All agree crisis is worsening, let’s talk strategy then

Sarbjit Dhaliwal     

 Tribune News Service

sangrur, January 30     

As one enters the periphery of villages such as Andana, Balran, Bakhora, Lehal Kalan, Chotiaan, Kishangarh and Kulrian in this belt, a feeling starts sinking in as if the demons of death stalk this part of the countryside. These villages figure on the long list of rural inhabitations where more than 50 farmers and landless labourers have committed suicide over the years owing to debt distress, crop failure or other farm-related issues.

Sangrur was the belt from where reports of such suicides first emerged in the early 1990s when the Green Revolution started petering out and input costs began shooting up, thus making farming unviable for small and marginal farmers.

What hurts the Punjabi pride most is that their prosperous land has become scarred. At least two to three cases of suicide by farmers are reported almost daily now, largely owing to the deepening crisis in the farm sector with the failure of cotton crop. The state government’s failure to address the crisis head-on has made it worse.

Suicides in the farm sector is a pan-India crisis, though most pronounced in predominantly agricultural states like Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Telangana. Recent surveys have highlighted how the rate of suicide is highest in the farm sector across the world. Countries like the US and the UK have put in place round-the-clock helplines for people with suicide tendencies. Many countries have teams of counsellors to guide people on how to come out of stress. In Punjab, the political class as a whole has done nothing worthwhile to deal with the issue. Except visiting the families of deceased farmers and announcing ex gratia, nothing practical has been done to pull the farm sector out of the crisis.

On getting wind that the issue of suicides in the farm sector would move to the political centrestage in the days ahead of the Assembly elections, the SAD-BJP government has fallen back on the strategy of counting the dead to update its official records. It has again put Punjabi University, Guru Nanak Dev University and PAU on the counting job.

The previous survey of 10 years (from 2001 to 2010) had recorded 6,926 cases of suicide in the farm sector. Of it, 3,954 were by farmers and 2,972 by landless labourers. Of these, 74 per cent farmers and 58.6 per cent labourers had committed suicide due to debt. The maximum number of cases was from Sangrur (1,132), followed by Mansa (1,013) and Bathinda (827).

But what will the government do after gathering figures? Announce compensation, to decide the quantum of which it take years? How will compensation to the affected families change the crisis at hand?

For years, the governments in Punjab remained in a denial mode and did not concede that farmers were committing suicide. But, as some organisations, especially the Movement Against State Repression (MASR) headed by former MLA Inderjit Singh Jaijee, continued to hammer the point with facts and figures, the government had to admit in the late 1990s that there was some truth in reports regarding cases of suicide. The first time a provision was made in the State Budget was in 2001 to give Rs 2.5 lakh as compensation to each family of deceased farmers by the then Finance Minister Capt Kanwaljit Singh. However, the promise remained on paper.

One of the perceived reasons is exploitation of farmers by moneylenders. However, the state government has failed to regulate the private money-lending business. Because of political calculations, it has been keeping the “Punjab Relief of Agriculture Indebtedness Bill” pending for the past several years. With growing pressure, it has now ventured to pass this Bill in the next session of the Vidhan Sabha. However, without making farming viable for small and marginal farmers and ensuring better security of life for the landless labour, mere legislation would be meaningless.

At the end of the 19th century, American poet Edwin Markham penned the despair of farmers. A lot of what’s in the poem seems to stand true for Punjab today. It is disturbing beyond words.

Bowed by the weight of  centuries he leans Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,

The emptiness of ages in his face, And on his back the burden of the world.

Who made him dead to rapture and despair,  A thing that grieves not and that never hopes, 

Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?

Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?

Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow? 

Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?