Another farmer suicide in Singur

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1081203/jsp/bengal/story_10198855.jsp

Farmer suicide in Singur

Singur, Dec. 2: A sharecrop- per who had apparently lost work after nearly 1,000 acres were acquired for Tata Motors hanged himself today.

Bholanath Patra’s wife Shyamali said the family had six cottahs outside the factory site, but that was too little. “After he lost his job, we found it difficult to arrange two square meals a day. He started working in a cold storage unit but his health began to fail,” said Shyamali, a mother of two in Bajemelia.

Hooghly superintendent of police Rajeev Mishra said the 42-year-old farmer “was suffering from depression because of failing health”.

Bholanath was a Save Farmland Committee member during the height of the anti-Tata agitation. “Around noon, he locked himself in the bathroom. When he did not come out even after repeated knocking, I called villagers,” said Shyamali.

Mamata crop

Mamata Banerjee told a rally in Singur today that the Save Farmland Committee would cultivate paddy on the land acquired for the Tatas.

Indian Villages For Sale

http://www.countercurrents.org/gl-sharma130206.htm

By Devinder Sharma

13 February, 2006



Harkishanpura is a non-descript village in Bathinda district of Punjab in northwestern India. It suddenly made its way into news when in an unprecedented move the village panchayat announced that the village was up for sale. That was in Jan 2001. Since than five more villages in Punjab - in the midst of the food bowl of the country - are awaiting auction.

What began as an isolated and an extreme case of rural distress is now slowly and steadily spreading its tentacles throughout the country. In December 2005, Dorli in Wardha district of Maharashtra in central India became the first village outside the frontline agricultural state of Punjab - the harbinger of Green Revolution in India - to make itself available for sale. With signboards pasted all around, and the slogan " Dorli village is for sale" painted on the cattle back and trees, what appeared to be a bizarre tale is now becoming a sad but widespread reality.

Dorli village comprises 270 residents, 500 livestock, and nearly 600 acres of agricultural land. Every villager, including children, has an outstanding debt of Rs 30,000 (425 pounds).

A few weeks later, hundreds of residents of Chingapur village in Yeotmal region of Maharashtra, invited the President of India, Dr Abdul Kalam, and the Prime Minister, Mr Manmohan Singh, to preside over a 'human market' for the sale of kidneys. Unable to repay the mounting debts, the villagers had decided to go in for mass sale of kidneys. The situation in the neighbouring villages is no better. Agricultural distress is written all around.

In the neighbouring village, Shivani Rekhailapur, banners read: "This village is ready to be auctioned. Permit us to commit mass suicides." Rural indebtedness has reached such alarming proportions that village communities are being forced to sell not only their body organs but also their lands - willing to lose control over their only means of economic security.

Malsinghwala is a tiny village in the Mansa district of Punjab. The village owes upto Rs 50 million to banks and another Rs 25 million to private moneylenders and commission agents. " We are neck deep in debt. We are left with no other option but to sell of our land," says village panchayat head Jasbir Singh. Showing the panchayat resolution that authorized the sale, he said that each of the 4000 residents had an outstanding debt of Rs 13,000. With crop yields faltering, and with no other hope of repaying the outstanding debts, the village had decided to sell off its assets spread over 1800 acres.

Five years after Harkishanpura in Bathinda district was put up for sale, the village is still awaiting a buyer. Like any other village in prosperous Punjab, Harkishanpura has nothing to indicate that it is different from others. With some 125 families, and 1170 acres of land, the village somehow continues to slog in its march for survival. Mounting indebtedness and an indifferent Punjab government is slowly and steadily pushing several villages in its neighbourhood into a severe socio-economic crisis.

Bhuttal Kalan in Sangrur district comprises 1000 acres of land. The neighbouring Bhuttal Khurd has 1200 acres of land. Eighty per cent of the village land is already mortgaged to moneylenders and commission agents. While both these villages are up for sale, the situation is no better in the adjoining villages. "The situation is alarming. But no one seems to take any notice of our cry for help," says Hardayal Singh, sarpanch of the adjoining village of Govindpura Jawaharwala. No wonder, 40 per cent of the farmers have in the latest National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) report expressed the desire to quit farming.

And yet, it doesn't shock the conscious of the world's biggest democracy. There was no public outrage when earlier reports showed that sixty-five of the 243 farmers who committed suicide in Vidhrabha region of Maharashtra in 2004 alone had debts as little as Rs 8,000 (110 pounds). That Meena Prakash Rechpade, widow of the 36-year-old farmer, Prakash, of village Dhanori, near Wardha, in Maharashtra, had no money to arrange for the last rites of her husband, who took the fatal route to escape the misery of Green Revolution, did not evoke strong reaction. Except for routine inquiries and promises, such stories have failed to move the nation.

