Odisha has been passing through a distressful situation with increasing suicides by farmers due to debt and drought. The National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) report on framer suicide has indentified crop failure as the major reason driving the hapless farmers to take the extreme step.
Over past three weeks, 25 farmers have committed suicide by consuming pesticides or hanging themselves in the State. In view of the enormity of the situation, the State Human Rights Commission sought a report from the State Government while a five-member Central team visited the drought affected area recently for assessment. Besides, the Opposition demanded a White Paper on drought by the State Government. There has been substantial debate over the issue involving people from different walks of life, including political parties, farmer organizations and media. Both the Centre and the State Government have declared a number of temporary packages such as cash incentive over crop loss, input subsidy and increasing the man days of NREGS etc to meet the drought crisis on a war footing basis though these measures are not new to State like Odisha. With Rs 1,000 crore relief package, the Government of Odisha has converted the short term kharip loan to medium term loans with same interest rate in drought affected areas and promised for fresh finance for Rabi cultivation.
The issues of natural calamities such as drought, flood, and cyclone has been a regular visitor in the absence of long term disaster mitigation plans by the State in ensuring timely irrigation for agriculture. This year about 70 per cent of the agricultural land has been affected by drought covering around 100 blocks in 23 districts of the State. The State Government report says 5.23 lakh hectares of cultivable land has been affected and for long term drought mitigation plan, the State has demanded Rs 3,500 crore as special Central assistance. The Centre has supported drought hit States such as Maharashtra with Rs 2,000 crore package recently.
Though farmer suicide is a global and national phenomenon, but it is very specific to the region. Odisha has unresolved traditional structural issues due to over all socio and economic backwardness with large presence of socially marginal groups that contributes to distress of farmers. The NCRB reports as many as 5,650 farmer suicides in the country last year, while it says Maharashtra, Telengana, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka together account for about 90 per cent of the total cases.
So far as Odisha is concerned, though there are a number of issues, but mainly debt and drought are the prominent ones which need a long term plan to ensure credit for the farmers and irrigation for cultivation. But it has been observed that the State Government has been implementing welfare programmes rather than investing in agriculture sector to change the economic condition of the farmers for a long term basis. There has been no plan to bring improvement in institutional arrangement for disbursement of credit.
It is fact that about 70 per cent of the people of Odisha depend on agriculture and about 63 per cent of the total workers of the are engaged in the farm sector which includes 24 per cent of cultivators and 39 per cent of agricultural unorganized workers. They are not socially and economically a homogeneous group and have unorganized diverse interest which has been a major barrier for collective bargaining. The production of agriculture not only provides food but also primary income for these families to make a living out of it. The socio-economic condition of farmers and agriculture labourers has been the most miserable one in terms of standard of living and income. They are the lowest paid workers and face problem of distress sale of their produces for a long time. The post liberalization era witnessed a different growth model of privatization, an increasing input cost of agriculture and dependence on market forces, private companies. The agricultural workers as a major workforce are lowest paid and without a regular employment and social security benefits. Many of the agricultural workers are small and marginal farmers and share croppers with small holding dependable on absentee landlords’ land for cultivation. Their dependency has increased over the years over everything that includes inputs, land, seed, fertilizer, pesticide, agro appliance and credit. The State policy favours a lion share of subsidy that goes to purchaser of high cost agro appliances such as tractor, deep bore well etc and small farmers do not feature in such kinds of subsidy. There has been lack of timely collateral security free institutional credit for agriculture. Baring a few cooperatives and regional rural banks, the farmers mostly depend on private money leaders with conditional loan of higher rate of interest for timely investment. Sometimes, it leads to distress sale in compulsion. It has been observed that many of the farmers those who committed suicide are share croppers and got loan from private money lenders. They are primarily dependent on agriculture as the main source of income to meet the growing need of the family, besides meeting the increasing input cost of agriculture and face continued inflation in uncontrolled market economy. There has been no health and crop insurance to meet the unforeseen risk involved in production and managing family. They have no control over Government policy, weather and diseases. The debt bondage is a trap that has been a never ending process in rural villages. The State has not yet covered two-thirds of its area with any banks where as every panchayat should have a bank for making availability of timely credit. There has been a need of timely hassle free institutional credit for farmers where the State Government, NABARD, RRBs and RBI have a major proactive role in setting up farmer-friendly financial institutions and mobilizing loans and encouraging saving habit of farmers and building a culture of repayment of loans. There must be stringent laws to control private money lending and its exploitative nature for poor and illiterate farmers. The Odisha Money lenders Act should be amended to suit the present context. The Money lending Regulation Act 2008 of the Government of Maharashtra has set an interest rate slightly higher than the rate declared by Reserve Bank of India. The Government of Kerala also has set up a Kerala farmer debt relief commission.
Though Odisha has tremendous potential of water resources but this resource has not been tapped for the use of agriculture. The ground water and surface water with so much of rivers and Nalas has not been fully utilized due to inadequate State investment in irrigation and electricity, prerequisite for lift irrigation. The irrigation projects in the State are suffering due to lack of adequate and timely Central assistance as well as State investment.
large scale irrigation is not possible with individual investment and the farmers are not in a viable economic position to invest on irrigation. In spite of going for water sources for individual farmers, the State should encourage collective water sources for the farmers of a particular patch and develop water management committees of the water user farmers of the area. The farmers of should be organized for cooperative farming with collective responsibility for production, sharing of inputs, land, water and electricity and also for repayment of loan by which the individual burden of risk management can be minimized. It will also minimize the average production cost and dependency on market forces for inputs and credit needs. The farmer organizations while demanding for relief and welfare measures must have a demand before the Government for long term solution to debt and drought mitigation through adequate State investment for agriculture growth on promoting institutional finance, irrigation and farmer social security.
(The writer is a researcher and rights activist, who can be mailed at manasbbsr15@gmail.com Mob -9437060797)