By Mohammed Junaid
Ompal Singh, a 50-year-old farmer from Muzaffarnagar, sugarcane belt of Uttar Pradesh, ended his life on 4 June 2020 allegedly over the delay in payment for his sugarcane dues. His death triggered protests in the area, but like other farmer suicides, didn’t make ground for any far-reaching change. Farmers continue to suffer, and a shaky economy and impact of Covid19 pandemic will only make it worse.
The death of Ompal Singh is not a single incident of farmer death. Like in this case, most of these deaths are forgotten in lieu of cash compensation by the government. But is that an effective solution to farmer’s woes? Socioeconomic factors, rather than mental health problems, are associated with farmer suicides, with increased indebtedness playing the predominant role.
As many as 10,655 farmers and farm labourers committed suicide in 2017, which is an average of 29 suicides a day for an entire year, according to data released on January 2 by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). The government agency, while releasing the data after much delay, maintained that the toll is the lowest since 2013. It had released the 2017 crime data in October 2019 but held back the data on suicides. The next month it disclosed farmer’s suicide data for 2016, claiming there was a decline. At least 10,349 people working in the farm sector ended their lives in 2018 and many of the suicides go unreported or may not get inserted in the government’s data.
Activists and scholars have offered various reasons for farmer suicides, such as high debt burdens, poor government policies, corruption in subsidies, crop failure, public mental health, personal issues, and family problems.
PM-Kisan Yojana, a farmer-centric scheme of NDA government pledges 6000 INR per farmer family, the amount is meagre and only 9 crores out of 14.5 crores families have been identified. However, data from the Union Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare (MoAFW) shows that until October 2019, only 3.12 crore received all three instalments as they registered during the first period. An accurate count of farmers to extend these benefits is a major issue.
Once in power, the NDA government promised to double the incomes of farmers between 2015 and 2022. Growth of the agriculture sector has been fluctuating; it declined from 6.3% in 2016-17 to 2.9% in 2018-19. This is itself an indicator, that the doubling of income remains a distant dream for farmers.
Other factors which are responsible include demonetisation, technical reasons, and the recent unplanned lockdown for COVID-19.
Demonetisation had a severely detrimental impact on agricultural markets. In the first few weeks or months, it disrupted agricultural supply chains across the country. November 2016 was the month when Kharif harvests arrived in mandis. But cash shortages prevented the smooth sale of the harvest. In some regions, traders did not pick up farmers’ harvest from fields and yards.
Two years after demonetisation, the Union agriculture ministry has admitted that the farmers were badly hit by the note ban. The agriculture ministry informed the committee that when demonetisation was implemented, the farmers were either selling their Kharif yield or sowing Rabi crops. Demonetisation rendered all the cash they had in hand useless. This drastically affected the farmers, said the agriculture ministry report. The ministry said that due to the shortage of cash, about 1.38 lakh quintals of wheat seeds of the national seed corporation were not sold.
Apart from this, March and April of 2020 were bad for farmers of 13 states and Union territories in northern, central, and east-central India. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) recorded 77 per cent more than normal rainfall in the country between March 1 and March 19. A large part of India lost a substantial amount of ready wheat crops. In spite of rich infrastructure, IMD fails to warn the farmers about weather disasters which lead to huge crop losses. Accurate weather predictions are also a front to be worked on to better the condition of farmers.
To add to their woes, India’s lockdown due to Covid19 is hurting its crucial farming sector which employs about half of the country’s workforce. Preliminary findings of a survey of more than 1,000 agricultural households across 12 Indian states show that 60% of those who did harvest reported a yield loss, and 1/10th of them could not harvest their crop in the past month. More than half (56%) of the farmers said that the lockdown has impacted their ability to prepare for the upcoming sowing season. A lack of workers and breakdown in supply chains has left many farmers struggling to sell their crops.
Moreover, transparency and commitment to implement the policies at grass root level too has a key role in improving the miserable conditions of the farmers. As India is still not over the Covid19 crisis, challenges are likely to increase. A prompt assessment and resolution to their problems is imperative to stop any more tragic deaths like that of Ompal Singh.