Rural Development & Farmer Suicide in Maharashtra
Rural
Development & Farmer Suicide in Maharashtra
Dr. Shubhangi Rathi
Associate Professor,
Smt. P.K. Kotecha Mahila Mahavidhalaya,
Bhusawal
Importance of Rural Development:
Improvement in the quality of life of rural people is the
important agenda of rural development programme. In India so many people
living in rural areas, rural development programme is necessary aspect. Rural
development implies both the economic betterment of people as well as greater
social transformation. The basic objective of all rural development
endeavors / programmes has been the welfare of the millions. In order to
achieve this, planned attempts have been made to eliminate poverty, ignorance
and inequality of opportunities. A wide spectrum of programmes has been
undertaken so far, to alleviate rural poverty and ensure improved quality of
life for the rural population especially those below the poverty line. In
the initial phase of planned rural development, the concentration was on
sectors of agriculture industry, communication, education and health. The
Ministry of Rural Development places importance now on health, education,
drinking water, housing and road so that the quality of life in rural areas
improves and the fruit of economic reform are shared by all sections of the
society.With time and experience, it is realized that accelerated and
meaningful development can be achieved only if people of the grass root are
involved, “people’s participation” has become the keyword in rural development
programmes. The participation of the people is necessary to provide the
rural people with better prospects for economic development1
The phenomenon of the suicides of
the farmers’ is one of the most tragic events in the history of India. For last few
years every other
day we read the
news of farmers committing suicides. The number of farmers who have
committed suicides since 1997 has crossed 1 lakhs. In
this context the actual
problems being faced
are to be understood
and analysed. Innovative remedies have
to be thought of
which are to be
implemented with sincerity
by the Government and the
implementing agencies, along with putting in place ways
to rehabilitate the affected
farmers. An attempt has been made in
this article to address the issue of farmer’s plight leading to suicide and
measures to address the issue have been suggested.
When
we discuss about Vidharbh we see that farmer suicides in Vidarbha have been
occurring since the last 20 years but they only came to light around 2005. Post
that the government announced several schemes and packages for the cotton
farmers, including the much hyped Prime Minister's package. So several studies
have been conducted by the Government and social science organizations to
analyse the rural development and farmers suicides. So in this paper I will
study the rural development and farmer suicide
Objectives
of the study:
1. To determine the reasons of
farmer suicide.
2. To know the different factors in
leading farmers to end their lives.
3. To find out the impact of farmers
suicide on rural development
Farmer suicides
rise in Vidarbha, Marathwada regions 120 farmers from the drought-hit regions
of Maharashtra have committed suicide in the past month Nov. 2014.In the year
2012 farmer suicide in India 13754. Although Maharashtra is a
highly industrialized state of India, agriculture continues to be the main
occupation of the state. Principal crops include rice, jowar, Bajra, wheat, pulses, turmeric, onions, cotton, sugarcane and several oil seeds including groundnut, sunflower and soyabean. The state has huge areas, under fruit cultivation of
which mangoes, bananas, grapes, and oranges
are the main ones. Irrigation facilities
are being extended so that agriculture could be made less dependent upon rain
water. The net irrigated area totals 33,500 square kilometres.2 Now a
day we see a series of farmer suicide
which is impact on rural development. Death of one farmer means we lost two
working hands as well as the disturb family
lost their working capacity. So in this paper it is essential to search the
reason of suicide of farmer cases..
Reasons of suicide:
When we study so many of the suicide farmer
we observed that people commit suicide for multiple reasons. But when a farmer
who produces food for the nation commits suicide it draws attention of all
concerned. Ours being a agricultural state and farmers commit suicide for the
cause of failure in farming, there must be some valid reasons.
The study attempted to compare the
opinion of scientists as well as farmers to know the ground reality causes of
suicides are,
- · Pressure of credit agency for repayment
- · Poor marketing system
- · Inherited poverty of farm families
- · Weak psychology
- · Crop failure
- · Lack of Govt. protection for farmers in order.
