I - Death, along the famished road

By Jaideep Hardikar Chapter I: As you sow, so shall you weep 1 A pearl of broken necklace 2 The RussainRoulette 3 The Rising import of Suicides 4 Cash crops the food crop 5 Unregulated inputs market 6 Chor Bt aur Bt chor 7 The rise of the moneylender 8 Monopoly mess 9 Rich daddy poor daddy 10 What next?

Chapter II: Along the famished road. Stories from the Vidarbha countryside.

I - As you sow, so shall you weep

Something is terribly wrong in the countryside today. - M S Swaminathan, Chairman, NCF, Sept 2006. Introduction:

When the spiritual Guru Sri Sri Ravishankar addressed a rally in Mumbai in November 2006, it was an indication of a government running thin on options. A mediocre chief minister sharing the dais with an ever-smiling spiritual master did not make the things any better. The CM had, at best, found a divine refuge. Back in his cabinet next day, the trouble had spilled over. The ministers were not comfortable with the picture of their CM sharing dais with Sri Sri over an issue that could bring down his government. If not, himself, in the days to come. But the CM reassured his ministers that this was just one of the options hes trying. Not very long ago, the same CM appeared on the news channels fighting hard to smile and say: Our two years in the office were eventful and satisfactory. In Vidarbha, the same day, the graph of the farmers suicides rose further. And the spiritual masters intervention had not brought any breather to the CM. Within a week, the Congress high command sent a simmering dissent note to the CM. The message was loud and clear: Get your act together, or face the axe. Yet the malaise that rips through the states far eastern region of Vidarbha is not the doing of the Maharashtra Chief Minister, but a more concrete design that hes only a part of. Alas, amidst the political games, things are turning for the worse, notwithstanding the princely packages that he and the Prime Minister offered to the beleaguered farmers. A clueless government is now getting panicky, and yet not ready to change the faulty policies that are at the root of the driving distress. Vidarbha, the cotton bowl of Maharashtra, is an agrarian volcano today. Though cotton farmers are ending themselves at a frightening rate, the agrarian crisis of

the region itself goes far beyond the suicides. The green fields are transforming into killing fields. The distress is devouring the region at a much greater pace in the wake of open markets. And ironically there is no respite from any quarter. Just take this: Past four years have seen close to 2,500 farmers end themselves in a region rich in cotton, paddy, soybean and oranges. In the last five months, over 500 farmers suicides have been registered (a suicide almost every six hours or may be even less) all of them a result of ruthless policies of the past decade that pushed them to brim. And those holding on have very little hope of lifting themselves out of the crisis, unless the state hikes its investments in agriculture sector and takes corrective steps on policy-front. So far, the government hasnt shown signs of improving the situation any further. It remains heartless. Unfortunately, even the peoples initiatives have come to a naught. The last decade indeed saw the Vidarbha farmer slide from bad to worse and further worse on all the counts income, farm techniques, food security, health care etc. As farmers leader and expert on agriculture in Wardha, Vijay Jawandhia, puts it: The farmers, who are living, are living only just, because they are not dying. While the region also grows pulses, rice and oranges, its mainstay crop is cotton, which punctuates its economy as well. With cotton in peril and orange orchards drying up, the regions cash crops are in danger. So are its near 3-mn farmers. The malady is only getting worse, with a majority of farmers under rising debts, input costs soaring, state-run monopoly cotton procurement scheme folding up, and imports rising. Till 2003, suicides were reported from the cotton belt. Now peasants from a much better plateau the one producing paddy are following a trend that reflects the past decade of liberalization policies have pushed the peasantry to a point of no return. The crisis needs an immediate attention. Drought is just one contributory factor for the biting distress, not the only. The region receives over 800 mm of average rainfall annually. And statistics obtained from the Indian Meteorological Department, Nagpur regional office, show that the rainfall variation in Vidarbha over the last hundred years has been plus or minus 30%. Which means, in rainfall deficit years, the region still received close

