology industry, were the beneficiaries of the state's largesse in the name of improving agricultural productivity and enhancing rural incomes. The new government has focused on agriculture but refuses to look for the real causes behind farmers distress. All its efforts are directed towards convincing the markets that sensex will not be allowed to slip any further.

The tragedy is that while the farmers have delivered their verdict, the economists and policy makers are not willing to accept it. The nation is not only clueless but doesnot even want to know how to resurrect agriculture and farming. This is where the politico-economy equations have gone wrong, this is where the Indian democracy has reached superficial heights. The CII and FICCI have already ensured that their breed of economic thinkers and supporters are in each political party. The tragedy therefore is that the policy directions between the ruling party and the opposition has blurred. Both follow the same economic prescriptions that have no connection with the ground realities. The Congress-led coalition too will easily fall into the trap of pushing for more economic reforms, and provide the same direction for the agriculture sector that Mr Naidu falsy banked upon.

The ground realities are far removed from the rhetoric and the statistics that have bred immunity against compassion. We are all part of a global food system, which perpetuates poverty and deprivation. The food industry makes tall claims of nutritious diet that it churs out, and millions are dying of obesity and related problems. We make tall claims of improved technology for agriculture by pushing stark realities of increasing indebtedness, growing poverty, resulting human suffering and hunger from the public glare. We are, therefore, in reality, the cause behind hunger and the resulting farmers suicides. Behaving like an Ostrich is surely not going to eclipse hunger and death from the politico-economic radar screens.

It requires policy makers, agricultural scientists, academicians and even the civil society groups to first accept the fundamental flaws that force farmers to the gallows. And then it needs determination - both political and scientific -- and there is no reason why farmers distress cannot be turned into a scourge of the past. Economic gimmicks like announcing free electricity and enhancing bank credit will otherwise continue to force farmers to take the fatal route by drinking pesticides.

Devinder Sharma is a New Delhi-based food and trade policy analyst. Among his recent works include the book In the Famine Trap. Responses can be emailed at: dsharma@ndf.vsnl.net.in)


