Abstract up which has led to development
Abstract – This paper discusses the important reasonsbecause of which farmers commit suicide. Many technological advances have comeup which has led to development of new tools and equipment’s that majorlyfocuses on agriculture. But, we have mostly concentrated on Farmers rather thanon farming. According to a survey done the majority of suicides are due tobankruptcy, they cannot repay the loan provided to them on time. The demands offarmers are: • They need better price for their produce • Need better agricultural pension • Loan waiver Through a detailed survey, wehave identified possible gaps in Agriculture and have provided recommendationson the suicide rate of farmers are decreased.
Keywords—Suicide,debtedness, bankruptcy, NCRB I. INTRODUCTION India is an agrarian countrywith around 70% of its people depending directly or indirectly uponagriculture. Many Commentators and researchers claim that farmers are the mostdistressed group in the country as the suicide rate are becoming higher and increasingyear by year. They also claim that farmers group needs proper counselling.National Crime Research Bureau (NCRB) provides statistics for the suicide ratein India. A rebuilding of the suicide rates by economists Deepankar Basu andKartik Misra of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Debarshi Das ofIIT-Guwahati published last year in the Economic and Political Weeklydisclosed that except for Kerala and Maharashtra, the ratio of suicide rates(or the suicide transience rates, as the researchers define the rates) forfarm-related workers and nonfarming workers was less than one in all the statesbetween 1995 and 2011.
Maharashtra is the most affected state for farmer’s wherefamers suicide. Over 12.000 famer’s suicide every year. Numerous reasons havebeen presented to explain why farmers commit suicide in India, including:floods, famine, debt, public health, use of lower quality pesticides due toless investments producing a declined harvest and also government economicpolicies. The Government of Maharashtra became anxious about the highest totalnumber of farmer’s suicides among its rural populations, specially made its ownstudy into reasons. At its behest, Indira Gandhi Institute of DevelopmentResearch in Mumbai did field research and found the top causes of farmer’ssuicides to be: dues, low pay and crop failure, family issues such as illnessand inability to pay celebration expenditures for daughter’s marriage, lack ofsecondary income occupations and lack of value-added opportunities. Thebanking sector of India have come up with many schemes for the farmers so thatfamer’s don’t have to worry about the money deposition.
These schemes sometimesprove to be beneficiary for the farmers. II. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES Study also claims that farmer’ssuicide in India may be linked to changes that take place in the climate.Increase in temperature leads to crop yield reduction.
As discussed above thevarious reasons about the farmer’s committing suicide. The study found out thatthese there are some natural factors responsible for farmer’s death but did notfound measure e to prevent it. The preventive measures and strategies used byother nations may not necessarily be the same for the Indian farmers. Livelyparticipation by psychiatrists in prevention and investigation work in thefield of farmers’ suicide is now being recognized in India. Farming done inSouth Indian countries like Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka has been successfully.But for Maharashtra the case is different.
PossibleSolutions can be: 1. Agriculture dependency on nature should be reduced by watermanagement schemes. 2. The farmers must be guided and advised with the utilizationof funds. 3.
Organic farming must be fortified. 4. The extreme powers of the money lenders must be checked. 5. Middle men should be eliminated. III. REVIEWOFLITERATURE Research says that the increase ratio of farmer’s suicidevaries from needs and location of famer’s residing in rural areas. Study doneby researches states that its mainly due to the scarcity of basic needs andagricultural loss which in turn leads to hypertension and ultimately leads tothe death of a farmer.
Along with this there are also many other externalfactors which leads farmers suicidal such as lack of efficient resources,debts, family income, bankruptcy and many more. Lack of confidence andilliteracy also somewhere plays a role in farmer’s death in high proportion.According to Alexandra Hofle of health and society in south Asia Seriesstated that.
As the majority of quantitative studies on farmers commitingsucide is uses statistical data,many analyze the use of the statistics.Especially the quality of adta on sucide obtained from the NCRB has beenanalyzed critically.As there are no comprehensive evidence,Mayer(2011)concludes that the official NCRBstatistics are valuable. In contrast to theseconclusions, Staples (2012), Bose et al. (2006), Patel et al.
(2012), Rane andNadkarni (2014) as well as Radhakrishnan and Andrade (2012) found anunderestimation of suicide data in India. Radhakrishnan and Andrade (2012), forinstance, argue that especially in rural areas data on suicides are incomplete.According to them, this can be attributed to the fact that family members oftencite illness or accident as reasons for death as they fear the stigmaassociated with suicide. IV. METHODOLOGY To understand the reasonsbehind farmers committing to suicide, the data is captured through thesecondary sources.