to 580 mm rainfall, and in better years, it recorded more than a thousand mm. In that rainfall, you can grow grapes, if the water is harnessed in a planned way. In perspective, India has more land under cotton than any other country in the world, but just about the lowest yields. Vidarbhas worse: 97% of its 14-lakh hectare land under cotton is rainfed (Non Irrigated). Its productivity is meager 146 kg lint/hectare, compared to the national average of 440 kg and 220 kg of the state. Farmers reap only one crop. And borrow from moneylenders to dig wells. Over the years, the inputs industry has burgeoned. These companies outshine the funds-starved public sector efforts in introducing new seeds and newer pestcontrol chemicals, fueling the production cost. The productivity hasnt risen. Complete collapse of agriculture extension in the region has proved disastrous too. The agriculture universities and the governments agriculture extension, even the Chief Minister of Maharashtra Vilasrao Deshmukh admits, are in peril. That has affected the public research on inputs, particularly seeds of cotton. Theres also the issue of regional imbalance, with Vidarbha being stifled of funds by the successive governments, dominated by the western Maharashtra leaders. Primarily, the disparity in the annual budgetary allocations by the successive state governments and lack of a strong political lobby for cotton farmers diverted maximum funds to the western Maharashtra, which helped that region build over its infrastructure, resources and a strong cooperative movement. But the regions like Vidarbha and Marathwada suffered, starved of funds for almost all the sectors irrigation, off-and-on farm activities, and agriculture infrastructure. This also led to more investments in all these sectors by private and public sector financial institutions in western Maharashtra, especially the sugar belt. There, the funds flowed freely. And in Vidarbha, irrigation projects were dragged for ages. Ironically, the state government has built cotton complexes in the sugar belt of western Maharashtra, not in Vidarbha where cotton is actually grown. Here, it is promoting sugar cultivation, despite a clear warning by the National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning (NBSS&LUP) that Vidarbhas climate is not conducive for sugarcane cultivation; it will be disastrous for farmers to grow it.

There is also another reason why farmers must stay away from sugarcane there is no water for this water-intensive crop. All the sugar mills in Vidarbha, save one, have collapsed, closed down or defunct. And there is no hope for them to be revived. Had the government set up cotton complexes where raw cotton is weaved into raw yarn in Vidarbha, it would have seen the monopoly cotton procurement scheme make profits and helped the cotton cultivators gain in marketability and good returns. The region had and still has a potential to become Indias textile hub, but the government has to shift to the policies that support such a regional development. In contrast of the western Maharashtra, which is sugar, and also wine hub, now, Vidarbha and Marathwada could have together pulled up the states exchequer through one of the most paying sectors of textile, and the center could have protected this sector from global markets. Coming back to cotton farmers woes: In the past few years, the cost of cultivation has increased sharply but income has dwindled dramatically. This is the region, which has adopted high cost Bt seeds, without adequate research on its viability. In spite of this, productivity has not gone up in 2005, Maharashtra with roughly three million ha of land under cotton, produced 4.6 million bales. Its yield was 271 kg per ha, the lowest in the country and a pittance as compared to 600-700 kg per ha of Punjab, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu. This fact points to a key technological challenge, as the region needs varieties suitable for rainfed conditions. This system survived to an extent due to the government procurement policies, which bought the cotton from farmers at a premium. But now, the government wants farmers to survive in open market. Unfortunately, even public research and public agencies have failed farmers, who are now finding it difficult to cope with these changed circumstances. Each year, a new reason and factor exacerbates the crisis, accelerating the suicide rate. In 2005-06, the crisis was aggravated because the state government withdrew the advance bonus (Rs 500) that it gave its farmers over and above the minimum support price through the monopoly cotton procurement scheme at a time, when farmers went for more loans investing in more expensive seeds, which promised them bumper crops. But the risk did not pay off productivity of their crops on