The Bt Cotton Fiasco

Stepping into a trap

Devinder Sharma

sn’t it like sending a soldier to the battle front and then asking him not to use the latest sophisticated assault rifle?,’ a British radio journalist asked me the other day. He was obviously referring to the Indian government’s initial decision to burn down the illegally grown genetically modified cotton on some 10,000 acres of farmland in Gujarat.
"It will certainly be tragic to deprive a soldier of the latest weapon. But it will be more sinister and criminal to provide the soldier with an AK-47 gun and then deliberately make him step on a booby trap," I replied. I added that Bt cotton – containing a gene from a soil-borne bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) – is an attractive biological trap. It is more potent than the toxin it produces, which kills the dreaded bollworm pest. Experience has shown that gullible cotton growers have been continuously pushed over the past few decades into ‘a vicious circle of poison.’ The only difference being that the ‘chemical treadmill’ is now being replaced with a more dangerous and hitherto unknown ‘biological treadmill.’
"But then a majority of cotton growers are happy with the standing crop, even if the seed was clandestinely supplied," said the journalist. He stated that there was a growing demand that the genetically modified crop, which has proved to be effective against the bollworm insects, should not be destroyed. "This," I replied, "is exactly what had happened when the fourth generation pesticides called synthetic pyrethroids were introduced in the country less than 20 years ago. Since then over 10,000 cotton growers have committed suicide."
Who will be responsible if and when thousands of cotton growers again take the fatal route once the insect develops resistance to the Bt gene? Will the secretary of the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) – who appears eager to hasten the process of commercialization – be responsible for the resulting deaths? After all, suicides by thousands of farmers, resulting from the targeted pest developing immunity against the chemical or the gene is not just ‘collateral’ damage. It is a heavy price that the Indian farmers have paid, and are likely to pay in the future, with the introduction of Bt varieties. Technology has to be linked to human rights.
The jubilation that was expressed by cotton farmers in the early ’80s, when the synthetic pyrethroids were introduced in the cotton-growing areas, did not last long. For the first two or three years, the farmers were visibly happy. The chemical killed almost everything, and that included the ‘American bollworm,’ as the pest is generally called. However, the euphoria was short-lived. The insect gradually began to develop resistance, and in the next few years, while the number of expensive, environment-unfriendly sprays increased, so did the resistance to the chemical. In 1987, Andhra Pradesh recorded 37 suicides by cotton growers from crop failures. This was a direct result of the chemical equation going wrong. The farmers got into mounting debts. Unable to withstand the humiliation that comes with increased debt, they drank the pesticide that had failed to kill the insect.
Ten years later, a serial death dance began. Starting from Warangal district in Andhra Pradesh once again, the suicides spread to the neighbouring districts, and then to Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab and Haryana. Government denials notwithstanding, more than 10,000 cotton growers have died so far. No scientific institution, no chemical industry and no chief minister have been held accountable for arguably the greatest man-made human disaster to strike independent India. It did not end here. In fact, the same arguments, the same rhetoric, and the same vested interests are desperately pushing genetically engineered crops as the saviour of the farming community. No one – not even the Genetic Engineering Advisory Committee (GEAC), the highest regulatory authority in India – has asked how many more thousand farmers need to be sacrificed at the altar of development. Who is responsible for the families of those farmers who end their lives as victims of commercial agriculture? The death of thousands of farmers is not a small pri-ce to pay for scientific experimentation.
The Indonesian experience
And that is reminiscent of the dilemma that the former Indonesian President Suharto was faced with in the mid-1980s. Indonesia’s rice crop, its staple food, was devastated by brown plant hopper insects. No pesticides were effective against the menacing pest. After trying all kinds of permutations and combinations, President Suharto finally sent an SOS to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) at Manila in the Philippines. The international scientific community responded with a sensible and sustainable alternative. It suggested an immediate ban on the spraying of chemicals on rice.
President Suharto understood the importance of integrated pest management techniques that the scientists wanted him to adopt on a mass scale. Under a presidential decree, 57 pesticides were banned. The chemical industry, led by the American Embassy in Jakarta, were up in arms, saying that the decision was suicidal, and Indonesia would be pushed into the throes of hunger and starvation. After all, rice was and still is the staple food of Indonesia. President Suharto refused to accept the industry’s prescription. Instead, he simultaneously launched a countrywide integrated pest management programme.
In the next two years, contrary to all projections, rice production increased by 18%. The consumption of pesticides was drastically reduced by 65%. The cost of cultivation slumped, and the environment became much safer.
Abuse of cotton
For cotton too, there is no other route. Over years, the indiscriminate use and abuse of pesticides have pushed the farmers into a vicious trap. The more the insect attack, the more potent and repetitive are the number of chemical sprays. Farmers have been forced to apply all kinds of pesticides (many of them spurious) to control the bollworm insects. So devastating is the ‘circle of poison,’ that farmers in Punjab are known to have sprayed chemicals worth Rs. 320 crore in 1998-99 to harvest Rs. 280 crore worth of cotton lint. While farmers are the sole victims of the exploitative system that cotton has spun, even lesser known insects like white fly have now become major cotton pests, thereby bringing in more pesticides.
What has been deliberately overlooked is the fact that in the same cotton field, there exist 27 natural predators or benign insects that feed on the American bollworm. But when the chemical sprays begin, the benign insects get knocked down first. By the time the American bollworm appears on the scene, the cotton field is bereft of its natural enemies.
Moreover, it has been conclusively demonstrated, both within India and outside, that much better yields and a cleaner environment can result from using fewer pesticides on cotton. Cotton productivity or yields in India are among the lowest in the world, not because we do not have high-yielding varieties. In fact, the first cotton hybrids were evolved in India. What is not known is that in the past two decades, cotton farmers have deliberately been paid 20% less every year by way of administered price, to keep the textile industry afloat. Which means that the cotton farmers had in reality subsidized the industry. If cotton farmers had received an attractive price, there would have been an incentive to produce more.
On the one hand, the biotechnology industry as well as the DBT use the same argument even now. On the other hand, the government has allowed the import of cotton into the country. Soon cotton farmers will be faced with an unprecedented crisis of livelihood, not because of low yields, but because of heavy imports of cheap and highly subsidized cotton into the country. Under the WTO rules, India will have to allow the import of cheap cotton. Ironically, the same textile industry which was subsidized by the cotton farmers all these years, has dumped domestic farmers at the first given opportunity.
Bt cotton is, in any case, a faulty prescription. It is widely accepted that in the case of Bt cotton, the third generation of the pest is the most problematic. In Southern China, farmers have been growing this variety. What is not known is that now they have to spray the pesticide to control the third and fourth generations of American bollworm insects. In Australia too, farmers have now been advised to go in for more sprays because of a drop in expression levels. With the insect developing immunity against the Bt toxin in the plant, scientists are now trying to introduce genetically manipulated varieties with two Bt genes. The ‘biological circle of poison’ is certainly going to be more dangerous than the chemical cycle that farmers have been forced to live with.
Devinder Sharma is a food and trade policy analyst. Among his recent works are two books: GATT to WTO: Seeds of Despair and In the Famine Trap


Globalisation and Agricultural Crisis in India/edited by Y.K. Alagh. New Delhi, Deep & Deep, 2003, xxviii, 384 p., tables, $44. ISBN 81-7629-430-6.

Everybody Loves a Good Drought: Stories from India's Poorest Districts (Paperback)
by P. Sainath (Author)

Abraham George's "India Untouched: The Forgotten Face of Rural Poverty",
examines the crisis of poverty and offers realistic and pratical solutions that have been implemented.