Ram-da,
It is sad to see such defeatist attitude among some Indian farmers. On the other hand many others are taking up arms -as Naxals and killing the richer ones.
If one analyzes the reasons --it is mainly debt --for buying GM seeds (Genetically Modified) which canot even be used later for next crop (Robert Schuller -the famous evangelist preacher and book writer : Tough times don't last tough people do). He spoke of the Great Depression of 1930s in USA when thousands of famous stock brokers committed suicides in face of financial ruin. His father was a farmer who lost his house and farm due to tornado and the later crop due to drought --but did not lose hope. He used his meagre produce as seeds for next crop and somehow made good.
MNC produced GM seeds take away even this last hope.
Many such MNCs have been accused of playing with people's lives by introducing
untried products -on unsuspecting farmers.
Again it is illiteracy there to blame. If the famrer could read and reason -then s/he would not be fooled -and would not buy such GM seeds and non-effective pesticides --despite promotion by corrupt govt officials or over-paid MNC execs.
There is not much difference between the well heeled evangelist and the well heeled MNC exec --both come promising miracles and reap in converts among the deprived. Who can resist the temptation of the silver tongued , suited-booted big-city genteel folks who have come to help the village poor?
Umesh
Ram Sarangapani <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Ram Sarangapani <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Thanks C'da for forwarding that.This is indeed a sad scenario. IMHO, the shift in policy decisions at the Center, often hurt the poorest of the country. On the other hand, for a country that has been stagnating for years on a semi-socialistic setup, the early 90s seemed to give her that one shot she needed to play in the big leagues.I think its a difficult thing to balance this opportunity to become an economic power and at the same time improving the lot of the poor.At present, I am reading a book "The End of Poverty" by Prof. Jeffrey Sachs (Columbia). Sachs makes convincing reading as he discusses poverty, social and economic problems facing India's middle and lower middle classes, and the economic benefits that others (IT sector for example) seem to be enjoying.Nevertheless, this is a very serious problem for India, and needs to find longterm solutions, specially if it wants to play in the big league. It can't be one, if a sizable population is left behind.--Ram--Ram
On 9/18/06, Chan Mahanta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:On India's Despairing Farms, a Plague of Suicide
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: September 19, 2006
BHADUMARI, India - Here in the center of India, on a gray Wednesday
morning, a cotton farmer swallowed a bottle of pesticide and fell
dead at the threshold of his small mud house.
The farmer, Anil Kondba Shende, 31, left behind a wife and two small
sons, debts that his family knew about only vaguely and a soggy,
ruined 3.5-acre patch of cotton plants that had been his only source
of income.
Whether it was debt, shame or some other privation that drove Mr.
Shende to kill himself rests with him alone. But his death was by no
means an isolated one, and in it lay an alarming reminder of the
crisis facing the Indian farmer.
Across the country in desperate pockets like this one, 17,107 farmers
committed suicide in 2003, the most recent year for which government
figures are available. Anecdotal reports suggest that the high rates
are continuing.
Though the crisis has been building for years, it presents an
increasingly thorny political challenge for Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh and his relations with the United States. High suicide rates
and rural despair helped topple the previous government two years ago
and put Mr. Singh in power.
Changes brought on by 15 years of economic reforms have opened Indian
farmers to global competition and given them access to expensive and
promising biotechnology, but not necessarily opened the way to higher
prices, bank loans, irrigation or insurance against pests and rain.
Mr. Singh's government, which has otherwise emerged as a strong ally
of America, has become one of the loudest critics in the developing
world of Washington's $18 billion a year in subsidies to its own
farmers, which have helped drive down the price of cotton for farmers
like Mr. Shende.
At the same time, frustration is building in India with American
multinational companies peddling costly, genetically modified seeds.
They have made deep inroads in rural India - a vast and alluring
market - bringing new opportunities but also new risks as Indian
farmers pile up debt.
In this central Indian cotton-growing area, known as Vidarbha, the
unofficial death toll from suicides, compiled by a local advocacy
group and impossible to verify, was 767 in a 14-month period that
ended in late August.
"The suicides are an extreme manifestation of some deep-seated
problems which are now plaguing our agriculture," said M. S.
Swaminathan, the geneticist who was the scientific leader of India's
Green Revolution 40 years ago and is now chairman of the National
Commission on Farmers. "They are climatic. They are economic. They
are social."
India's economy may be soaring, but agriculture remains its Achilles'
heel, the source of livelihood for hundreds of millions of people but
a fraction of the nation's total economy and a symbol of its abiding
difficulties.
In what some see as an ominous trend, food production, once India's
great pride, has failed to keep pace with the nation's population
growth in the last decade.
