In this month (January 2011) alone, at least 15 farmers in the state have committed suicide—mainly due to the burden of the debt, they found themselves unable to repay. While most of the farmers were debtors of money-lenders charging Shylockian rates of interest, some had taken loans from nationalised and co-operative banks. Their problems have been accentuated by the severe damage to the drops due to frost.

A farmer in Narsinghpur district committed suicide by throwing himself before a speeding train while another in Damoh—the home district of state agriculture minister—set himself afire. The latter owed Rs. 50 thousand to a bank.

According to the National Crime Record Bureau, a total of 12,455 farmers committed suicide in Madhya Pradesh from 2001 to 2009. Madhya Pradesh follows Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka — the five States with the highest incidence of farmer suicides.
In 2009 alone, 1,395 farmers committed suicide in the State, taking the average farmer suicide that year to four a day. According to a 2003 household debt survey conducted by the National Sample Survey Organisation, the average individual farmer debt in Madhya Pradesh stood at Rs.14, 218.

On December 20 last year, thousands of farmers had congregated at Bhopal to convey their anger and resentment over the government ignoring their plight. The protest was mounted under the aegis of Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU)—an RSS affiliate. The very fact that a member of the “Sangh Parivar” was constrained to air the grievances of the farmers stands testimony to the fact that the state government has been unable or unwilling to redress the grievances of the farmers. The farmers laid a siege on the city, blocking all major roads by parking their tractor trolleys. In its endeavour to end the agitation, the government announced that it would initiate action to fulfill 50 of the 182 demands of the farmers. But so far nothing has moved on the front.

Even as the BKU announced that it would “adopt” the families of the farmers who have taken the extreme step, the state government went into a denial mode. State Parliamentary affairs minister Mr. Narottam Mishra claimed that the farmers were committing suicides due to “personal reasons” and that the state government was committed to “welfare of the farming community”. To buttress this claim, the government has also come out with figures saying that in the Damoh district, which had witnessed the highest number of suicides, the damage to the crops was only between 16 to 19 per cent while there has been no report of farmer suicide from Vidisha district, where the crop damage has been to the tune of 100 per cent in two tehsils.

The agriculture Minister Mr. Ramkrishna Kusumaria added salt to the famers’ wounds by saying that they were only “paying for their sins”. After his statement kicked up a storm, he clarified that what he meant by “sins” was unbridled use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

An alarmed Chief Minister has announced a Rs. 500 crore package for the farm sector. This includes suspension of recovery of loans from farmers. The Chief Minister has also announced that 50 percent or more damage to crops would be treated as cent percent loss and that the eligibility for compensation was being lowered from the existing at least 50 percent loss to 20 per cent. It was also announced that the farmers would, henceforth, get credit on an interest of one per cent per annum.

AICC spokesperson Digvijay Singh, among others, has demanded that the government should immediately take cognizance of the distress of and disaffection among the farmers. (IPA Service)