rainfed areas did not increase substantially, but costs of inputs spiralled. As much as 50 per cent of the BT seeds were sold in rainfed Maharashtra in that year. Also, the democratic front government comprising Congress and National Congress Party returned to power with a promise to pay Rs 2700/quintal to cotton, a word never kept. The Congress high command and the state leadership passed this off merely as a printing mistake in its election manifesto. Across the country, the average cost of cultivation in cotton is around Rs 16,00022,000 per ha. With an average productivity of 460 kg per ha, it costs between Rs 35 to Rs 48 per kg to grow cotton. In Vidarbha, the cost of cultivation could go well beyond Rs 20,000 per ha and if marketing cost is added it crosses Rs 22,000. But the productivity is only 270 kg per ha. In other words, the cost per kg is almost double well over Rs 70 per kg. This fact is confirmed by the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Pricing, which finds that in Maharashtra, the cost of growing cotton increased from Rs 17,234 per ha in 2001-02 to Rs 20,859 per ha in 2002-03, a CSE report states. In Maharashtra, the input costs of all components are higher than the more productive regions of the country. An official document of the Maharashtra Government Farmers suicides in Maharashtra, an Overview says that the current support prices for cotton are 30% less than the production cost. Leave alone profits, you cant recover capital. According to the central Commission for Agricultural Costs and Pricing (CACP), input costs for 2002-03 are as follows: The labour costs per ha of cotton in Maharashtra are over Rs 750, as compared to Rs 400 in Andhra Pradesh or Rs 200 in Karnataka. The seed costs are Rs 1000 per ha, against Rs 700 per ha in Gujarat or Karnataka. Only expensive Andhra Pradesh spends 1600 per ha. The fertilizer costs are Rs 1400 per ha, against Rs 850 per ha in Gujarat. The insecticide costs are Rs 660 per ha, against Rs 492 per ha in Gujarat. Andhra Pradesh topped that with Rs 3000 per ha in pesticide costs, while Punjab broke the record that year, spending as much as Rs 7000 per ha in pesticides in the year pre-Bt (2001-02) (CSE briefing paper for round table discussion on cotton, seed and fabric at Pusa Institute, New Delhi, July 2006).

Important also is the fact that pest infestations are quite severe comparatively, leading to heavy pesticide loads that poison people, water and fauna -- including insects that prey on cotton pests, deepening the treadmill cycle. Pesticides for cotton consume more than half of India's massive hard currency pesticide bill. Lint quality has been generally low, yields unstable. Cotton thus absorbs fungible water, hard currency, domestic resources and land -- all with high opportunity costs, but with insecure returns for average cultivators. Transgenic [Bt] cotton has spread rapidly from farmer to farmer, evading national regulatory authorities and making India's bio-safety regime mandated by the Cartegena Protocol a subject of ridicule. Scientists are still not sure whether BT is good or bad. China has meanwhile rejected BT cotton after its seven-year trial failed. Yet, one view of the critics is the lack of implementation of policies is the reason for prevailing farm crisis in Vidarbha and elsewhere. Realities speak otherwise. As P Sainath, the countrys frontline journalist on poverty and agrarian issues puts it in his essay (Its the policy stupid! The Hindu, 2005): Seldom has policy been so forcefully implemented as in the 1990s. For ten years, the governments have assaulted the livelihoods and food security of the poor. That security does not lie in mountains of grain but in millions of jobs and workdays for people. Its not the lack of implementation, but the policies themselves that are at the root of the prevailing crisis, and the crisis-driven distress suicides in the region. The sacked BJP leader and one of the vocal right-winger political critics of the neo-liberal policies Govindacharya said in a speech in Nagpur (July 2006): For 20 years, all the governments from the Congress-run to the BJP-led have treaded the same path. Rajiv Gandhi first built a pathway to facilitate the entry of the multinationals; then the Congress converted it into a pucca road in 1991. The NDA tarred it, and the UPA is now transforming it in to an Express High Way. The current crisis, he said towards the end of the speech, is beyond politics and ideological divide. The battle is beyond the realm of ideological positions. Four years ago, during the NDA regime, India boasted of its mounting foodgrain stocks, while countless millions of her farmers couldnt buy food. At the end of

last fiscal, the agriculture employment rate had dwindled below 1%. It now stands in minus, meaning farmers want to give up farming and migrate to some other source of income, or simply starve. In a country where 60% (over 600 million) people depend of agriculture for their living, that rate of employment in farmsector sounds no good. Also, as Utsa Patnaik, a leading economist, points out in her essay the Republic of Hunger (2004): The average Indian family of four members is absorbing 77kg less of food grains annually than a mere six years ago and since in urban India absorption has risen, it is the rural family which is absorbing much less. This abnormal fall is because of the loss of purchasing power for several reasons, and it got reflected in massive building of unsold public food stocks, reaching 63 million tones by July 2002, nearly 40 million tones in excess of the normal food stocks for that time of year, she says. But, the then NDA government got rid of over 17 mn tones of foodgrain by exporting out of stocks with subsidy, and what it went mainly to feed European cattle and Japanese pigs. A poor Indian farmer continued to starve. So, while the governments expedited the integration of global markets with the fragile and unprotected local markets, rural India naturally took the stick. The devaluation of rupee nationally meant that even as the standard of life increased, the rural population was forced to live in the same low cost economy. Evidently, the crisis has hit the farmers in more than one way. The Per Capita debt borrowed from private sources has grown phenomenally (In rural India you can end up paying up to 300% interest to your lender in a season). To elaborate on just one crucial factor fuelling this phenomenon is the rising input prices and declining output prices. As Kishor Tiwari, leader of Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti in Yavatmal points out, The farmers are at loss on the day they start sowing. The more they do intense farming, the more they end up with losses. Today, every one is in the same boat small and marginal farmers, and those with big holdings. Concurrently, in many families food intake has dwindled. Two years ago, tens of Kolam tribal farming families in western Vidarbhas three districts starved to death. That prompted the Bombay High Court to take note of it and direct the

