:: Saturday, June 29, 2002 ::

Farmer Suicides and Rural Dilemmas

I've been reading occassional reports of peasant suicides for the past three years or so, especially in rural Andhra. Sonia Gandhi has seized on this issue and laid blame with Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, who has responded that the suicide rate in his State has actually been somewhat below the national average. Conrad, have you seen these numbers, or do you know where we can find them? I don't want to take anything away from the individual and family tragedies described, but I think we should look at the numbers to try to determine if there is in fact a clear trend, both at the national level and in terms of distribution across the States. There may in fact be an undeniable upward trend in peasant suicides coterminous with changes in cultivation and production techniques. The media, however, often can't be trusted when it comes to reporting trends; editorial judgements change and a phenomenon which occurs at a fairly constant rate can suddenly appear to be on the rise simply because reporters begin to cast their spotlights on it. The so-called post-9/11 "baby boom" in the U.S. is a recent example; it appears to be based entirely on anecdotal evidence and the experiences of a few obstetricans who have seen increases at their practices, but has yet to be definitively substantiated.

The linkages to pesticide-dependence and crop-failure are certainly worth investigating. I haven't read nearly as much on this issue as the two of you have, but the reports I've read in Frontline have tended to link peasant suicides in Andhra with the removal of price supports under the State's World Bank-endorsed reform programme. This is another issue we could discuss.

It is tricky to establish causility in the midst of the kind of the complexities of food technologies, social relations, and government policies. The common thread running through almost all of the suicide stories, as Conrad notes, is the dependence on moneylenders. Such predatory social relations have no doubt been exacerbated by changes in production techniques, but the relations themselves are not new and are not "caused" by new technologies. What would an integrated rural development programme that avoids the inegalitarian pitfalls associated with these technologies look like? What are the trade-offs that would be involved? Is it possible to employ biotechnologies while attacking the problems of rural credit head-on? Are we willing to accept a certain level of inequality among farmers, and if so, how much? This issue continues to dog policymakers in the United States, where government interventions in agricultural markets are often criticized for favoring large-scale, relatively well-off farmers.

I'm not optimistic that redistributive land reforms will be achieved in India beyond what was done in places like Kerala and West Bengal, and especially not in the current political climate. Further, I agree that land reform in several of the East Asian "miracle" economies is underemphasized as one of the explanations for their relatively egalitarian growth rates, but I don't think that that was the "magic bullet" any more than any of the other frequently invoked explanations (state-business networks, U.S. security umbrella, Confucian values, Japanse colonial practices versus those of Britain and France, etc.--yes, I know there's overlap in these categories) was in isolation. The East Asian "miracle" was, in my view, the whole package. It offers helpful instruction for the Indian setting, but little in the way of practical ready-made policy prescriptions.

Again, the question that runs through so many of the discussions here: What is to be done?

H1-B Visas

You might be interested in reading a story from the online magazine eWeek, on how shifting political winds post-9/11 have led to diminished support for the H1-B visa program, the category of visa under which many thousands of Indians (including relatives of my wife) have come to the United States for temporary work in the IT sector. I'm concerned that, in addition to the factors discussed in the story, recent media reports that al Qaeda's sophistication in hacking and the potential for electronic terrorism are greater than U.S. intelligence agencies previously believed, along with allegations that "foreigners" brought to the U.S. on temporary contracts in 1999 by companies and agencies scared silly by doomsday Y2K bug predictions may have used the opportunity to gather information on behalf of terrorist groups, will create an indiscriminate climate of fear about foreign-born IT workers. Not that the H1-B phenomenon has been an altogether positive thing for India (which leads the category, I believe) by any means; there have been numerous reports of abuses by "body shops" who sponsor workers and then take sizeable cuts from their salaries. Nevertheless, if there's a major contraction in H1-Bs, the consequent loss of remittances could have adverse effects for the Indian economy. Given that the macro picture was looking rather grim even before the recent effective U.S. sanctions in the form of the State Department's travel advisory (since lifted with no publicity?), India can scarcely afford such a blow.

Here's the URL for the story: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,299596,00.asp

:: Jason Kirk 12:39 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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Crisis in a Time of Prosperity?

Vikash, Jason, I thought this article is interesting as it juxtaposes both our recent interest in IT and transgenic crops, in an interesting if disturbing fashion.

November 8, 2001:
BANGALORE, India (Reuters) - Newspapers in the southern city of Bangalore, India's answer to Silicon Valley, often carry prominent advertisements to entice talented software engineers, despite a global technology slowdown. The same papers also routinely carry small news items about farmers committing suicide in the remote nooks of the state of Karnataka, home to Bangalore, where 65 percent of a population of 52 million still depend on agriculture for a living. Bangalore's streets lined with cars and glitzy shopping malls, and crowded with young engineers and executives in trendy jeans present a picture of sharp contrast to the haggard farmers in the countryside, dressed in homespun cotton loincloths. The technology boom has done little or nothing to help modernize the vast reaches of the state, officials and angry farm leaders say. And both blame the free-market policies of the World Trade Organization as a key factor in unsettling the farmers' lives. "I honestly confess I do not know how to prevent suicides," Karnataka's chief minister, S.M. Krishna, told Reuters. "This is a complex social phenomenon." Krishna set up an expert panel to investigate the suicides in August and gave it a three-month deadline. The state's burgeoning software industry has not necessarily helped the farmers, even if only by boosting demand for their products, experts say. "It is difficult to say if the software boom has helped the farmers," one agricultural economist, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters. "There is nothing like a one-to-one relation in this." Against the backdrop of rural unrest, the Karnataka government canceled an international film festival in Bangalore last month, citing a drought in the state and tension after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. Some days later, two farmers were killed when police opened fire on a demonstration to protest a state ban on the tapping of coconut palms -- because the fermented juice contains alcohol -- prompting authorities to drop the ban.

