How can we stop farmer suicides?

India is an agricultural economy, which means, Agriculture is the pre-dominant sector of the Indian economy. True to this, even today, inspite of the Indian economy opening out to the world and globalization, close to 70% of the people still hang on on agriculture for their livelihood. We’ve witnessed the “5 years plans”, “Green Revolution”, and every budget says it focuses on Agriculture development.

Does that mean everything is looking positive for Indian agriculture? A top level view on the above points would tempt anyone to say yes, but the truth is too far away from it. Behind all the growth and development lies the reality that Indian farmers have to face - extreme poverty and financial crisis driving them to suicides.

The year 1997 saw the first few cases of farmers committing suicides, these cases steadily increased over the next decade, peaking in 2001 and reports say that as many as 6000 farmers committed suicide in the last 5 years in the state of Andhra Pradesh alone. The worst cases of farmers committing suicides come from the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra. What are the grave adversities that drive the farmers to commit suicide, at a time when Indian economy is supposed to be gearing up to take on the world?

Why farmers commit suicide?

Repeated crop failures, debt hassles, lack of alternative sources of income, absence of institutional finance have left the farmers with no other solution other than ending their lives. Another disturbing trend has been observed where farmers commit suicide in order to avail relief and benefits announced by the government to support the families of the farmers who have died. This is true in the case of several farmers in Andhra Pradesh who committed suicide so that their families could atleast benefit from the Government's relief programmes.

What then needs to be done to prevent this sad state of affairs?

There cannot be one single solution to end the woes of farmers. The solution to the farmer's plight should be directed towards enabling the farmers to help themselves and sustain on their own. Temporary measures through monetary relief would not be the solution. The efforts should be targeted at improving the entire structure of the small farmers wherein the relief is not given on a drought to drought basis, rather they are taught to overcome their difficulties through their own skills and capabilities. The Government needs to come up with pro-active solutions and the nation has to realize that farmers' suicides are not minor issues happening in remote parts of a few states, it is a reflection of the true state of the basis of our economy.

"Give a man a fish, he will eat for a day but teach him how to fish, he will eat for the rest of his life", so goes the popular saying, the case of our Indian farmers is similar to this, what they need is a means to sustain throughout their lives without having the face the desperation that adversity drives them to. If India has to shine, it is these farmers that need to be empowered.

Courtesy: Some of the statistics and above data are retrieved and reproduced from http://www.civilserviceindia.com

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