What a contrast it is! When on the one hand the Odisha Government went on an overdrive recently claiming Odisha as the only State in the country to double its farmers’ income in the last decade, a recent analysis by its own Department of Economics and Statistics (DES) has apparently painted a contrary picture as it has discovered the economic condition of farmers as ‘alarming’.
The detailed DES analysis reveals how much inequality and poverty is prevalent among the farming community in the State. This, when seen in the context of a 2016 study by the Bengaluru-based National
Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) that has identified inequality and poverty as the prime trigger factor of farmers’ suicide, puts the Odisha farmers’ suicide in the right perspective. In Odisha, the farmers’ Average Propensity to Save (APS) reflects their hand-to-mouth existence as the data available with the DES reveal that savings in farmer households in the State are either negligible or negative. The analysis based on field level data of the 70th round of National Sample Survey show that a whopping 70 per cent or around 29 lakh cultivator households either have negative APS or a very negligible APS. The DES analysis reveals that when cultivators from the Others Caste (OC) category have negative APS; SCs and OBC cultivators have a very negligible one.
In simple terms, the study has explained that on every Re 1 income, cultivators from OC have a saving ratio or APS of (-0.14) and SC and OBC cultivators could save a mere 1 paisa and 9 paise, respectively. And importantly, the incomes of the cultivator groups are not as high as Rs 1 lakh drawn per month by MlAs/Ministers but a meagre amount of Rs 5,076, Rs 5,322 and Rs 4,009, respectively, for OC, OBC and SCs. In these conditions, the savings for OC work out at Rs (-708),Rs 404 for OBCs and only Rs 37 for SC cultivators. But a ST cultivator saves an amount of Rs 1,549.
This analysis brings to the fore the prevalence of high inequality among cultivators. And a profiling of suicides by farmers in the State over the last decade reveals that almost 90 per cent of the suicides have come from social groups of SC, OBC and OC.
Moreover as per the NIAS, since poverty is also a trigger factor for farm suicides, a look at the DES data shows that income inequality among people in respective social groups of cultivators is a matter of great worry in the State.The intra-poverty level in respective castes measured by Gini coefficient shows that inequality among ST farmers’ households is the worst while it is the least in SC farm households. In simpler terms, the rich-poor gap in ST farm households is acute whereas the gap among SC farm households is the least.
The least gap among SC doesn’t mean that the poverty is not acute.
Rather, it reveals poorest economic condition of SCs, given that SC farm households have the lowest average income in the State.