Topic: Farmers suicide in India

Written by: Jash Parmar

With a population of approximately 1.4 billion and over 50% of the population dependent
on farming, Indian farmers are significant factors responsible for contributing to Gross
Domestic Product (about 18%). However, a global phenomenon has been reported in
news articles, research papers and non-governmental reports. This phenomenon is
suicide among farmers. The Indian government is strongly criticised for persistently
ignoring the growing agriculture issues. Being from India, I support this criticism as the
Indian government never hold itself accountable for taking irrational and poor decision.
The ruling party always seeks a scapegoat, and the whole situation is drawn towards a
never-ending "blame game."
The rising cases of farmer's suicide are necessary to be addressed and to mitigate the
problem, and it is necessary to understand factors responsible behind the motive of taking
one's own life. The pillars of sustainability can thematically represent the identified factors
from different sources

Economical Socio-cultural
Heterogenous credit policy Ignored distribution of resources,
economic and social development
during the green revolution

Economic reforms and Inadequate mental health services

globalisation

Reduction in public investments in Lack of awareness knowledge and

irrigation and infrastructure, and
technological advancements
awareness among farmers. Most
farming decisions are linked with
earning more profit (relatively short
term) and are accompanied by land
degradation.
Little or no eligibility for loans for
marginal and smallholder farmers
indebtedness, rising costs of
cultivation and declining returns,
Environmental
Climate change
Rain-fed agriculture
Irregularities weather
Is a strong communication
channel established among
agricultural extension services
and households?
India is a patriarchal society. Most of the
farming-associated household
decisions are performed by a man
(leader of the household), and a big
informational void is generated when
men perform suicide. Widows are not
aware of the benefits and are further
chained down to highly sophisticated
bureaucracy, eventually giving up the
idea of governmental benefits.
Insititutional
Land reforms, loan waiver schemes,
fertiliser subsidies, and tax-free
agriculture is already established but
often criticized for not doing enough on
the ground.
State indifferences and inadequate
policy support (lack of state-level safety
nets)
The portrayal of opposite image of
farming through data manipulation and
inadequate reporting.
The specific definition of “farmer’s
suicide.”
The international food supply chain
holds a massive amount of market
shares and is likely to influence the
government without keeping farmers’
emotional and technical knowledge into
consideration.
No cooperative (weak bargaining power
because of small land owned by
smallholder farmers, no cold storage
facilities and other required
infrastructure)
To prevent farmers' suicide crisis, the government facilitated farmers with genetically
modified crops that ensured higher yields. These GM seeds were provided by foreign
companies, which raised the input cost of seeds, further making farmers dependent on
credit, and the GM seeds failed to a great extent leading to a massive suicide case of
farmers. Farmers were blamed for being ambitious, extravagant, adventurous, lazy,
cowardly, and too emotional. There were rules to dying; only those deceased farmers
who had unpaid bank loans in their names or the names of their families, and had land in
their names or the names of their families, were considered to fall in the "farmer suicide"
category. This kind of compensation was considered as one of the motivations behind
suicide. To help farmers cope with psychological stress, government and NGO bodies
organized multiple camps, but what is the point behind taking action after the dreadful
events take place. In my opinion, there should be a platform that provides mental support
to households, monitors their progress, and supports them daily through knowledge,
cultural, and social exchange.
Let us understand these interconnected problems through an analogy. Imagine it is a
beautiful sunny day, and you plan to have a nice picnic in nature with your family. You
prepare everything and visit the location surrounded by a beautiful landscape and a pond.
The water in the pond is calm and stable. Meanwhile, your partner/ child throws a stone
in the pond, and what could you observe? The answer is simple "ripple". The disturbance
is created by an external source that further transmits to an adjacent layer and
compounds. More significant the external source, the bigger the disturbance. Now lets us
take the layers and arrange them into different governance scales. If we take a single
factor from the above table and plot the impact, we can see the interconnectedness
among the pillars at all governance scales. The correlation among socio-cultural, techno-
economical and sustainability could be established.
I want to perform a small activity with my classmates. They will be divided into three
groups. The activity's primary purpose is to strengthen their knowledge about various
factors leading to farmers' suicide and interconnectedness between those factors on a
governance scale (figure below). I will prepare some flashcards based on the identified
factors and ask them to discuss among themselves.

Could you please arrange 3 (size A3) used chart papers?

 Scale of governance
L- Local scale
L R N G R- Regional scale
N- National scale
G- Global scale