As of 2017, farmer suicides have occurred in large numbers in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telengana, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Jharkhand.Tamma Carleton, a researcher at the University of California at Berkeley, compared suicide and climate data, concluding that climate change in India may have "a strong influence" on suicides during the growing season, triggering more than 59,000 suicides in 30 years.More than 23,000 farmers have committed suicide in the state of Maharashtra between 2009 and 2016. In 2014, the National Crime Records Bureau of India reported 5,650 farmer suicides.The highest number of farmer suicides were recorded in 2004 when 18,241 farmers committed suicide.The farmers suicide rate in India has ranged between 1.4 and 1.8 per 100,000 total population, over a 10-year period through 2005.India is an agrarian country with around 70% of its people depending directly or indirectly upon agriculture. Farmer suicides account for 11.2% of all suicides in India.Activists and scholars have offered a number of conflicting reasons for farmer suicides, such as monsoon failure, high debt burdens, government policies, public mental health, personal issues and family problems.There are also accusation of states manipulating the data on farmer suicides.Various reasons have been offered to explain why farmers commit suicide in India, including: floods, drought, debt, use of genetically modified seed, public health, use of lower quantity pesticides due to less investments producing a decreased yield and also government economic policies. There is no consensus on what the main causes might be but studies show suicide victims are motivated by more than one cause, on average three or more causes for committing suicide. Panagariya states, "farm-related reasons get cited only approximately 25 percent of the time as reasons for suicide" and "studies do consistently show greater debt burden and greater reliance on informal sources of credit" amongst farmers who commit suicide.A number of social activist groups and studies proposed a link between genetically modified crops and farmer suicides. Bt cotton (Bacillus thuringiensis cotton) was claimed to be responsible for farmer suicides. The Bt cotton seeds cost nearly twice as much as ordinary ones. The higher costs forced many farmers into taking ever larger loans, often from private moneylenders charging exorbitant interest rates (60% a year). The moneylenders force farmers to sell their cotton to them at a price lower than it fetches on the market. According to activists, this created a source of debt and economic stress, ultimately suicides, among farmers. Increasing costs in farming associated with decreasing yields even with use of BT cotton seeds are often quoted cause of distress among farmers in central India. Scholars claim that this Bt cotton theory made certain assumptions and ignored field reality.
We live in a world where access to information is rampant, yet public opinions have become increasingly polarised. One reason for this is that we often consume half stories of world events, which only tell partial truths, and make our worldviews more rigid and ineffective in terms of dealing with persistent problems such as growing global disparities and deprivation.
For instance, consider the debate over use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) owned by major agribusiness giants. Proponents of GMO promote their use as the solution to the problem of hunger, which can also decrease our reliance on fertilisers and pesticides, and enable crops to be grown with less water. Conversely, GMO opponents have expressed a range of fears, including health concerns associated with consumption of GMOs to the exorbitant cost of genetically modified products, which make life more difficult for poorer farmers.
Resistance to adoption of GMO technology was initially quite fierce. Widespread protests were organised in many Western countries. Over time this resistance softened. While still forbidding the planting of most GM crops, Europe now permits the importation of foods made from them. Monsanto, the leading GMO seeds producer, now almost has a monopoly in some seed markets. Its dominance is not confined to the industrialised world alone. It has also made its presence felt in India.
Since India first allowed GM cotton cultivation in 2002, the country has become a leading producer and exporter of fibre. However, the promotion of BT cotton has brought with it a frightening cost of widespread debt-ridden farmer suicides. While poor Indian farmers traditionally relied on indigenous seed banks to grow their crops, the increasing commercialisation has been nudging them towards use of higher-yield seed varieties. The introduction of GMO seeds has taken the commodification of seeds to a new level. Use of genetically modified cotton seeds can easily put poor farmers in debt, especially when there is crop failure due to misuse or water shortages.
There is ample research highlighting the links between the growing desperation of Indian farmers since they started using GMO seeds. It was thus surprising to see a recent The New York Times story depicting the plight of Indian farmers, in its mixed media portrayal of ‘The uninhabitable village’ in southern Punjab, that does not mention the role of agribusiness concerns in exacerbating this problem.
It is problematic for a newspaper with the stature of NYTs to highlight the problem of farmer suicides in India without mentioning agribusinesses. While the report admits how thousands of Indian farmers have been killed in the past 30 years due to a complex range of factors, it primarily focuses on droughts as the underlying reason. The story just cites recommendations which focus on how the government needs to provide more aid or how it should build better infrastructure to address their irrigation needs or even relocate them, if necessary.
The NYT story could have also highlighted the voice of prominent activists like Vandana Shiva. Shiva points out how structural adjustment policies of the World Bank have been encouraging agribusiness firms like Monsanto to dominate the Indian seed market. She also draws attention to falling produce prices under trade liberalisation encouraged by the WTO, which have also spiked farmer debts and created a ‘suicide economy’ in India. While Shiva’s assertions are also contestable, the NYT story could at least have mentioned the possibility that the global production system may also be responsible.
Instead it tells half a story, and such half stories are problematic since they encourage thinking about poverty or underdevelopment primarily as problems of mal-governance and corruption of poor countries themselves, rather than symptoms of deeper flaws in prevalent economic growth and trade models. Such half stories also in turn identify half-baked solutions, which will not suffice in curbing the problem of farmer suicides in India, nor other varied implications of rural discontent plaguing much of the remaining developing world, including Pakistan.