HIGH INTEREST, LOW PRICES

The unrest among farmers has translated into major political tension for both Karnataka and its technology rival and neighboring state, Andhra Pradesh. Investment bankers and venture capitalists have arrived to help Bangalore's entrepreneurs but farm activists say rural folk are trapped in the grip of moneylenders who demand high interest. Farm leaders say crop failures because of drought and pests are compounded by inadequate credit, a patchy crop insurance system, high input costs, subsidy cuts and low support prices offered by state-run procurement agencies.M.D. Nanjundaswamy, a socialist who led farmers in recent protests against PepsiCo's Kentucky Fried Chicken and seed giant Cargill Inc., said he estimated there had been 100 suicides in the past three months or so. "The suicides are actually an accumulation of various facts for the past six years after India became a part of the WTO," the peasant leader told Ruters. "They (the farmers) are stuck ... no other sector is prepared to take them." Nanjundaswamy says his group, the Karnataka State Peasants' Organization, represents a quarter of the state's farmers, 75 percent of whom own no more than five acres. He says the farmers have been victim to under-estimations in production costs for decades, and the problems have been compounded by cuts in fertilizer subsidies and a support price mechanism that is outstripped by rising inflation. "The government shows a smaller cost of production to help dumping (of imports). It has been doing so since the British rule days," he said. Nanjundaswamy reels off numbers to prove his point: While the government values farm Labour at 31 rupees (65 U.S. cents) a day, farm owners pay 70 rupees. Manure costs 1,000 rupees a ton, five times the government estimate.

STATISTICAL FLAWS

Support for this view appears to come from former central bank governor Chakravarti Rangarajan, who recently bemoaned the lack of appropriate figures by which to assess the farm sector. "Despite impressive and commendable achievements in agriculture, over the years, there is a growing concern over the quality of agricultural statistics that are available," he said in a report. Besides costs, loans are a major source of farmers' woe. India's rural credit system is almost wholly served by state institutions. Activists say crop insurance claim rules are unrealistic and ill-implemented. Only a fifth of farmers get loans from commercial banks or cooperatives pushing others to private lenders who charge three times the 12 percent banks usually charge, Nanjundaswamy said. "The interest grows faster than the crop," he said. He studied international law at the Hague before giving up his professor's job at Bangalore University a decade ago to become an activist. Nanjundaswamy has turned his anger on the world trade regime since the WTO was formed in 1995. He said farmers have been hit by fertilizer subsidy cuts and import of unreliable seeds and pesticides. Even if the government moved to boost farm credit, Krishna said, it would only create fiscal problems if the cultivators are unable to pay back the loans. "Because of the WTO, some price structures have collapsed. So we have to do something," Krishna said.

Copyright 2001 Reuters Limited.

:: Conrad Barwa 8:26 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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Bt. cotton Some Basic Issues:

What are Bt crops?

When a gene of the Bt bacterium is cloned and inserted into the plant, the altered crop variety continuously produces insecticidal toxin in most, if not all, parts of the plant. This provides continuous protection against the pest and Monsanto claims that the technology would minimise pesticide usage and increase production by 20-25 per cent.

What is BT?

Bt is a bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis. It is found in the soil and produces a toxin that is lethal to the Bollworm, a pest that affects cotton, corn and potato among other crops. Farmers have traditionally used this bacterium in pest management. Cotton farmers periodically dust the crop with the dried extracts of soil rich in the bacteria. This naturally occurring soil bacterium has been used as a biological pesticide since the early 1960s.

Have most countries approved the commercial cultivation of Bt crops?

Curiously, while India rushes in to allow genetically modified crops, trials of genetically engineered organisms (GEO) have been banned or restricted in countries of the European Union, Japan, Brazil and many other countries. In New Zealand, a major controversy has broken out over revelations that a US government official threatened serious economic reprisals if the country went forward with a law on mandatory abelling of food products to indicate whether they had been made from genetically modified crops. In Brazil, one of the nations largest supermarket chains, Carrefour, has come out against the commercialisation of Monsantos herbicide-resistant Roundup Ready soyabeans. England has been particularly harsh in not allowing GM crops and even Monsantos staff canteen in England is not allowed to use GM foods!More than 24 leading African agriculturalists and environmental scientists, representing their countries at the UN, issued a statement last year against moves to commercialise genetically modified seeds. The statement said, We do not believe that such companies (Monsanto) or gene technologies will help our farmers to produce the food that is needed in the 21st century. On the contrary, we think it will destroy the diversity, the local knowledge and the sustainable agricultural systems that our farmers have developed for millennia and that it will thus undermine our capacity to feed ourselves.