Not only in Punjab and Maharashtra, tens of thousands of farmers throughout the country are migrating every season looking for menial jobs in the urban centres. Mofussil newspapers in the heartland of the cyberstate - that's how Andhra Pradesh in south India wanted itself to be called - are full of advertisements inviting people to mortgage their gold and silver belongings. In Karnataka, where farmer suicide rate is equally high, the over-emphasis on technology had only alienated a large percentage of farming populations from economic growth and development. The biggest tragedy being that both the states have turned into a national capital of shame for farmers' distress, visible more through the increasing rate of suicides in the rural areas

While the rural misery continues to multiply, what is more depressing is that the government is clueless of the reasons that aggravate agrarian crisis. Nor is there any effort from agricultural scientists, economists, and social scientists to come out with proposals to put an end to this shameful blot on the country's image. The reason is obvious. No one has the political courage to point a finger at the fundamental reason behind the collapse of the Green Revolution. It not only acerbated the crisis leading to an environmental catastrophe but also destroyed millions of rural livelihoods.

The alarm bells had been ringing for quite some time now. For nearly a decade, agricultural production had almost stagnated, than began the downslide. All this happened at a time when high-chemical input based technology had already mined the soils and ultimately led to the lands gasping for breath, with the water-guzzling crops sucking the groundwater aquifer dry, and with the failure of the markets to rescue the farmers from a collapse of the farming systems. By ignoring the critical connection between agricultural production and access to food -- with the focus shifting to agro- processing linked to foreign investment and exports -- it was bound to happen.

While the input costs kept on increasing over the years, encouraging farmers to back up with more loans, the farm prices remained steady. The entire input-output ratio gradually went upside down, with a large number of farmers sliding into debt that kept on mounting with each year. A recent UNCTAD report that showed agricultural produce continues to be sold at 1985 prices. In other words, the price farmers were getting today is in reality the same at which they were selling their produce 20 years back.

Such is the growing apathy that without first ascertaining where has the farm equation gone wrong, and without learning from the bloody aftermath of the Green Revolution, a second green revolution is being forced, which will increase dependence over external inputs and thereby add on to farmers costs. The second Green Revolution has all the ingredients to further accentuate the prevailing crisis in sustainability and speed up the marginalisation of the farming community.

Agricultural reforms that are being introduced in the name of increasing food production and minimising the price risks that the farmers continue to be faced with, is actually aimed at destroying the production capacity of the farm lands and would lead to further marginalisation of the farming communities. Encouraging contract farming, future trading in agriculture commodities, land leasing, forming land-sharing companies, allotment of homestead-cum-garden plots, direct procurement of farm commodities and setting up of special purchase centres will drive out a majority of the 600 million farmers out of agriculture.

Village for sale will then become a common feature of the Indian landscape.

(Devinder Sharma is a New Delhi-based writer and commentator)

Irrelevant laws and futile exemptions

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1080311/jsp/frontpage/story_9005657.jsp

Budget can’t write off suicides

SATISH NANDGAONKAR AND G.S. RADHAKRISHNA

March 10: Ghanshyam Mirge, 38, of Akola in Maharashtra and 35-year-old Jayarami Reddy from Andhra’s Kurnool had a lot in common — both are young farmers owning around 8 acres, steeped in debt and not eligible for P. Chidambaram’s loan waiver. The similarity doesn’t end there: both took their lives last week. Satyanarayan Reddy, also from Kurnool, had around 4 acres, which qualified him for a waiver. But since most of his money was owed to moneylenders who had put him in jail and now threatened to get his wife arrested as well, Reddy, too, killed himself. As did Kashinath Belure (60) of Bidar in Karnataka. He would have got a total loan waiver but for the fact that he was indebted to moneylenders. Nearly 60 farmers have taken their lives in India’s death bowl since Chidambaram announced the farm loan waiver 10 days ago. Questions have been raised about the largesse because the complete loan waiver is limited to the 3 crore marginal and small farmers owning up to 2 hectares (4.9 acres). Those with over 2 hectares — around 1 crore farmers — will get a 25 per cent discount for a one-time settlement. Economists had also pointed out that farmers had borrowed heavily from moneylenders as well, and the government had no answers to that. The highest number of deaths has been reported from Andhra, where 35 farmers have committed suicide since February 29, when the finance minister unveiled the waiver plan in the budget. Barring a couple, all the farmers owned over 5 acres, which meant they had to cough up 75 per cent of the money. At least 22 farmers killed themselves in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region, among the worst hit by the debt cycle, while two deaths have been reported from Karnataka. All the Vidarbha farmers had over 5 acres of land. The Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti, an NGO based in the Pandhakavda region of Yawatmal, the Maharashtra district with the highest number of suicides, said the announcement has had little impact on the farmers who grow cotton and are burdened with loans from banks as well as private moneylenders. Like Kisan Uike, 32, who consumed pesticide in Khadki village, 50km from Nagpur. Uike, the owner of around 8 acres, had an outstanding loan of Rs 43,000, which had ballooned to Rs 75,000 because of interest accumulation. “Twenty-two farmers have killed themselves since the budget. This indicates that the farmers have no faith in the government and its announcements,” said Kishore Tiwari, convener of the samiti, which maintains a “death register” of the suicides in six districts of Vidarbha. According to the samiti’s records, 80 farmers had killed themselves in January, 66 in February and, in March, the figure could be higher. Not all farmers are overjoyed by the waiver. Vidarbha’s farmers say their counterparts in western Maharashtra, whose land holdings are smaller and who have higher loan amounts, were likely to benefit more. Prabhakar Reddy of Marrikunta village in Kurnool, around 700km away, echoed them. “We don’t want any charity or freebies. Let the government organise agricultural credit during harvesting, subsidies in seeds and fertilisers. We will ensure that the loans are repaid in time,” he said. The majority of the deaths in Andhra has been of farmers badly hit by the recent unseasonal rain. Narne Rama Rao (45) had sown groundnut crop but the rains destroyed his livelihood and swamped him with loans of Rs 12 lakh. Narne did not take his life, he died of a heart attack. Leaders from the Congress, which hopes to reap the benefit of the scheme in the spate of elections to be held over the next 12 months, tried to soften the blow. Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh said he would ask the Centre to either increase the ceiling to 15 acres or offset loans of Rs 50,000 for all farmers irrespective of land holdings. “The suicides and the loan waiver have no link,” said a Congress spokesperson in Andhra. With inputs from Anil Budur Lulla