The cries of Indian farmers - or what Prime Minister Singh recently
described as their "acute distress" - can hardly be neglected by the
leaders of a country where two-thirds of people still live in the
countryside.
Mr. Singh's government has responded to the current crisis by
promptly expanding rural credit and promising investments in rural
infrastructure. It has also offered several quick fixes, including a
$156 million package to rescue "suicide prone" districts across the
country and a promise to expand rural credit, waive interest on
existing bank loans and curb usurious informal moneylenders.
But pressure is building to do more. Many, including Mr. Swaminathan,
the agricultural scientist, would like to see the government restore
subsidies to help farmers survive during crop failures or years of
low world prices.
Subsidies, once a linchpin of Indian economic policy, have dried up
for virtually everyone but the producers of staple food grains.
Indian farmers now must compete or go under. To compete, many have
turned to high-cost seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, which now line
the shelves of even the tiniest village shops.
Monsanto, for instance, invented the genetically modified seeds that
Mr. Shende planted, known as Bt cotton, which are resistant to
bollworm infestation, the cotton farmer's prime enemy. It says the
seeds can reduce the use of pesticides by 25 percent.
The company has more than doubled its sales of Bt cotton here in the
last year, but the expansion has been contentious. This year, a legal
challenge from the government of the state of Andhra Pradesh forced
Monsanto to slash the royalty it collected from the sale of its
patented seeds in India. The company has appealed to the Indian
Supreme Court.
The modified seeds can cost nearly twice as much as ordinary ones,
and they have nudged many farmers toward taking on ever larger loans,
often from moneylenders charging exorbitant interest rates.
Virtually every cotton farmer in these parts, for instance, needs the
assistance of someone like Chandrakant Agarwal, a veteran moneylender
who charges 5 percent interest a month.
He collects his dues at harvest time, but exacts an extra premium,
compelling farmers to sell their cotton to him at a price lower than
it fetches on the market, pocketing the profit.
His collateral policy is nothing if not inventive. The borrower signs
a blank official document that gives Mr. Agarwal the right to collect
the farmer's property at any time.
Business has boomed with the arrival of high-cost seeds and
pesticides. "Many moneylenders have made a whole lot of money," Mr.
Agarwal said. "Farmers, many of them, are ruined."
Indeed, one or two crop failures, an unexpected health expense or the
marriage of a daughter have become that much more perilous in a
livelihood where the risks are already high.
A government survey released last year found that 40 percent of
farmers said they would abandon agriculture if they could. The study
also found that farming represented less than half the income of
farmer households.
Barely 4 percent of all farmers insure their crops. Nearly 60 percent
of Indian agriculture still depends entirely on the rains, as in Mr.
Shende's case.
This year, waiting for a tardy monsoon, Mr. Shende sowed his fields
three times with the genetically modified seeds made by Monsanto. Two
batches of seed went to waste because the monsoon was late. When the
rains finally arrived, they came down so hard that they flooded Mr.
Shende's low-lying field and destroyed his third and final batch.
Mr. Shende shouldered at least four debts at the time of his death:
one from a bank, two procured on his behalf by his sisters and one
from a local moneylender. The night before his suicide, he borrowed
one last time. From a fellow villager, he took the equivalent of $9,
roughly the cost of a one-liter bottle of pesticide, which he used to
take his life.
Those like him with small holdings are particularly vulnerable. A
study by Srijit Mishra, a professor at the Mumbai-based Indira Gandhi
Institute of Development Research, found that more than half of the
suicides in this part of the country were among farmers with less
than five acres of land.
But even those who are prosperous by local standards are not immune.
Manoj Chandurkar, 36, has 72 acres of cotton with genetically
modified seeds and sorghum in a neighboring village called Waifad.
Every year is a gamble, he said.
Each time, he takes out a loan, then another and then prays that the
bollworms will stay away and the rains will be good. On his shoulders
today sit three loans, bringing his total debt to $10,000, a vast sum
here.
The study by Mr. Mishra found that 86.5 percent of farmers who took
their own lives were indebted - their average debt was about $835 -
and 40 percent had suffered a crop failure.
The news of Mr. Shende's death brought his wife, Vandana, back home
to Bhadumari. Relatives said she had gone to tend to her sick brother
in a nearby village. By the time she arrived, her husband's body was
covered by a thin checkered cloth.
A policeman had recorded the death - the eighth in six months for the officer.
Ms. Shende, squatting in the narrow village lane, shrouded her face
in her cheap blue sari and wailed at the top of her lungs. "Your
father is dead," she screamed at her small son, who stood before her,
dazed.
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Umesh Sharma
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Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
weblog: http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/
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