BT cotton : The controversy in India

The introduction of Bt cotton has been mired in controversy. Those opposed to the cultivation of GM varieties have cited reasons as varied as the impact on the environment, to the fear that it will increasingly enable the agri-MNCs to wrest control of the global food supply. Many environmentalists and NGOs have raised objections to the commercial use of Bt cotton. They point out that the field trials and results are clouded in secrecy. The initial field trials were illegal, according to Greenpeace and other groups. Environmentalist Vandana Shiva's Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, Dehru Dun, has filed a Public Interest Litigation in the Supreme Court against the Department of Biotechnology, alleging large-scale violations of biosafety guidelines during the field trials. Seeds from fields sown with GM varieties often infest neighbouring non-GM fields. "It is strange that the approval granted by the Department of Biotechnology should come at a time when Europe has imposed a three-year moratorium on the commercialisation of GM crops," the independent Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security has said in a statement.Members of the Karnataka Rajya Ryota Sangha (KRRS) have repeatedly burnt genetically engineered cotton crops in the state on the plea that it is harmful to the environment and encourages monoculture. KRRS leaders have asserted that they would not allow the introduction of genetically-modified varieties. Traditional farmers would have to buy seeds every year, and pay hefty amounts for herbicides, they point out.
The GM seed companies and their supporters have, however, dismissed the protests against Bt cotton and GM crops. The Maharashtra Hybrid Seed Company, in which the US-based Monsanto has a 26 per cent stake, has the license to use the Bt cotton technology in India. In the last six years, MAHYCO said it has conducted more than 100 field trials in different agro-climatic zones and nutritional and biosafety studies with Bt cotton under directives issued by the regulatory authorities.The Agriculture Ministry in its Seeds Policy 2001has claimed that Bt cotton would increase crop yields -- farmers could get 1,000 kg per hectare as opposed to the present 350 kg per hectare -- and also reduced the load of pesticides. More than 50 percent of the pesticides used in India are used to destroy pests in cotton alone. However, there is also a cautionary message in the Policy: there is need to adhere to safety norms like environmental, health and biodiversity safety before commercial release.

Monsanto and MAHYCO have claimed that some companies are illegally selling bollworm-resistant seeds. Unapproved GM cotton (the variety "Navbharat 151") was detected in Gujarat in the beginning of October 2001. The company Navbharat Seeds Private Limited, which sold this variety, confirmed that it has not carried out genetic engineering methods to produce seeds. The company said that it is not equipped for genetic engineering research. It has basically produced a hybrid from cotton plants collected from Maharashtra, selected superior hybrids, which had been registered as the hybrid "Navbharat 151". This hybrid variety was marketed in the last two years. The company argues that the source of the Bt-gene in the "Navbharat 151" hybrid has come from either the open field trials undertaken by Monsanto and MAHYCO or by cross-pollination from their trials with other cotton varieties. In either case Monsanto and MAHYCO are the source of the genetic pollution which has now entered the commercial seed supply through hybridization, either intentional or natural. However, MAHYCO, which has spent more than 8 million U.S. dollars preparing to commercialise Bt cotton in India wass furious that bollworm-resistant seeds were already available in Gujarat. MAHYCO has been waiting for approval and has been limited to controversial field trials. The company claims that Navbharat Seeds has violated intellectual property rights, and has sold Bollworm resistant cotton seeds without paying Monsanto or MAHYCO for the technology. The Indian Government had issued a directive to the Gujarat Government that it destroy the pest- resistant Bt Cotton seeds and burn the 10,000 hectares or more of land in western Gujarat that had been planted with Bt cotton. Gujarat farmers are furious that the government wants to burn their fields without paying compensation.

Source: www.Kisanwatch.org

:: Conrad Barwa 4:04 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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The Technocratic View of Agriculture in the Developing World:

The following is a preliminary list of my initial thoughts on Norman Borlaug’s view of the Green Revolution and the application of Science to agriculture as evinced in his letter regarding transgenic crops:

1) Three scientists advised the US government on the research centre set up by the Rockefeller Foundation to develop HYV (High Yielding Varieties) of seeds in the 1950's: Elvin Stakman, Richard Bradfield and Paul Mangelsdorf. Mangelsdorf was known for his pioneering work on corn hybrids, which he argued prevented the spread of communism by ensuring that post-war Europe was well fed. The three scientists emphasise the importance of the contributions of science, technology and education to the progress of agriculture in the US in the 25 years preceding 1941 - but they fail to mention any of the dislocating social effects of these changes: including growing influence of corporate interests in agriculture, indiscriminate use of energy-intensive inputs and chemical fertilisers, growth of regional stabilisation, enormous increase in the concentration of land ownership, displacement of millions of the farm population, squeezing of family farmers. The result is a sector dominated by the corporate suppliers of machinery and chemical inputs on the one hand and the corporate purchasers of output on the other.

2) The technocratic approach to agriculture has an unabashedly Malthusian view of the Third World. The entire argument for increasing food output is couched in terms of meeting the rising population demands. The narrative relies on the motif of a race, which pits food production against population: in one lane is the Western Scientist, putting his imagination and dedication to work in inhospitable conditions and in the other lane is the dark challenging threat of population growth which threatens to undo all the Progress by Development.

