Read this in today’s Times. Just wondering why India’s economic boom hasn’t trickled down to the rural areas and should the BJP have done more to address the situation? I would think pakistani farmers are going through a bad time as well, is it because they are unable to compete with heavily subsidised farmers from other nations?
3,000 Indian farmers commit suicide to escape a life of debt
THE ring of the telephone echoed up to the vaulted ceiling of the district headquarters. Kullur Hayder picked up the receiver and opened his logbook, ready to record another story of lost crops, increasing debts and mounting despair.
“No, no,” Mr Hayder begged as a sobbing farmer described how he intended to escape the moneylenders hounding him for repayment of the debts he ran up trying to eke a living from the land. “Don’t take your life. You mustn’t despair. We will help you.”
The farmer’s threat was just one of 2,400 received from Anantapur district alone in the six weeks since this government helpline was set up to tackle the outbreak of farmer suicides in India’s drought-stricken southern state of Andhra Pradesh.
More than 3,000 farmers have killed themselves in this state in six years as the state government poured resources into the IT industry, ignoring the needs of struggling farmers.
The defeat of the Hindu nationalist-led Government in May cast the spotlight on the plight of the rural poor. But the new Congress-led Government faces a tough task assuaging their despair.
Sriramulu, 40, died ten days after the new Government came to power, and just days after the helpline was set up. For four years he had watched his peanut crops struggle through the soil, then wither away.
Every year he borrowed more money, first from the bank and then from private moneylenders, to purchase more seeds and try again to raise a crop from the parched land. By this year, he had run up a debt of 130,000 rupees (£1,500), with only a few bags of peanuts to show for it.
One night, as his wife and two children slept outside to escape the summer heat, he threw a rope over a beam and hanged himself. In the middle of the night it rained for the first time in months. His wife scurried inside to find her husband hanging. Farmers here called those rains “the Congress rains” because they came just days after the new Government came to power with its promise of help. But the coming of the rains did not mark the end to the suicides.
Since the election more than 200 farmers have taken their lives across Andhra Pradesh, robbing families of breadwinners and bequeathing them their debts.
Many are left more desperate than the ones who killed themselves. Obireddy, 50, was looked after by his wife, Narayanamma, for the past three years after tuberculosis robbed him of his health. She struggled to farm their five acres with the help of their two teenage daughters until they were forced to sell at a knockdown price to repay their debts.
She then worked as a farm labourer earning 20 rupees a day until that work dried up, along with the arid farmland. Three months later she drank poison bought to keep the pigs from the crops on their sold-off land and lay down on her bed to die. Obireddy found her dead when he returned from a medical check-up. “She fed me, she looked after me, what I am to do now?” he wheezes. Two weeks after her death, his two daughters, whom he had hoped to find husbands for, have gone to Hyderabad seeking building work. Obireddy remains alone, fed only by the generosity of his neighbours.
Manmohan Singh, India’s new Prime Minister, recently flew into a nearby village to meet the families of dead farmers and pledged them each a rescue package of 150,000 rupees. He also promised investment in the agricultural sector.
In the meantime, opinion is divided over the emergency measures. Critics contend that the compensation payments will merely encourage more farmers to commit suicide to save their families from ruin.
“There is a tendency that way, yes,” admitted V. Mohan Rao, the district revenue officer. As for the living who call the helpline, he admits there is little government officials can do beyond urging moneylenders to be lenient.
That is asking a lot. Laxshmidevi, 40, received her compensation payment two days after her husband killed himself by drinking pesticide after losing his land.
The cheque is yet to be honoured, but even when it is, it will fall far short of what she needs to repay her debts.