Docs fear more suicides

http://thestatesman.org/page.news.php?clid=1&theme=&usrsess=1&id=186571

Statesman News Service
KOLKATA, Jan. 18: Doctors of a voluntary medical organisation, who spoke to farmers to know the impact of land acquisition on aged farmers in early 2007, fear more suicides in the coming days in view of today’s Calcutta High Court order.
Four farmers of Singur, who had been either displaced from their plots or rendered jobless as agricultural labourers after the acquisition, have committed suicide in the past eight months.
They had been suffering from depression and spending their days in anxiety since they were evicted from their lands.
Doctors from the Medical Service Centre visited several villages in five affected mouzas of Singur and spoke to the farmers who were displaced from their lands.
The doctors, including psychologists, said 40 elderly farmers, whose lands were acquired by the state government without taking their consent, were suffering from depression and anxiety disorder. Some of them have developed insomnia.
The doctors also observed that the farmers were displaying suicidal behaviour.
“With the High Court judgment going in favour of the state government, farmers, who hoped that they would get back their lands after winning the legal battle, will receive a shock which might drive them to end their lives,” Dr Mridul Sarkar, an MSC doctor, said.
Dr Sarkar, among those who carried out the survey, said they spoke to at least 1,000 farmers in Singur and found that 40 of them had been suffering from depression and insomnia.
All of them are aged farmers. “The survey report has gained significance because the Calcutta High Court verdict has gone against the farmers. The farmers need counselling,” the doctor said.

Singur sharecropper commits suicide

The Statesman

Kolkata, Dec. 17.

Acute financial crunch drove a 50-year-old non-recorded sharecropper, Shankar Patra, to suicide this afternoon. He is the fifth farmer of Singur to have committed suicide following land acquisition there. Patra took his life at a cowshed adjacent to his house near Khaserveri in Singur.

His widow, Mrs Sandhya Patra, who found her husband hanging from the ceiling of the cowshed, said he had been suffering from depression since the state government had acquired land last year for the proposed Tata Motors car factory in Singur. Patra was later declared dead at Singur block hospital. The body has been sent for an autopsy, police said. Mrs Patra alleged that her husband hadn’t received compensation from the government despite its promise that non-recorded sharecroppers would be compensated.

Police said that Patra had been suffering from acute Tuberculosis and his death had nothing to do with land acquisition. “After being displaced from our land, my husband opened a tea stall. We were plunged into acute financial crisis by two thefts in a row at the tea stall.”

Police did nothing to trace the money stolen from the shop, Mrs Patra alleged. She added that her husband had opposed land acquisition and took part in rallies organised by the Singur Krishi Jomi Raksha Committee (SKJRC). Mr Dudhkumar Dhara, a SKJRC member, blamed Patra’s depression on police’s inability to recover stolen money.

Dismissing the suggestion, Mr Priyabrata Baxi, officer-in-charge of Singur police station said: “Patra was suffering from Tuberculosis. Financial distress drove him to suicide.”

Mr Prasenjit Chakraborty, block development officer, Singur, said: “A list of 397 non-recorded sharecroppers has been prepared. They will be compensated. Patra’s name is not on the list. It implies that he hadn’t registered for compensation. The process of compensating non-recorded sharecroppers is yet to start.”

The suicide is believed to add fuel to Singur fire as it comes a day before Trinamul Congress chief Miss Mamata Banerjee’s Singur visit.

Meanwhile, TV celebrity Mr Koushik Sen and litterateur, Tarun Sanyal, visited Singur today and spoke to farmers spearheading the movement to reoccupy land taken away for the car factory.

Later, they addressed a rally at Beraberi and condemned the manner in which the state government had acquired land in Singur.