3) The question of distribution is completely set aside. Land reform is said to only satisfy the hunger for land and not for food. This completely disregards the importance of land reform in making the increases in food output sustainable and broad-based in the NICs such as Japan, Taiwan and South Korea - for all the talk of state directed capitalism these countries saw a land redistribution programme that has been unprecedented outside Communist countries. Moreover, the problem of food hunger is seen as a production problem not as a distribution problem - this is questionable. Amartya Sen's work on famines has pretty much demolished the Food Availability Decline (FAD) theory of hunger which argues that is the fall in supply of food which leads to hunger + Famine - Sen has shown how food production in various famines from the infamous Bengal Famine of 1943 to the 1980's famine in Ethiopia was due not to a disastrous harvest/drought and decline in food production but rather to a collapse in the purchasing power of those who were net purchasers of food - a collapse in the entitlement demand over food. In fact Sen has shown that many "famine regions" were food exporters during a time when they were manta to be suffering from a shortage of food stocks.

4) Increasing food production is no guarantee to removing hunger. Bob Currie's recent work on the Kalahandi region in Orissa shows very clearly how starvation deaths still occur on a regular basis in India - this during a time when food stocks kept on climbing year on year. Very often those who die come from tribal communities who are not involved in commercial agriculture but follow forest-harvesting agricultural practices; with the HYV-system of food production this forest land is now converted to farmland to produce more surpluses which never reach the food-deficit households.

5) The whole discourse of Borlaug et al. is a self-serving one which bestows enormous moral and political legitimacy to narrowly defined, technocratic work that more often than not disempowers and depoliticises the poor and leads to increased inequality. The "angel" in this narrative is the idealised Western scientists with the "population bomb" being the diabolical enemy that threatens the modernist project. This also leads to a top-down and technocratic approach to beat the clock - involving ordinary people farmers and labourers would take to long and the results would be uncertain runs the argument!!!!

6) The approach completely ignores the success of Japanese farmers and East Asian cultivators in disseminating knowledge and producing hybrid varieties of seeds in the pre-Green Revolution period. Much of this work was done through farmers’ societies and landowners who paid itinerant specialists to spread best practise techniques across the countryside. A model of slow diffusion from the grassroots level up rather than the top-down revolutionary HYV strategy is presented here.

7) Population is seen as an exogenous variable - ignoring all the research done by Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze that links decline in fertility rates to factors such as female literacy and reproductive health care - decisive in Kerala's ability to achieve population replacement ratios more characteristic of a developed country than and LDC. Borlaug should remember that the Green Revolution areas of the Punjab, Western Uttar Pradesh and Haryana now for the notorious "Bermuda Triangle " of missing women in India - the sex rations within this area is so low that the govt. has had to ban natal gender tests and prosecute anyone found aborting female foeticides. The abortion of unborn female children has seriously unbalanced the gender profile of the population - much of this has to do with the social structure of a patriarchal peasant society which transformed by the Green Revolution now values land inheritance as a crucial indicator of wealth and income -girl-children in this regard have a limited utility and thus are unwanted. The Green Revolution heartland's in India have also been less successful than other areas such as the southern Indian states which have increased welfare spending on female literacy, health care and even social security systems such as old age pensions and widow maintenance payments. Where is this in Borlaug’s entire scheme for food security; population is not just an exogenous factor.

8) The use of HYVs also requires intensive use of water resources all year round; given the limited impact of canal irrigation much of the recent impetus comes from tube well irrigation. However, uncontrolled use of this irrigation source has led to regional imbalances with areas such as eastern Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat near exhausting their groundwater table within 20-30 years at the current rate of water resources. You already know the problem that surround the dam-building projects which penalise forest-dwellers in the highlands to reward cash crop farmers in the parched lowlands - where is the equity in all this? Water is a shared and a public resource; use of HYV and technocratic style development privatises this resource without considering the long-term implications or a real Cost-Benefit analysis.

9) The imbalanced regional development of agriculture as a result of this kind of growth is not good for anyone. It penalises and retards growth where there is no or little of the rural infrastructure needed and where water is scarce by undermining food production there and it puts enormous pressure on the well-endowed regions. Punjab, western Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, now produce over 80% of the total foodgrains procured by the govt. which have led to stocks of over 40 million tonnes. This is not good for these regions as well as it drives farmers to utilise the land very intensively much more than the carrying capacity of the land can bear. This has led to problems such as water logging, salinity, falling levels of micronutrients and soil erosion. These are long-term costs which are not easily apparent but which will destroy the productivity of these regions in the long run.

10) The recent spate of suicides in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka reveal the human costs of these strategies. Farmers often get into debt to buy the Chemical inputs and the GM crops to ensure a good harvest; when these crops fail they are often left with no income and with all their assets such as land and equipment mortgaged Over the last three years there have been over 2,000 farmer suicides in Karnataka, forcing the govt. to set up a commission to enquire into the causes behind it. Use of GM and HYV crops while more productive are more unstable, prone to less immunity to pests and to changes to the weather unlike natural varieties and show production instability has increased over time even though yields and trend output have risen - the large corporations involved in selling machinery and the seeds have benefited as have selected financial institutions from the increases in average output but the risks have been borne by the farmers and labourers who suffer from the greater temporal instability of production.

11) Given the fact that the state subsides food production by giving free water and electricity as well as cheap fertilisers and then by offering generous and ever increasing procurement prices to surplus farmers one can ask how successful a HYV strategy really is given the fiscal subsidies involved. Borlaug is decieving himself when he argues that the inequities of distribution have nothing to do with the Green Revolution - who procures the food - the state, why is this not distributed more fairly? Why have the wages of agricultural labourers failed to keep up with the increases in yields and output? Why is it that the level of subsidies to maintain increases in food production has kept on increasing year after year? Where are the assessments of environmental damage done by the changes in the countryside? Finally despite there being enough food in the world to feed everyone - why is there still mass hunger; while states such as the EU have difficulty in affording the costs of wheat mountains and lakes of milk, there is endemic food insecurity in Sub-Saharan Africa? One should ask Borlaug given the number of times distribution questions have always been delayed under the rubric of more production will solve the problem, is it not time we at least paid some attention to distributing the ever-growing surpluses we already have rather than just pursuing in a narrow-minded fashion the elusive Holy Grail of evermore food production.