government to supply food free of cost to the starving families. By 2006, the problem of starvation was checked in that community, but in others like dalits or backward classes, people are still rotating their hunger by observing fasts. A rural family has no budget for health. That makes a farmer more vulnerable to even a routine viral fever because he cant see a doctor. The usury is rampant, and cornering of resources by the rich and powerful too. Those who have small land holdings are losing even that piece to unscrupulous Shylockian moneylenders. So, its also not as some newspapers suggest a successive spell of drought that has hit the farmers, but a perennial drought of good policies. Add to it the lopsided open market economy weighed inherently against the marginal farmers. All this, and the states failure to protect the peasantry are taking their toll on the regions agricultural economy, as they do in any other part of the country as well. The nation is facing an acute agriculture crisis, admitted the Union Minister for Agriculture, Sharad Pawar, at a press conference in Nagpur in October 2005. If your investments in agriculture fall, what else would you expect? he remarked in a rare admission to the governments failure in addressing the grave problem. For a sector employing 60% of your population, your budget is a dismal 2.5%, he admitted, in what was his first candid admission to the prevalence of a crisis. The reasons are economic, and political, and not social, as many thinkers feel. And how? Gross fixed capital formation in agriculture in proportion to GDP declined from 3.1% during late eighties to 1.6% during the last part of the ninth plan, according to the planning commission reports. Percentage of Plan expenditure against total plan expenditure also declined nationally from 13.1% to 7.4%. In Maharashtra, this decline was to 4.5% from 6.1% for the same period, the reports indicate. But Pawar categorically denied any global links to the national crisis, though as a sugar baron he knows just as well that the rules of the game have changed. The policy decisions are now taken in international trade summits and not in the Parliaments. For instance, last year, many developing countries cheered a WTO

ruling declaring US agricultural subsidies illegal. Indigent farmers in India will never know the difference though. The WTO ruled that billions of dollars in US subsidies to cotton farmers were illegal. In the post WTO era, ever since agriculture was opened up to free global trade, world prices of cotton have witnessed a sharp and steady decline. For, despite the avowal to cut protection in agriculture, the post WTO era has not seen any reduction in protection that is being given to farmers in rich developed countries like the US and the European Union. At the same time, it has lifted a little protection that the farmers of developing nations had. Import duty, for instance, on cotton in India stands at a meager 10%, which is up from 5% in the 1990s. But as raw cotton is an agriculture commodity, the Centre can increase its tariff to 150% - the bound tariff rate. Ironically, the 10% import stands to be waived off if the importer promises to export the yarn in return. Tens of textile mills take the advantage of this leeway. Chinas import duty is 40%. Coupled with it, larger regulations on inputs and seeds have been long withdrawn. A company self-certifies its seeds and gleefully sells the packets in an open market to the farmers at hefty rates. Notes Devinder Sharma, a policy analyst: A complicated and veiled system of tariffs allows western countries to protect their tiny farming populations while millions of farmers in developing countries are swamped under a tide of cheap imports. While cotton prices have declined by more than 60 percent since 1995, U.S. subsidies to its barely 25,000 cotton farmers reached 3.9 billion dollars in 2001-02, double the level of subsidies in 1992. Interestingly, the value of subsidies provided by American taxpayers to the cotton barons of Texas and elsewhere in 2001 exceeded the market value of cotton output by 30 per cent. From a share of 18.16% in 1998-99, Americas share in world exports jumped to 38.96 % in 2002-03. Indian cotton imports rose sharply in the same period, crushing the local cultivators. In 2004-05, global prices were around 50 cents per pound, the seventh year in succession that they were below the long-term average of 72 cents per pound. Even the most efficient producers are now operating at a loss, unable to cover the costs of production. Marketing projections by the International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC) suggest that prices will remain

