ICAR releases Rs 1.35 crore to create a 'stress index' for suicidal farmers

The Indian Council of Agricultural Research has released Rs 1.35 crore to support an ambitious research project  - which will create a ‘stress index’ for suicidal farmers  - and prepare a training module for village volunteers to counsel them, The Indian Express reports.

The Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), psychology department of the Punjabi University at Patiala and similar counterparts from Maharashtra and Telangana will create the module under the research project.

The aim is to create a 'stress index' (SI) for farmers. The exercise is part of a research project titled, ‘Addressing Farmer Suicides through Capacity Building of Farming Families’.

Telangana's Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University is a part of the project alongwith Vasantrao Naik Marathwada Krishi Vidyapeeth from Maharashtra.

The focus will be to track and survey 1,000 ‘vulnerable’ farmer households at baseline (before counselling) and endline (after counselling) stages, while training 200 “peer support volunteers (PSVs)” in Punjab and 100 each in other two states.

Their job would be to identify distressed farmers within the area and provide six months counselling to avert suicides.

Punjabi University’s psychology department will be providing statistical testing tools for the stress index and a “psychological resource index" (PSI) of farmers. These two indices have been finalized.

Typically, distressed farmers would show a high SI index and a low PSI – these two together would measure their mental strength and readiness to cope up with stress. A high PSI would indicate resilience – which should reflect after six months of counselling.

Harprit Kaur, head of Punjabi University’s psychology department and a a trained clinical psychologist, explained, “The testing tools to create the SI and PRI, based on farmer household surveys, include a General Health Questionnaire, the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, the Cognitive Distortions Scale, the Beck Depression Inventory-II, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, the Suicidal Behaviours Questionnaire, the Modified Scale for Suicidal Ideation, and the Friedman Well-Being Scale.”

The program’s efficiency would determine if similar sort of intervention could be done in the country to prevent an agrarian crisis.

“It is a first-of-its-kind project aimed at providing psychological first-aid to farmers and equipping them mentally to handle stress even in a time of agrarian crisis. Most studies we have so far don’t go beyond the statistical analysis of farmer suicides and the economic factors such as indebtedness, crop damage or non-remunerative prices leading to them,” Sarabjeet Singh, a professor at PAU’s department of agricultural journalism, language and culture, was quoted as saying.

The PSVs would be educated rural youth, trained to listen to farmers and educate them about ‘simple lifestyle’ and ‘positive path’ while also educating about eliminating social pressures such as hefty marriages, dowry among other things.