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

Should we protest the Methane (CBM) project

Should we stop the ongoing Coal Bed Methane (CBM) projects at the Tanjore Delta of Tamilnadu? Are the allegations such as the “project may the spoil environment and take away the livelihood of farmers around”, is this true? How far it is justifiable ?

I read a bit about the whole process. Let me share what I learnt, then you can answer the above questions yourselves!.

HOW DOES CBM WORK :

Naturally formed Methane in the underground coal marcels will get released when they are de-pressurized. CBM companies drill deep wells into these coal beds and pumping out all the surrounding water, so that the coal seal gets de-pressurized and lets out the methane to flow as a gas up through the pipes. Methane is then compressed and commercialized into market. It is often also necessary to stimulate the coal seam via fracking (process of fracturing the solid ground layers with high pressure chemicals/liquids) in order to maximum extract of gas.

SO WHAT ARE THE IMPACTS:

Ground Water depletion
Continuously removaing water from coal beds depletes ground water and may eventually lower farmer’s boreholes and underground waterlevel. It can also change the flow of good fresh groundwater to into the coal seams.

Waste Water Disposal
Millions of litres of produced water have to be disposed of from each well. Over time this represents a massive volume of water and toxic material released into rivers, estuaries and the sea.

Leaking Wells & Drinking water contamination
The steel and concrete pipes plunged deep into the ground will decay slowly over time. All gas wells will leak eventually. The possibility of the water used in fracking to contaminate water in rivers and other bodies of water is pretty high.

Air & Noise Pollution & Infrastructure damage
Road damage is an inevitable consequence of methane exploration due to intensive transportation of materials and machinery.

Global Warming & Earth Quakes
CBM is not green, it is not the replacement for traditional fossil fuels, it’s just another energy extraction technique, thus we ‘re only keep expanding the hydrocarbon and emissions. We’re already witnessing the bad effects interms of global warming and frequent earth quakes.

WHAT IS MY VIEW:
I do support technology and development; but this one is not required for our country - where there's already a huge water scarcity; poor infrastructure, corrupted environment/safety regulatory bodies, and greedy business men backed by fraud politicians. Why should we risk the livelihood of our future generations for the profits of certain corporates ?

In the end, I just can’t imagine the beautiful green surrounding of Cauvery delta region turning into a dark coal dump; pure breeze of air to go polluted with chemicals and dangerous gases; chirping sounds of sparrows to change into blasting bore well bombs and restless truck noises; and finally the poor people of these region will loose all they have got and become the refugee of their own land😢 #SaveNeduvasal #banhydrocarbonproject #savefarmer #saveagriculture

Save the River - Thamirabarani

What I am writing here is not JUST about the river Thamirabarani, it’s the concern for most of the rivers/lakes/water sources all over India - which are being vandalized and moving towards the edge of extinction. So please don’t overlook because you haven't even heard of this name “Thamirabarani”, a perennial river flowing in the corner of Tamilnadu.

The Thamirabarani river originates from the #pothigai hills and flows through #tirunelveli and #tuticorin districts of the Tamil Nadu. It serves as the primary source for drinking water and irrigation, for ~120 square kms of agricultural lands. But, eversince the government (SIPCOT) allowed the Coco-Cola company to tape-out water from the riverbed (1 Million litres everyday), the people of these districts started facing water scarcity, and agriculture started moving in downside.

In this situation, the other giant Pepsi Co was also given a license to suck another 1.5 Million litres from the river for 99 years! That’s were only a small set of sensitive people& farmers woke-up and started protesting for their water.

The protests weren’t widespread; were in really low-lights (thanks to our paid media who doesn't have time to think about farmers), but the issue in-itself is intense, and it is a fortunate that the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court understood the danger of river extinction and ordered a stay - restraining Pepsi and Coca-Coca to use the water of the Thamirabharani river.

But what is now shocking is: A recent RTI filed by a local resident & activist Ramiah Ariya is revealing that it’s not just the Coco-Cola and Pepsi, there 27 more industries are sucking millions of litres water everyday even now!.

Some companies are drawing out far more water than Pepsi or Coca Cola, and many of them more than their allotted limits. Please look at the amount of water slurped every day by these industries below. 

WHAT I URGE YOU TO THINK:

While I am not clear on the nature of contracts between these companies and SIPCOT, and have no solution for the loss of these companies when they are banned, still drawing more water than the allotted limits is necessarily a violation of the contracts. 

Why no one ask about this violation?, why all the activism and legal action focused only on Coca Cola and Pepsi? Why not other companies are included in the trail? Why there’s no media coverage on this issue? 

The stay order against Pepsi, albeit a temporary, we all know the money power of giant companies, it is just a matter of dragging the case to different levels for them, but for the people, it’s the lifeline.

Sucking the scarce water for business and profit, while diminishing the residents and farmers, particularly in this time of drought - is irrational and dangerous for the future of our country. Can we drink Pepsi everyday instead of water?? We can’t and we should not. 

#GoBackPepsi #Thamirabarani #TamilNadu #savetheriver