- · climatic hazards
- · high cost of inputs
- · high cost of labor lack of irrigation
- · poor farm management and non availability of farm inputs
- · Agriculture heavily depends on monsoon.
·
The success of crop production and
availability of water are inseparable components.
Reality of Agricultural Progress:
Agriculture
has progressed a long way in India from an era of frequent droughts and
vulnerability to food shortages, to become a significant exporter of a
diversified basket of agricultural commodities. Maharashtra accounts for nearly
9% of the total agricultural income of the country. The state has major area
under jowar. Forty three per cent of the total area under jowar is in
Maharashtra. The productivity of some of the food crops like wheat, paddy and
cash crops such as cotton has however remained low. The net sown area of 18
million ha is distributed among nearly 10 million farm holdings. The state
government have invested substantial amount in agriculture infrastructure like
irrigation, fertiliser industry. However, only 16% of the land is under irrigation.
As much as 76 % of the irrigation water is used for sugarcane grown on 3 % of
the cultivated area. The water resources are scarce, therefore improved methods
of water management is imperative. In the last 10 to 12 years, drip irrigation
has become most popular, particularly in crops like grapes, pomegranate,
banana, sugarcane, cotton etc. The increased water use efficiency helps
conserve scarce resources including capital investment for additional water
storages as well as brings additional area under irrigation at much lesser
cost. Sixty percent of the area under drip in the country is located in
Maharashtra.3
Increasing Farmer suicide cases as per NCRB:
The
latest report of National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) shows that the total
farmers suicides recorded during the year 2012 were 2,84,694 in the last
eighteen years. NCRB started documenting the ‘Farmers Suicides’ as a separate
category under self employed from 1995 onwards. Four states Andhra Pradesh,
Maharashtra, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh which are predominantly
growing cotton in rainfed conditions records 68% of the farmers’
suicides. The two major states Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh have shown
increase of 13% and 17% respectively compared over last year and together account
for 46% of the total farmers’ suicides.
Maharashtra
continues to face the challenge of dealing with rising cases of farmers'
suicide. It has reported 204 such suicides in the first four months of the year
- which is nearly half of what the state had reported in the entire year in
2013. In the
month of Nov. 2014, we can see the following cases suicide in Maharashtra
state.
Jalgaon
|
11
|
Usmanabad
|
08
|
Beed
|
08
|
Nanded
|
07
|
Source
ABP Maza
|
|
The Union agriculture ministry
informed the Lok Sabha of Maharashtra's dubious record followed by Telangana,
Karnataka and Gujarat. Though
Maharashtra's figures are available only till April 2014, the number of
farmers' suicide in the state (204) is still higher than the collective figure
of five other states (97) where such suicides were committed by farmers this
year .
Major Factors contributing to
suicides in Maharashtra
Ø
There
is an old saying "Farmer takes the
birth in debt and
die in the
same condition". This was
the position of farmers before
independence and it still
continue after 60
years of independence. If we analyse the
suicides by farmers
in Maharashtra it is
revealed that it is higher
in Vidarbha region of the State
where farmers preferred cultivation of "white gold" i.e. cotton
- a risky venture that suffered due
to non-availability of quality
seeds coupled with the
farmers or incapacity to buy
costly Bt. cotton seeds.
They could also not
get remunerative price
for their produce.
Ø
According to Dr. M.S. Swaminathan, although 60%
people in India
depend on agriculture and
Agriculture Sector contributes 25% of National
Income over the period investment and production in agriculture has
declined. In developed world the
percentage of dependence of population on agriculture is much less e.g. in USA
it is only 2% and income from agriculture is just 4%.
Ø According to government records, 422
farmers had committed suicide till first week of the December 2014, expressing
their inability to bear crop losses and a financial quandary made acute by
water scarcity and an agrarian crisis.