:: Conrad Barwa 7:52 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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Ravi Jaggu gets ready to cycle to work as his grandfather and young neighbours sit outside their thatched hut in Bhimnagar Tanda village, 165 kms (102.5 miles) north of Hyderabad, the state capital of Andhra Pradesh state. Ravi's father was the first of more than 150 farmers to commit suicide by swallowing a pesticide which failed to kill black caterpillars that ruined his cotton crops. Money lenders are encouraging farmers to commit suicide so they can recover their loans, said newspaper editor A.B.K. Prasad, who is seeking legal redress for the farmers and demanding criminal charges against money lenders. (AP Photo/Anil Kumar)

:: Vikash Yadav 12:03 AM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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The Silent Violence in the Countryside: The Case of the Peasant Suicides

Vikash, there is a lot to be said in reply to Borlaug’s letter, but since you have asked me to describe the farmer’s perspective, I think it is crucial to look at a relatively new phenomenon that we are seeing in connection to the use of transgenic crops – namely the occurrence of peasant suicides on a scale not seen before. The link between these unfortunate occurrences and the use of Bt. Cotton might not be easily visible but there is a connection. The first reports of peasant suicides appeared in coastal regions of Andhra Pradesh in November 1997. The region had seen suicides by cultivators before, most notably in 1987 but the scale this time was much more severe. By June 1998 the death toll was officially estimated to be 377 in Andhra Pradesh alone, though the phenomenon occurred also in Karnataka, Maharashtra and Punjab. I will summarise some of the cases in the relevant states, from which a certain pattern emerges. It is not a pretty one.

Andhra Pradesh

Case 1: A. Narsoji, 45, from Kadavendi village in Warangal district, owed moneylenders Rs. 1.3 lakh. This was equivalent to two and half year’s earnings in good harvests. But his cotton crop had failed; he had already sold his two oxen to repay one loan and had nothing more to offer moneylenders who were hounding him. Larger and larger doses of pesticides failed to kill the pests that ravaged his cotton crop. Finally, Narosji himself consumed the pesticide on January 25th, 1998 and killed himself.

Case 2: Lakkarasu Mogili, of Kamaram village, Warangal district, owned three acres but leased in a further two acres. The well in his field had dried up. He borrowed Rs. 50,000 from private moneylenders to raise a cotton crop. However, the standing crop was badly hit by bad weather and pests. Mogili committed suicide on December 19, 1997 (The Hindu 23/1/98).

Case 3: Kaselte Sammiah, of Sitarampur village in Warangal district, owed moneylenders Rs. 1.4 lakh. He committed suicide on 2nd February 1998, after consuming half a litre of monocrotophos – a pesticide that failed to protect his cotton crop from the pest Spodoptera litura.

Case 4: Komulamalliah, of Peddapur village in Warangal district, committed suicide on 12th December 1997. He had just leased two acres of land at Ts. 2, 025 per acre. He had borrowed money from the local moneylender and had obtained pesticides from the local shop on credit; his total debt was Rs. 60,000. When pests destroyed his cotton crop, he killed himself. The main beneficiaries of the compensation paid to his family will be his creditors, as his wife K. Laxmi will use most of the amount to repay the loan (ndian Express, 21/1/98).
Case 4: Ijagiri Rambhadraiah, of Papaiahpalle village, Warangal district, grew cotton on two acres to service a Rs. 50,000 debt. Even if he had had a good crop, most of the income would have gone to service his debts. After his crop failed, he consumed the pesticide endosulfan (Indian Express 21/1/98).

Case 5: The stand by the state government was that many of the suicides, which had occurred, were not the result of crop failure or indebtedness but were due to social and family problems. Such a stand is extremely cynical. Of course social and personal factors played a role but it is meaningless to see them in isolation to the crushing burdens that crop failure and chronic indebtedness added. Kakumanu Veeraraghava of Medikonduru village in Guntur district, grew cotton on four acres of his land and chilli on another acre. Three acres were taken on lease at the rate of 2,500 per acre. To meet cultivation costs took loans of Rs. 75,000. He had already paid Rs. 25,000 to get his son a post in the Army. One of his two daughters had committed suicide a year ago as her in-laws were harassing her for dowry; a second had been abandoned by her husband. A third was about to be married. Veeraraghava approached his friends and relatives for loans but met with no success. When he saw that his cotton was succumbing to the white fly pest, he gave up hope and consumed pesticide on January 15th, 1998. He left a letter for his son asking him to clear his debts ( N.K. Upadhyay, People’s Democracy, 19/4/98).

Karnataka:

Case 6: Shiviraj Revanappa Mainhalli, of Siddeshwara village in Bidar district, already owned two acres of land but was not able to support his family on such a small holding so took 16 more acres on lease with a 50:50 sharecropping agreement, taking a loan to purchase the cotton seeds. The crops were attacked by pests and Shiviraj sent his two children as bonded labour to a landlord in exchange for a loan. The pesticides failed to work and with a crippling debt of Rs. 60,000 he committed suicide on December 12th, 1997.