chronically depressed in the foreseeable future. Forecasts point to a modest recovery, but prices look likely to remain at 50-60 cents per pound until 2015 if present conditions continue. Estimates by the International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC), using its World Textile Demand Model, indicate that the withdrawal of American cotton subsidies would raise cotton prices by 11 cents per pound, or by 26 per cent. But the governments in developing nations cant pay their farmers a realistic price because the subsidies in US help their farmers grow surplus cotton that surplus crushes the cultivators in a country like India. Cotton has also to fight against the man-made fibres, polyster, terricot etc. That is another ground where its losing the ground, researchers say. Concurrently, these years have seen a spurt in the suicides, and indebt ness grew among cotton farmers of Vidarbha. Largely also because the state governments and the Centre have steadily lifted whatever little protection marginal farmers had. Folding up of rural credit, monopoly mess, rising input costs and a total shift from food crops to cash crops like cotton and soybean belted the farmers. Add to the crisis, the dumping of imports that result in decline in local cotton prices; and the governments steady withdrawal from the water and energy sectors. As the mainstream agriculture suffered, other allied activities too collapsed like dairy, poultry and animal husbandry. Fishing activities also went out of the hands of communities, as the state government privatized the tanks and awarded the contracts to big hoteliers of the region, or corporate rich. Over 300 tanks in the region are now with one hotel chain of Nagpur. But thousands of locals cant fish in their own water. This fall in income was not by decay; it was by design. There was another important factor, which went unnoticed: The fall of a strong farmers movement in the decline of the Shetkari Sanghatna. The neo-liberal czars penetrated the movement that mobilized the peasantry in the region. They managed to knock the struggle down by, what Jawandhia says, buying the leader into believing that neo-liberal policies and globalisation were good for farmers. Sharad Joshi, who fought for the farmers, toed the line of globalisation, and then went on to shift sides ideologically and politically through the 90s. He now sits in

the Rajya Sabha on a Shiv Sena ticket, while the farmers in Vidarbha who rallied behind him in late seventies and eighties with a dream of establishing a Bali Rajya (peasants state) in Vidarbha were dumped. The decline of the movement saw an end to the political struggle of the agrarian masses in the region forever. In the current political dispensation, the opposition alliance of BJP and Shiv Sena looks fragile and weak, and out-of-sync with the regional realities. Pursuing the agenda of liberalization, globalization and privatization is the government. There is hardly any difference between the shades of political spectrum from the left to the right, through the centre, the political offshoots of ideologies look and taste much the same. Theres no alternative approach, or new political alternative that would steer the issues of rural communities, particularly the agrarian masses. Today, the symptoms of crisis are there to be seen. The devastation it wrought on poor families is beyond ones apprehension. Suicide is only one of the several sickening processes. In Amravati, a 19-year-old diligent girl committed suicide. Why? Because as she wrote in a neat handwriting in the suicide note left by her if it werent her, it would, most certainly, be her father. The girl knew she was attaining a marriageable age, and her parents were already reeling under the tension. With two more sisters behind her, she left the world in her teens. Not far from that village, in one of Yavatmals non-descript villages, the villagers raised a corpus from their own collections to cremate a farmer who snapped his life by consuming pesticide to put an end to an endless streak of indebtedness. It was a village funeral, as its Sarpanch put it. The rituals too were performed from the village collections. There was no sign of the government presence there. At the beginning of this agriculture season, two young farmers committed suicide within months of suicides by their fathers. The sons followed their fathers steps leaving behind two widows in a house. In many other households, widows too have ended themselves, unable to bear the burden of raising the kids, alone. Countless children are dropping out of schools, tens of women are ordained into a world of widowhood left to fend for themselves and their children, hundreds of cattle are sold cheaply to the mushrooming slaughter houses cotton never

