BHUBANESWAR: The sudden rise in incidence of suicide by farmers in rainfed regions of the State that are hit by drought has a pattern to it.
The scores of farmer suicides that shook the nation about four years back were reported from the rainfed and drought-hit regions of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. The governments then had attributed many such suicides to some grave ailments or family problems. So is the Orissa Government doing now.
But, the Radhakrishnan Committee set up by the Union Government to look into the entire gamut of farmer suicides and its link with agrarian crisis and indebtedness has come up with stark revelations.
It found that farmers took loans ranging between 25-60 percent for consumption, marriage functions and medical treatment, etc. in the hope of redeeming the debt soon from the proceeds of good harvest. And, crop failure led to extreme action.
But the most significant conclusion of the panel is many farmers who have not taken any debt took the extreme step following crop-losses due to want of adequate money to treat their ailments. It outlined `health’ as an important risk factor for the farming households and recommended all the States to adopt the Yashaswini model launched by Karnataka to insulate farmers from health shocks.
It pointed out that rise in suicides was a symptom of a prevailing agrarian crisis. Such agrarian crisis has gripped the State since long but the Government seems to have failed to respond effectively.
The Committee has delineated some significant determinants. It has ranked Orissa as second lowest in India with the per worker productivity in agriculture estimated at Rs 7,871 only. A total of four districts - Boudh, Koraput, Malkangiri and Nuapada - have been listed in the country’s 100 distressed districts. The institutional agricultural credit has shown decline down the years from 2.9 per cent in 1982 to 1.7 percent in 2006. As high as 70 per cent of primary agriculture credit societies are in the red and the participation of marginal and small farmers in them remains very low at 18 per cent.
In Orissa 48 per cent farmer households are indebted with the average loan per household estimated at Rs 5,871. The total indebted farmer households constituted 5 per cent of the national tally. A high of 25 per cent of the borrowings were from non-institutional sources like moneylenders and others in Orissa with 11 per cent farmers taking loan for consumption, another 14 per cent for purposes of marriages and 3 per cent for medical purposes.
The inference is low value realisation led farmers to borrow for consumption and other uses and crop failures in rainfed areas pushes farmers to debt and death-trap.