Case 7: most of the suicides in Karnataka were concentrated in Bidar and Gulbaraga districts, which have negligible irrigation, despite the two rivers, and two canals that run through them. Supply of water can be a mater of life and death. Veerabhadrapa Jurbar from Veerapapur village in Raichur district lost his groundnut and jowar crops because sufficient water was not available from the Tungabhadra left bank canal (Frontline 17/4/98).

Case 8: The Deccan Herald reports (22/3/98)>“ In 1996, Yellappa Gundankar of Kadapatti village in Dharwad district borrowed some money from the bank thinking that the yield would be good and he would clear all the dues. But his calculations went wrong and the next year also the crop failed. Last year again he borrowed money from local moneylenders at a high rate of interest thinking that the crop would fetch a handsome price. Again nature played truant and the crops were ravaged. This year he could get just 4.5 quintals of chilli from 10 acres. Yellapa took the extreme step after he came to know that his debts had touched Rs. 70,000-80,000. Although his relatives tried to dissuade him against taking any extreme step, Yellappa ended his life.”
Maharashtra:

Case 9: According to the Union minister for Agriculture there were over, 82 cases of suicide by indebted peasants in Maharashtra during 1997-98. The state government contests this and claims there were only 19, a claim belied by press reports of individual cases. The large majority of the cases were from Vidarbha. Press reports put the total for the first half of 1998 at 100. A typical case is that of Purshottam Banagdwar from Dhamangao village. Purshottam had only 2.5 acres of land and had incurred heavy debts from moneylenders. When his crop was destroyed according to unseasonal rains and hailstorms, he committed suicide (Indian Express 6/5/98).

Case 10: Gulab Dhote, owned 27 acres of land in Panchgavan village in Yavatmal district and also had four cows and 12 bulls in his possession. However, he had borrowed heavily for cotton cultivation, and was unable to service his debts. He could not sell his cotton to the state cotton federation for the past three years the entire crop was taken by his creditors. He also sold seven acres of his land t5o repay moneylenders. Even the jowar he had sown for his family’s consumption was struck by bad weather just when the crop was ready for harvesting. He consumed pesticide in May 1998 (D. Lokhande, Midday29/5/98).

Case 11: Lakshman Gadwe from Januna village in Amravati district spent Rs. 70,000 on inputs for his cotton crop. But as his crop was ravaged by pests, his yields were less than 20% of the normal level. His returns were less than Rs. 30,000. To repay the debts, he was forced to sell the land he had worked so hard to buy. As the co-operative bank did not cover the loans needed he had borrowed from relatives and moneylenders. He consumed pesticide and killed himself in June 1998 (Times of India 1/7/98).

Case 12: Manjurabai Thakur from the same village, found her husband Hari, lying dead in their field two days after he had drank pesticide. He had sunk into a depression for several days before he killed himself and did not divulge how much he had borrowed to his family. After his death moneylenders asked for Rs. 10,000 from his widow (Times of India 4/7/98).

Certain disturbing trends also present themselves. Both in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra traders encourage rampant overuse of pesticide. Vithal Kamble owned 18 acres of land on which he planted cotton. Anxious to rid his crop of the American bollworm, he sprayed it repeatedly – 15 times in all purchasing Rs. 34,000 worth of pesticide from the local pesticide dealer. The heavy rains increased the humidity, aiding the conditions in which the pest flourishes and the cotton crop was destroyed. After selling off his land and possessions, Vithal committed suicide (Times of India 6/7/98).

The cases also reinforce how recent crop failure is only the last disaster in a series of mishaps – even in “normal” times the position of the marginal/small farmer is always tenuous. Mahadeorao Kinnekar in Yavatmal district was found dead after having jumped into a well. He left a widow and five children. His widow told a reporter “we a never able to pay back all the money even if the crop is good. But if there is a natural calamity and the crop along with the fodder for cattle is destroyed, we can’t recover from its after-effects for at least three years. It was this fear and the constant hounding by moneylenders that made my husband commit suicide” (Indian Express 8/4/98).

The narrow options for the peasant outside agriculture is illustrated by the case of Vituji Irbhan Vasukar of Malkapur village, from Amravati district.He sowed 4.5 acres of land with cotton. Out of season rains destroyed the entire crop, leaving him with just 7.5 kg of cotton and a heavy burden of debt. He had also borrowed for his daughter’s wedding. To make ends meet he sold his bullock cart and took a loan from the Mahatma Phule Vikas Mandal to buy an auto rickshaw. But he was unable to make payments on this loan and sold the rickshaw. He then worked as a farm labourer in a nearby village, but was still unable to clear his debts. On March 14th, 1998 he killed himself.

A Pattern in the Darkness:

These examples can be multiplied many times over but what are the underlying causes of these sad acts. The newspaper reports I have collected and seen report only the immediate and short-term fallout of the suicides they are silent on the long-term and structural causes behind them. I will list several key factors, which I think, go someway in explaining this problem:

1) Almost all incidents of suicides are reported from households, which are small and marginal cultivators with very small amounts of land to cultivate. Very few cases involved peasants owning more than 2-4 acres. Many peasants were forced to lease in more land in the hope of making enough to survive. 30% of the land cultivated by suicide victims in Andhra Pradesh was taken in on lease.