burnt with such vehemence in Vidarbha ever. And its flames are now threatening to engulf the paddy cultivating districts in eastern parts and orange orchids too. Amidst all this despair, a section of private moneylenders, government officials, contractors, food merchants and banks had had a grand feast, an endless supper. Their earnings have burgeoned. Land grabs have soared. Cuts in compensation, bounties in contracts, and exploitation of hapless women ubiquitous market and its promoters at the ground zero have exploited the situation with impunity. Ironically, though tragically, the government preferred to stand by the market, not the bullied farmers, all these years. It preferred to announce special packages than to correct the policies. It punished small-time moneylenders than caning the giant loan sharks, who sat sometimes on the treasury benches within the system. It refused to pay a farmer his little legitimate price but gleefully waived hundreds of crores of rupees on excise and other taxes of the corporate industries. It paid for the teeming Metros (here, read Mumbai) wasteful extravagance and vulgar extravaganza, but in a tearing hurry withdrew whatever little the villages enjoyed. In Vidarbhas dusty countryside its for everyone to see festivals are a pass. The village bonds are crumbling. Farmers confidence lays shattered, resilience stands tested and patience is pushed to the brim. Theres no ray of hope, no light. For, even the polity has lost the focus. So has the ebullient media industry. Not that this is an exception. Vidarbha is just one of the broken pearls. It is now happening elsewhere in the agrarian country of ours. As Sainath remarks: This is not the beginning, this isnt the end. So, for the media, it becomes even more a daunting task. Weve to be alert, weve to be on toes, and were to be responsive. As farmers leader Vijay Jawandhia puts it, It is increasingly becoming difficult to farm in an agricultural country like India. Its an irony that food producers are starving, while the purchasers have stocks beyond their consumption limit.

1 - A pearl of broken necklace

Nagpur, the orange city and by far the most developed town of Vidarbha, will soon have an Empress City, its biggest infrastructure project so far. Theres a cotton connection here. The project is eating into a sprawling complex of what was once the regions identity the Empress Mills of the Tatas, which spun fabric out of cotton produced by Vidarbhas many million toiling farmers. The realty has pushed the reality under the veil of glitz and glamour, which is now the artificial face of the modern day India the one that shines only in corporate banquets. As the agrarian crisis plagues the region and push farmers to death, the fall of Empress Mills is just another grim pointer to the far deeper economic tragedy. It was in the early 20th century that Jamshedji Tata started his first industry in the form of Empress Mills. His industrial vision was intrinsically interwoven with the agrarian economy that was basically based on cotton. The Mills were taken over by the state government after the Tatas relinquished the business in the mid eighties, following the onset of new textile policy. The Tatas felt they would not be able to match the changing market dynamics and bequeathed their control to the Maharashtra Government. The state government finally folded up loss-making units in 2003 rendering close to 5000 mill workers jobless. It sold the land at a premium price to pave way for the citys biggest infrastructure project and paid the dues of the workers from the money. The mills are being razed for an IT park, plush apartments, a multiplex, state-of-the-art gymnasium and much more. Vidarbhas handloom sector which had a glorious history and tradition had collapsed and folded up a little before that, in the early eighties, and is now more or less like a museum, being run on a piecemeal budget as a remembrance. Just a decade after Tatas left the city and the mills, cotton crisis had come for a boil in western Vidarbha. Seven of the 11 textile mills in the region folded up by 1995. A couple of cooperative mills are functioning, but just. The cotton-to-cloth dream that this region saw once upon a time is now being given a silent burial.

Life, though, has come full circle for the farmers. Some time in the late 19th century, the same Vidarbha which was then called as Berar saw a surge in the farmers suicides during the great American depression. Its a well documented history that the British rulers pushed cotton in this region because of its black soil which was condusive for the white gold. The Manchester Mills needed cotton, and in view of cheap labour in Vidarbha, it would make an ideal economic option. It did, for at least one decade. But after the restoration of American economy, the cotton produced there flooded the markets and brought about the crash in prices. The farmers in Vidarbha suffered in more than one way, and took the stick. But, the phenomenon that we witness now is certainly more dramatic and tragic than it was in the colonial regime. The British gave more protection to the peasantry than the independent Indias federal government in the open market regime. Vidarbha has undoubtedly earned the dubious distinction of being the suicide country of India, of late. But this ones the region where prosperity flowed in abundance once, without any bar. Its the land of the Bhonsles, whose kingdom extended from south to north-east and covered almost the seven states of modern day India. Its the land of Gonds, the indigenous tribal clan that lies cornered in its own hinterland today, unable to keep pace with the changing world. More than cultural distinctness from the rest of Maharashtra, Vidarbha has evolved historically in a different fashion. Vidarbha figures in many mythological stories such as the marriage of Agatsya and Lopamudra, Rukmini-haran by lord Krishna. Kundinpur, the mythological capital of Vidarbha has been mentioned in the epic Mahabharata. Ramayana has the reference of Vidarbha as one of the Janapadas at that time and Kalidasa's epic poem "Meghdutam" was written, as historians say, at Ramtek, 60 km north of Nagpur. Kalidas mentions Vidarbha as the place of banishment of the Yaksha Gandharva in Meghdutam, they say. What is more, this region appears regularly in childrens popular Chandamama books. Politically, Vidarbha was a part of the erstwhile Central Provinces and Berar till it got ceded to Maharashtra in 1953, though the States Reorganisation Commission had strongly recommended the formation of a separate Vidarbha state. However, the erstwhile political leadership opposed the carving of a new state.

