A multi-State study on farmer suicides has shown that a significant number of cases, in the sample group studied, belonged to, what were categorised as, Above the Poverty Line (APL) families in 2015-16.
A high percentage of farmers holding APL ration cards committed suicide in Kerala (74%), Gujarat (67%), Madhya Pradesh (40%), Uttar Pradesh (70%), Maharashtra (36%),Chhattisgarh (22%) and Punjab (63%), said a study conducted by the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bengaluru.
In contrast, a high percentage of farmers belonging to the BPL and Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) categories committed suicide in Andhra Pradesh (93%), Telangana and Karnataka (86% each), Tamil Nadu (80%) and Chhattisgarh (78%) among the families studied.
As many as nine Agro-Economic Research Centres were associated with the study that covered 13 States.
It was conducted at the behest of the Agro-Economic Research Division, Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Union Ministry of Agriculture.
Principal Investigator A.V. Manjunatha and Co-Principal Investigator K.B. Ramappa of ISEC conducted the study.
They surveyed 528 victim households (HHs) which accounted for 6.63% of the total farmer suicides (7,959) in the 13 States. The suicides were attributed to a combination of factors including social circumstances, crop failure and debt.
Landholdings
Noting that the average operational landholding of victim HHs was 3.4 acres with groundwater (70%) being the major source of irrigation, it said marginal and small victim farmers constituted 76% to the total victim HHs followed by medium (16%) and large (8%).
The percentage of victims from among marginal and small farmers was the highest in U.P. (97%), followed by West Bengal (97%), Telangana (96%), Kerala (93%), Chhattisgarh (90%), Karnataka (80%), A.P. (78%), and T.N. and Maharashtra (76% each).
The percentage of medium and large victim farmers was higher in Haryana (86%) and MP (53%).
The study also appears to indicate problems in categorisation as APL and BPL families, considering that many States show a high percentage of suicides among small and marginal farmers as well as in APL category.
The fatal decision was taken at the spur of the moment with respect to 70 to 80% of the victims.
On an average, most victims were married (91%) and every victim was survived by a spouse and one/two children across sample States.
Majority (59%) of the victim households were nuclear families at the all-India level.
Mr. Manjunath told The Hindu that “extremely insufficient income to meet farm and non-farm expenditure” is the root cause that compels farmers to commit suicide.
“Their endeavours to augment income turn futile due to repeated crop failure or incomparably low yield, coupled with unremunerative market prices for their produce. Victim farmers relied completely on crop production and they hardly own any livestock or other enterprises,” he said.
Underlining the continuing dependence on moneylenders, he said that surrendering to them would be inevitable for farmers after exhausting all their institutional sources of credit.
‘Debt trap’
“Borrowing once from a moneylender is enough to entangle them in a debt trap that they start borrowing from one moneylender to pay the interest of another one,” he said.
The study also recommends better and sustained access to institutional loan, government intervention in making available quality agricultural inputs, providing foodgrains through ration shops to support the families and setting up of counselling centres, among other things.