The secondary data isobtained through the Net, books and related journals. These annual reports wereobtained from websites.There is a need for socialand cultural awakening with in the village communities. In 1998, World Bank’sstructural adjustment policies forced the government to replace farm savedseeds with corporate seeds. The Indian farmers are forced to buy thehigh-priced seeds manufactured by the multinationals. The small farmers inIndia are the major farming community and the largest farming community in theworld was badly affected due to these changes.
This community is on theboundary of extinction due to the conditions imposed by WTO. The World Bank’sstructural adjustment policies enforced India to open up its seed sector toglobal corporations in 1998. Steps Modi Government has taken to tacklesuicide rates of farmers: 70% cut inMonsanto’s Payments: Modi government declared a70% cut in the payment that the local firms pay Monsanto (Americanmultinational agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation). For itscotton seeds.
With such deep cut in its revenue which Monsanto has been blamedof jacking up due to its monopoly. Pradhan MantriKrishi Sinchai Yojana Thisis the national mission of under Modi’s government to expand the irrigation inthe country and enable the agriculture to become unaffected to the impulses of Indianmonsoon. Pradhan Mantri Fasal Beema Yojna (Insurance of crops forFarmers): Anotherimportant move required to fight the issue if, farmer’s suicide is stillpresent. This new scheme will provide compensation for the losses acquired bythe farmer. Soil Health Card: Government issues soil cardto farmers which has crop wise recommendations on nutrients and fertilizersthat are required by farmers for farming in order to increase the productivityand enhance the crop yield. In India there are many soil testing labs whichtests the samples of soil.Till date, with the help oftechnology government has been developing many new tools and equipment’s thatsupport farming. But, here, initial consideration must be Farmers.
Collective Knowledge shouldbe known about the farming.V. PROBLEMS TheFarmers are uneducated, disorganized and doesn’t understand the financialactivities that happen around them.
Due to the lack of Agricultural MarketingFarmers become the innocent victims of poverty and Bankruptcy. Here, themiddlemen and money Lenders come into the picture. They apply their own tacticsand make farmers victim of their own thoughts and actions.The fast increment in cultivationof crops cost has been a major matter of concern. Non- availability of farmcredit is continuously causing distress amongst farmers. An agriculture schemewas introduced in year 2004-2005 so that the credit flows increase to farmers.For Eg: In Maharashtra state maximumnumber of suicides are been recorded. The cotton crop is grown mostly underrain fed condition the gross cost in current prices has escalated massivelyfrom Rs.
3,267/ha in 1989-90 to Rs. 61,907/ha in 2011-12. Increasedindebtedness is a consequence of the agrarian emergency, which is attributablemainly to the sharp decline in the profitability of farming. It follows,therefore, that no effort that seeks to address the question of indebtednesswithout undertaking the crucial issue of productivity will yield the desiredresult of giving a boost to the farm sector. Theweather of India has now become unpredictable at best and even the rainfalldoesn’t happen at right time. Even now moderate rainfall is needed for properagriculture and has now reached extreme.
The situation has now become extremelybad in Central India, which is somewhere regarded as agricultural heartland ofIndia. The weather patterns have also been changing from many years. One of themost crucial problems faced by farmers in India is regarding marketing. Thelaws in India are outdated and most often a farmer has no option but to sellhis produce in regulated markets, where the middlemen are the ones making themaximum gains.
At times, they can make up to 75% profits. If the middlemen canbe eliminated then the farmers could have sold their products at better rates. Other Reasons for farmer’scommitting suicide is imbalanced Supply chain: 1.
Distress Sale 2. Lack of transportation facilities 3. Unfavorable Mandis 4. Intermediaries 5. Lack of market intelligence 6. Dalal and local agents 7.
Improper Agricultural Marketing Suicides reported amongst Farmers: 2014-2015 122 2015-2016 1478 2016-2017 848 It is the duty of supervisorygovernments to ensure that such incidents must not happen and should takeessential steps to lessen the suicide rates and rescue the farmers. The stateis looking forward on how to eliminate these problems. Every sector in businessprovides many services like manpower, equipment etc. VI. CONCLUSION As we have seen above, major cause for the changes whichtook agricultural sector since 1990. Though these economic, social,individual,political and environmental problems were before 1990, they weren’tpresent at this level though.
The wave of the famer suicides occurred in thestates of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra , Madhya Pradesh andChhattisgarh, all these states were mostly affected due to farmer suicideswhereas other states were not affected that much as compared to these states onthat level. These five states weren’t beneficiaries of the green revolution ,it only helped certain crops such as wheat and those crops are now grown infive states. The first states to liberalize economies were Andhra andKarnataka.
These suicides have been related to the failure of governmentpolicies as well.But now there are laws undertaken by governing bodies in orderto save or reduce farmers sucide rate.