2) Those regions, which reported serious crop failures, also were those worst affected b y incidents of suicide deaths. In June-September 1997, rainfall was 25% below normal in Telegana, 9% in northern Karnataka and 25.5% in Vidarbha – the areas where the majority of suicide cases occurred. However, manmade causes were also behind the crop failures. Many peasants were hampered b y lack of irrigation, which increased their dependence on rainfall. 83% of the suicide victims in Andhra Pradesh had unirrigated lands. Only 10% of the land in Vidarbha is irrigated and the area under irrigation in Warangal district in Andhra Pradesh is actually declining. Loss of crops to pests was also another key factor. This was due partly to the eagerness of the peasants to earn cash quickly and repay their debts – which led them to cultivate cotton a lucrative cash crop. This meant that whereas cotton used to be cultivated in rotation with other crops breaking the pest cycle, it now began to be cultivated as the only crop and allowed the pests to survive from crop to crop. As many of the pesticides sold were ineffective or adulterated there were many cases of peasants drinking pesticides in order to commit suicide but surviving. This was compounded by the near total lack of agricultural extension staff and services provided by the government. MRM Chalapati Rao, Warangal’s top agricultural official blamed small farmer’s “bad habits” – poor crop choice, misuse of fertiliser, over spraying of pesticides and so on for the crop losses. This conveniently ignores the fact that it was his primary responsibility to advise and educate the farmers in the proper use of these techniques with regards to the new crops. The facilities for this were also inadequate – the ministry had only 39 field officers to cover 1,100 villages. The result was that many peasants, encouraged by traders sprayed their crops 12,13 or even 20-25 times – many multiples of the maximum that would be effective. In Warangal alone there are 13,000 retailers of pesticides, selling 93 companies’ products. One dealer T. Venkata Reddy of Medical India said his sales doubled in 1997-98 with 70% of his sales being on credit. He added, “This caterpillar is uncontrollable. Farmers would have been better off abandoning their crop”. When asked why he did not warn the farmers he replied “No one would sacrifice his own business, Why tell them not to buy?”. In poor districts such as Bidar and Gulbarga in northern Karnataka, Rs. 60 crore of pesticides is sold every year. Many pests have already built up a resistance to the pesticides in use and the pesticides had the effect of killing off many of the natural predators of the pests, worsening the problem.

3) Input prices have been rising as a result of the reforms in the Indian economy – fertiliser prices, irrigation charges, electricity costs have all risen. The quantity of fertiliser and pesticides has also risen per hectare as peasants find their yields per hectare tapering or falling off. India has trebled its pesticide consumption in the last eight years – growing 20% per annum since 1989. The total consumption of nitrogenous fertiliser has grown by 29% between 1990-91 and 1996-97 but the index of agricultural production has grown more slowly by just 11.4%.

4) The prices received for much of the crop have also been depressed. Apart from purchases of food grains in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, government intervention in procurement markets is limited. Private traders exert a strong hold on the market. The Commission on Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) constantly points out that the prices actually paid to the peasants do not correspond to the actual support prices declared by the government and that government agencies do not intervene effectively in the market (except in the foodgrain surplus areas) and that even in years of scarcity the traders are able to manipulate the price downwards at harvest time. The Minimum support prices MSP themselves are frequently very low for cotton – the MSP price of cotton in Andhra Pradesh was 25%-30% below the costs of cultivation in 1997. Even in the case of monopoly procurement of cotton as in Maharashtra, peasants are unable to afford the transport cots to the distant procurement centres and under compulsion of their debts sell their crops top traders and agents at depressed prices. The agents then sell to the government agencies at inflated prices.

5) All the cases of suicides were by peasants engaged in commercial cropping. Even where the peasants were growing foodgrains they were intended for the market. Deepening poverty and indebtedness has driven increasing numbers of peasants to abandon food crops (much of which they would retain for their own consumption) in favour of commercial crops. The area under non-foodgrains grew from 28.7% in 1980 in Andhra Pradesh to 45.21% by 1992-93. In Warangal district, there were just 6,000 hectares under cotton in 1986 compared to over 100,000 by 1997.This has led to several consequences. Most commercial crops, unlike coarse cereal and pulses that were earlier grown need heavy inputs leading to borrowing. Cotton is responsible for over a third of the pesticide consumption in India. Secondly, the prices of these crops fluctuate sharply as a result of nation and international developments. As the peasant needs to purchase his consumption needs from the market, he is doubly vulnerable to these market fluctuations.

I find it insulting and demeaning to read descriptions of farmers who are “lured” into planting commercial crops by dreams of “getting rich”. Smallholder peasants who grow commercial crops do not entertain hopes of fantastic wealth but are responding to compulsions to generate large amounts of liquid cash: for e.g. daughters’ weddings and dowries, for meeting medical expenses or the repayment of earlier debts. Such are these compulsions that even after the disastrous year of 1997-98, peasants in the Telegana region of Andhra Pradesh are increasing their planting of cotton. Ironically, the peasants are growing more cotton as they faced disaster last year and now have to generate more cash to meet their accumulated debt burden. A scientist at the Acharya N.G. Ranga Agricultural University revealingly remarked: “The farmers still consider cotton as white gold, and firmly believe that one good cotton crop will make them rich, so that they can pay their old debts”. Riches here are defined simply as the ability to pay off accumulated old debts.

