Farmers Suicides in Karnataka, 2015
By Kishor Govind
In 2015, over 600 farmers were reported to have committed suicide in Karnataka. Reports of suicide started in large numbers in July and continued at a high rate through September. The rate was alarming affecting even the richest districts of the state reaching even epidemic proportions. In response to the crisis, a study was undertaken as part of the “Farmers’ Agitation Campaign” to look into the underlying causes of farmer suicides. The campaign was initiated by Karnataka Jana Shakti, a regional progressive organization with the support of farmers’ groups and other organizations. As part of the study, some members of the PUCL Karnataka volunteered to take part in conducting the study. The study looked into social, political, personal and economic factors in the suicide with the aim of trying to understand what caused the spike in suicides in 2015.
This year three things stood out in note that the study tried to look into.
First, while in previous years farmers who committed suicide tended to be older, this year a substantial numbers of suicide victims were young people in their 20s and 30s. This showed that the agrarian crisis has completely shifted to the next generation of farmers. These farmers’ lives have been shaped by the period where farmer suicides have become a staple of the agrarian story. They did not know of a life before that. Contrary to a popular conception that poor agrarian conditions would lead to people leaving agriculture, many younger farmers were torn between aspirations beyond agriculture and a declining home economy, as the family farm was in part a sense of identity. Some felt trapped as they felt they could not leave their parents with such high levels of responsibility. Some got into debt to fund the education or weddings of their children. Often we found that the escape from agriculture itself locked people into a cycle of debt from which suicide was a response.
Second, a substantial number of the suicides happened amongst sugar farmers in the southern districts. This was surprising as sugar is generally considered to be a very lucrative crop and production from Karnataka was actually at a high this year. In the investigation we learned that the high production itself was the problem. Worldwide production of sugar has been high for many years and international demand has not kept up. Market forces responded to the high production with severe drops in prices over the past three years. Farmers reported that whether the yield was high or low, they would suffer a low remuneration. The situation compared to a crowded movie theatre. When all were seated, the screen cannot be seen. When all stand up, the screen still cannot be seen.
Third is that farmer suicides have actually been on decline over the past few years, with a huge spike only this year. We found three parts to the problem. First, the dropping market prices of certain agrarian products such as sugar and maize took some amount of time to hit the farmers. While the sugar prices have been dropping over the past three years, the crop cycle of sugar took a year and a half to hit the farmers, and maize took a full year. Second, the monsoon rain was late and less this year causing farmers in rainfed crops to experience a great loss. This did not affect sugar, as sugar tends to be irrigation fed, but for farmers in dry land. Even delays in production are costly these days as a months delay in payment can lead to an increase of debt by 3% due to accumulated interest.
The demographics we observed saw farmers at different income levels. The two major causes of suicides were swelling costs of living and uncertainty in the future. Costs of living were one part substantive, and one part aspirational. Substantive costs related to basic agrarian expenses, such as costs of fertilizers and labour, health expenses, especially that of family members, and home construction. Aspirational costs related to cost of education or investment in the facilities for the land, such as bore-wells.
Causes of the suicide have been linked most immediately to market failure and rain failure. In dry land areas, the delay in rain caused many farmers to lose crops. Debt was a commonly seen phenomenon. Debt levels commonly were Rs. 3-4 lakhs with interest rates being paid primarily at rates of 3% per month. Rates of debt in the rural landscape were increasing at alarming rates; rough estimates based on interviews with farmers showed that the amount of debt farmers were incurring have been rising at a pace beyond the rise of income by many-fold. Farmers who had committed suicide, as in years past, were typically engaged in cash crops, including mulberry, sugar, maize, fruits and vegetables. Few farmers we saw were engaged in staple crops like millet, rice or wheat. Pesticide consumption and hanging where the most common methods of suicide. While financial turmoil was very common amongst the farmers, victims of suicides felt a deep shame associated with their situation. As most of the farmers belonged to regionally dominant castes and were male, this often linked up with caste and male pride meaning that apart from their parents, they did not speak to anyone about their financial situation.
Farmer size holdings were typically in the range of half to five acres. We determined that those at highest risk where those who were dependent on their land for livelihood exclusively. They did not own so much land that they could easily sell their land off for profit, nor did they own so little that they earned from non-agrarian activities. Many of them had to lease their lands and worried that their land would be taken by the debtors. Even with their deaths, the pain of their loss continued to haunt their families who were not saved from their situation.
The high cost of maintaining livelihood in agriculture is slowly making it a richman’s game. Farmers who try to adjust to the market are now going into states of desperation. Unless something is done soon, the basic right to livelihood will be lost to all but the richest farmers. Suicide statistics are only a sign of the deep rooted agrarian distress. When asking a farmer why a particular member of their village committed suicide, he replied that who commits suicide is only an accident. Their village is full of potential suicides.