The reason: One-language-one-state. Vidarbha, according to the protagonists of the separate statehood, is still paying for that political hara-kiri by the Congress leadership of the region which surrendered meekly to the national leadership. The western Maharashtra could not have afforded to lose this resource and mineral-rich region, which would breed their interests for years. Administratively, today, Vidarbha is spread over 11 districts, Maharashtras eastern part. Six districts Nagpur, Wardha, Chandrapur, Gadchiroli, Bhandara and Gondia fall in eastern Vidarbha division with headquarter at Nagpur, and five Amravati, Akola, Washim, Buldana and Yavatmal in western, with Amravati as headquarter. The five western districts and one from Nagpur division Wardha comprise the cotton bowl of the region and the suicidecountry. Nearly 80% of its 25-mn people depend on agriculture for living. Nagpur was the capital of the erstwhile Central Provinces and Berar (Vidarbha), which was a state from 1861 until 1950. It became the major constituent of Madhya Pradesh after it was formed in 1950. Nagpur continued to remain the capital of Madhya Pradesh till it Vidarbha was merged into the Bombay State. Nagpur thus lost the status of a capital city. In 1960, under the Nagpur pact, the city became the second capital of Maharashtra. Although the official notification to this effect was only given in 1988, the Indian yearbook of the Government of India still does not mention it either second or the winter capital of Maharashtra. Under the Nagpur pact, one of the preconditions for Vidarbha joining the state of Maharashtra was that, at least one of the legislative sessions every year should be held in Nagpur. This session, held in winter, is supposed to specially deal with Vidarbhas problems. Owing to the lack of seriousness, which the Maharashtra Government attaches to this session it is often referred to as the picnic session. The main cash crops of the region are cotton, oranges and soybean. Traditional crops are sorghum (jowar), pearl miller (Bajra) and rice. Rainfall and water: The region receives over 800 mm of average rainfall annually. And statistics obtained from the Indian Meteorological Department, Nagpur region office, that

the rainfall variation in Vidarbha over the last hundred years has been plus or minus 30%. Which means, in rainfall deficit years, the region still received close to 580 mm rainfall, and in better years, it recorded more than a thousand mm. In that rainfall, you can grow grapes, if the water is harnessed in a planned way. Importantly, Vidarbha enjoys a rare agro-climatic and rainfall synergy. For instance, its eastern five districts Nagpur, Gondia, Bhandara, Gadchiroli and Chandrapur grow paddy on an extremely fertile land, which is a red soil, and these districts receive an average 900 mm of rainfall. Paddy crop requires good amount of water, which is naturally available. But it does want the water to log in the farms, an aspect taken care by the soil type and quality. Yet, this crop needs a shower or two in October, just before the harvest. In view of the erratic rainfall over the region, our forefathers built a strong network of tanks, popularly known here as former Malgujari tanks. These tanks would take care of that need for water in September in the absence of rains in that period of the year. In addition to that, it would give an additional subsistence avenue to the farm labourers through fisheries. For years, this regions over 50,000 such tanks have shrunk to less than 30,000 today, because the government did not maintain these tanks. Yet they provide for a major source of irrigation to hundreds of rice-cultivating villages of Vidarbha. Paradoxically, the western districts Wardha, Amravati, Yavatmal, Washim, Akola and Buldana receive less rainfall, yet it is enough for cotton crop grown over black soil that can hold on the rainwater. These districts have no irrigation whatsoever: just about 3%, as per the government figures. Besides, Vidarbha is bordered by two major river basins Godavari to its SouthEast and Wainganga to its west. A number of tributaries, water bodies and close to 30,000 water tanks places the regions eastern districts at advantageous position over the other regions in the water sector. But the suicides were reported even in the good monsoon years when the yield was good. Also some of farmers ending themselves were from better-irrigated paddy areas of Vidarbha. So the reasons for the deepening crisis are not just limited to lack of irrigation potential, but many other factors, including a shift from agro-economy to industrialization.