The production relations that dominate agriculture in so much of the Indian countryside is unfavourable to the small peasant: limited employment avenues outside agriculture, unequal ownership of assets especially land, limited access to cheap credit, lack of control over local water resources and the network of traders and agents which control much of the rural credit markets all militate against the freedom from debt. The dominance of moneylenders and traders in particular is seen as an impediment: according to a Business Standard report (13/7/98) in Andhra Pradesh farmers depend on private moneylenders for 80% of their credit needs for farm operations especially for commercial crops such as tobacco, cotton and chilli. A survey by the Deccan Herald (20/1/98) in an area of Warangal district revealed that there were over 400 unauthorised finance companies operating with an estimated turnover of 25 crores per annum. 25% of the companies belonged to local leaders of the ruling Telegu Desam Party and the BJP. In Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region public sector banks and co-operatives lend only 10% of the regions credit requirements the rest being met by moneylenders. Outlook magazine (27/4/98) reported “while cash input per acre per year is Rs. 6,000 for dry farming and Rs. 10,000 per acre per year for irrigated farming, the farmer is allowed Rs. 1,000 and Rs. 2,000 per acre per year, respectively, at 18% per cent interest by way of bank loans”. While cotton researchers noted that the cost of cultivation of cotton in Maharashtra went up by 85% between 1994-1997, the ceilings on co-operative bank loans for cotton remained virtually the same.

Even official sources recognise the depth of the problem. The executive director of the National Bank for Agricultural Research and Development (NABARD) S.D. Sharma admitted that banks cover merely 20% of the cost of agricultural production. He explains “ Since agriculture is considered an unstable business heavily dependent on the monsoon, commercial banks are reluctant to lend. Moreover, with liberalisation they are cutting costs by restricting the number of small borrowers in order to compete with foreign banks” (Times of India 4/7/98).

Revealingly, hardly any press report mentioned the moneylenders by name. Midday (30/5/98) notes of the suicide cases in Yavatmal that “it is curious that despite repeated questioning nobody comes forward with the names of moneylenders who charged such hefty interest that the farmers were left with no option but to kill themselves”. Frontline (3/7/98) reports “Many of the farmers whom this correspondent met in Vidarbha replied to questions about their sources of finance by speaking of ‘friendly loans’ or loans from relatives. The ubiquitous presence of the moneylender is well known but as most moneylenders have no licence to carry on business, there seems to be as conspiracy of silence about their identities.”

When an earlier outbreak of peasant suicides occurred in 1987-88, over 100 cotton farmers of Guntur and Prakasam districts facing similar problems to the cotton farmers of today committed suicide. The Ojha Committee headed by a former Deputy Governor of the RBI, made a series of recommendations none of which were implemented. Despite the publicity generated by the peasant suicides in Andhra Pradesh rising to three a day in January and February 1998 none of the state governments contemplated a cancellation or reduction of the peasants’ debts to the moneylenders/landlords. Nor did they mention the possibility of criminal action against moneylenders and traders for fraud or having abetted suicide (particularly in the case of pesticide traders who despite knowing better encouraged peasants to use many times more pesticide than was necessary). Even moderate proposals – such as the plea to set a ceiling on the accumulated debt of peasants at twice the principal amount was ignored.

This may be somewhat removed from discussing the impact of bt cotton but the implications are worrying. Current estimated from the EPW (May 25th 2002) suggest that the Monsanto varieties of hybrid cotton now being sold are priced at Rs. 1,600 per bag, driving the cost of seed up by Rs.3,200 per acre. Although the bt toxin will reduce the need for pesticides, even a dramatic reduction of 60% on pesticides will only give a saving of Rs. 600 per acre. The yield will not go up as Bt. Cotton has been bred not to confer a yield advantage but to give an advantage in disease resistance. The introduction of transgenic crops will mean further costs of seed that small cultivators will have to incur, given the current structure of credit in the rural sector this has very dangerous implications. Additionally, the poor extension and research facilities of the state mean that farmers are not advised properly on how to treat their transgenic harvests – for example farmers in Gujarat were not effectively told to leave 20% of their fields clear of transgenic cotton to allow a boll worm refuge and break the pest cycle. Moreover such varieties are more sensitive to fluctuations in climactic conditions meaning that small changes in the seasonal distribution of rainfall can lead to crop failure. The need for application of water also means that such crops need irrigation facilities to yield a good harvest, inadequate operation of these facilities will also lead to crop failure. The increased chances of crop failure and the lack of affordable credit means that farmers who are indebted run the risk of losing their only asset – their harvest.

The phenomenon of the peasant suicides has led to bitter recriminations in the states concerned. Karnataka has set up the Verma Commission to enquire into the occurrence of 2,000 suicides since 1997 (not all of which were by Farmers). Given the history of the Ojha Commission, there will be much rhetoric but little action on the issue. The structure of distribution, credit and trade penalises the small farmer/peasant but is also a source of lucrative rents to political parties to finance election campaigns and the lifestyles of the political entrepreneurs involved in such rent collection. I used to think that Primitive Accumulation was a purely historical process that could only have occurred in the past and would not be possible in a democratic polity; yet what we are seeing is nothing less than such an accumulation on a grand scale. It is damning indictment of the development promises of the Indian state that it is unable to protect its citizens from such a position. The fundamental raison d’etre of any state must be to guarantee the right to live of its citizens – the failure of the Indian state in this regard on such a scale cannot be allowed to go unnoticed, unchallenged or unrectified.

:: Conrad Barwa 9:48 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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