Maharashtra leads in statistic of shame
In 16 years, farm suicides cross a quarter million-
P. Sainath
It's
official. The country has seen over a quarter of a million farmers’
suicides between 1995 and 2010. The National Crime Records Bureau’s
latest report on ‘Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India’ places the
number for 2010 at 15,964. That brings the cumulative 16-year total
from 1995 — when the NCRB started recording farm suicide data — to
2,56,913, the worst-ever recorded wave of suicides of this kind in
human history.
Maharashtra
posts a dismal picture with over 50,000 farmers killing themselves in
the country's richest State in that period. It also remains the worst
State for such deaths for a decade now. Close to two-thirds of all farm
suicides have occurred in five States: Maharashtra, Karnataka, A.P.,
Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
The data show clearly that the
last eight years were much worse than the preceding eight. As many as
1,35,756 farmers killed themselves in the 2003-10 period. For
1995-2002, the total was 1,21,157. On average, this means the number of
farmers killing themselves each year between 2003 and 2010 is 1,825
higher than the numbers that took their lives in the earlier period.
Which is alarming since the total number of farmers is declining
significantly. Compared to the 1991 Census, the 2001 Census saw a drop
of over seven million in the population of cultivators (main workers).
The corresponding census data for 2011 are yet to come in, but their
population has surely dipped further. In other words, farm suicides are
rising through the period of India's agrarian crisis, even as the
number of farmers is shrinking.
While the 2010 numbers show a
dip of 1,404 from the 2009 figure of 17,368, there is little to cheer
about. “There was a similar dip in 2008, only to be followed by the
worst numbers in six years in 2009,” points out Professor K. Nagaraj,
an economist at the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai, who did the
largest ever study of the farm suicides covering a decade (The Hindu,
November 12-15, 2007). “This one-year decline does not in any way
indicate we have turned the corner. This dip happened mostly because of
one-off falls in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. In fact, a look at
the ‘Big 5' who drive the numbers shows the fallout of the agrarian
crisis to be as grim as ever. They have actually increased their share
of the farm suicides.”
The five States with the largest share
of the quarter-of-a-million farm suicides recorded in India over the
past 16 years are Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya
Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
While the total number of farmers who
took their own life in 2010 showed a dip from the preceding year, the
share of the Big 5, in fact, rose to 66.49 per cent of all farm
suicides in 2010. It was 62 per cent in 2009. Three of the Big 5 States
have shown significant increases over 2009: Maharashtra (+269),
Karnataka (+303), and Andhra Pradesh (+111). Nationally, the last eight
years have seen on average, farmers killing themselves at a rate of
one every 30 minutes.
In all, 14 of 28 States reported
increases in 2010, while four have recorded declines of five or fewer
suicides. The dip in 2010 comes with big falls in Chhattisgarh (-676),
Tamil Nadu (-519) and Rajasthan (-461) and significant falls in Madhya
Pradesh (-158), Puducherry (-150), and Uttar Pradesh (-108). West
Bengal and Gujarat also report declines of 61 and 65. But the overall
trend remains dismal.
In 1995, the first time the National
Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) tabulated farm suicide data, the Big 5
accounted for 56.04 per cent of all farm suicides . In 2010, despite a
one-year decline, they accounted for 66.49 per cent. Maharashtra's
story is alarming. It saw 20,066 farmers kill themselves between 1995
and 2002. That stands dwarfed by the 30,415 farmers who took their
lives in the next eight years. The latter period saw an annual average
increase of nearly 1,155 such deaths in the State. This was also the
period when money was poured into relief ‘packages' of the Prime
Minister, the Chief Minister, through the loan waiver of 2008, and
other measures.
During the very decade in which it reigned without
break as the worst State to be a farmer in, Maharashtra rose to the
first position among the big States in per capita income. Overall at
Rs. 74,027, it is behind only much smaller States like Haryana and Goa.
The Union Agriculture Minister is from this State and has held that
post for six of those 10 years
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