Ø The revenue department revealed that of
the 422 suicides, in 252 cases, farmers ended their lives due to
inability in repaying huge agricultural loans. Of the 252 suicides, 77 took
place in Beed, 48 in Nanded, 34 in Parbhani, 27 in Aurangabad, 19 in Hingooli,
18 in Latur, 15 in Jalna and 14 in Osmanabad.
Ø Marathwada is reeling under scarcity for
a third consecutive year due to scanty rainfall. Besides, crops were damaged in
some districts due to untimely showers.
Ø In the year 2014 Vidarbha Janandolan
Samiti (VJS), a non-government organisation tracking farmer deaths, claimed
last week that the number of farmer suicides in the cotton belt had gone up to 1,022
.
Ø
The
government’s assistance and relentless efforts to get a Rs 4,500-crore
financial package from the Centre.On November 18, the government had
declared a drought-like situation in a record 19,069 of the total 39,134
villages where aanewari (crop yield) fell below 50 paise.5
Ø
But Vidarbha still has just 4 per cent irrigated
land, major load shedding which has caused the per acre production of Vidarbha
to be just 2 quintals of cotton as opposed to the national average of 5.
Ø
Here's a report on all the factors driving the
farmer to suicide.40 lakh hectares of land is under cotton cultivation in
Maharashtra, more than any state in the country. Yet the state also tops the
list in farmer suicides. Almost all of them are cotton farmers.
Ø
In 2005, the Maharashtra government announced
the Chief Minister's package of 1075 crores. In 2006, came the Prime Minister's
package of 3750 crores, of which 2200 crores was meant to boost irrigation. But
the targets could not be met.
Observations
& Conclusions:
·
In
the cotton belt, the crop seems to have failed more than once in the last four
years. This crop failure has always not been associated with natural calamities,
such as failure of rain or unseasonal rains leading to destruction of crops.
The causes are an increase in pest attacks in the last few years,
·
The
tendency to take loans increased in the nineties. The farmers took their first
loan from banks (banks gave loan only once, with a further loan possible only
after repayment of the outstanding loan). The later loans were from private
parties to repay the bank loan (default of which would result in attachment
ofthe land or mortgaged house). Even for those with an ability to get loan from
the formal sector, access to informal sector loans was indispensable.
·
Thus,
over 75% of the farmers had loan commitments to non-formal sources. Those
farmers who faced repeated crop failures accumulated loans beyond their
capacity to repay. Thus, most of victims had turned defaulters over the last
four years.
·
This
points to a serious crisis as reflected in the absence of the support system to
bail the farmers out, in the form of relatives, neighbours, banks and even the
money lenders who had stopped giving the loans to them lately.
·
Many
farmers tried to diversify their employment opportunities with new loans. Some
had gone in for purchase of tractors in order to rent it out. Medium-and
large-sized landholders followed these strategies, but many did not succeed in
their efforts, resulting in higher debt burdens.
·
So it is necessary that the Central Government
should announce, on a priority basis, the provisions of a safety net for the
cultivators and their families.
·
The
Central Government should immediately announce the setting up of a commission
with statutory powers that takes decisions on issues such as genetic
modification technology and its impact on Indian agriculture, agriculture
pricing policy and cropping pattern.
·
Such
all findings are impact on farmer’s life. Farmer Suicide cases are impact on
family disturbance. Naturally suicide farmer’s family can’t work strongly in
such situation. It’s impact on rural development of India. So day by day we can see that the share of
agriculture in national income has been decreasing. As well as percentage of working population in
agriculture is also reduce.
Notes :
References:
v Lallangi Gopal & V.C. Shrivastava: (2008) History of Agricuture in
India, Concept Publishing House, New Delhi
v K. Nagraj, (March 2008 ) Farmers Suicide in India , Magnitudes, Trends & Spatial
Patterns, Bharathi Putthakalayam, Chennai
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