India has more land under cotton than any other country in the world, and just about the lowest yields. Vidarbha is worse: 97% of its 14-lakh hectare land under cotton is rainfed (Non Irrigated). And its productivity is meager 146 kg lint per hectare, compared to the national average of 440 kg and 220 kg of the state. Farmers take only one crop. And borrow from moneylenders to dig wells. Akola, Buldana and Washim on the Deccan plateau are more drought-prone and receive less rainfall their average is half the regions average rainfall. A report on the constraints analysis of cotton in India done by the Central Institute for Cotton Research (CICR) shows that the cotton productivity in the region is low and erratic due to the shallow and medium soils and lack of irrigation facilities. Politically, Vidarbha has been a Congress stronghold, but the past decade has seen the BJP-Shiv Sena dominate the politics due to the division of caste votes and the anger of farmers directed against the Congress-led government. Vidarbha has a strong dalit population. Dr B R Ambedkar embraced Buddhism in 1956 at Nagpurs Deekshabhoomi grounds, while the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Indias right-wing organization, was founded here by Dr K B Hedgewar. Mahatma Gandhi spent 13 years of his life at Wardhas Sevagram ashram. Today, lack of industries and other options of livelihoods in western Vidarbha have hit the region and its people. Agriculture that too mono culture cropping comes with increased risks, and low cost local economy is fragile and weak. The regions systems of sustenance have been wrecked. And like many other regions of the country, its awaiting a hand that resurrects it from its current malaise. The number game... Close to four and a half lakh households about two million people in western Vidarbha are in acute crisis, according to Maharashtra Government own door-todoor survey by far the most comprehensive data than any of the studies. And there have been quite a few; almost a dozen, some commissioned by governments and some done by independent inquirers. Another nine and half lakh households, the door to door survey adds, are in moderate crisis. Only three lakh families are not in any crisis. Put in perspective, close to 75% of the 17.64 lakh households in

the 8000-odd villages in six districts growing cotton are in trouble. They are the most suicide-prone households. Nearly a hundred thousand families have people with serious ailments, but cant see a doctor. Nearly three lakh families have the daughters of marriageable age all of them deep in worries over their fate. When the issue hit the headlines and gained significance in political domain, the state government first instituted a study by Tata Institute of Social Sciences, and later by the Indira Gandhi Insititute of Developmental Research (IGIDR), followed by a half a dozen more. None of the studies gave reports to sooth the government. Each report was more critical of the policies, and each pointed to the worsening situation of the rural Vidarbha, especially the cotton growing areas. The suicide figures differ though. Various lists maintained by independent agencies, farmers movements and the government, however, agree to the fact that the suicides by farmers in this are much more than the national average. Take for instance the report by IGIDR: 1Maharashtras suicide mortality rate (SMR, suicide death per 100000 people) has been higher than the all India situation. In 2001, age-adjusted SMR for males was 20.6 in Maharashtra compared to Indias 14.0. Similarly, age-adjusted SMR for females was 12.6 in Maharashtra and 9.5 at the all India level. 2SMR for male farmers in Maharashtra trebled from 17 in 1995 to 53 in 2004. Whereas for the overall population, the age-adjusted SMR for males has stabilized in the range of 20-21 from 2001 and that for females has been declining after 1999. 3Male SMRs have jumped to a higher level around 2000 or 2001 in Amravati, Nagpur and Pune divisions and this is also evident in the selected districts of Wardha, Washim and Yavatmal. 4During 2001-4, age-specific, education wise and marital status wise patterns indicate that SMR for almost each and every sub-group in Amravati and Nagpur divisions and in the selected districts is greater than the corresponding SMR for Maharashtra.

5SMR for male farmers is the highest in Amravati division annual average of 116 for the period 2001-4 and as high as 140 in 2004. Compared to the state average, Aurangabad and Nagpur divisions also show higher SMR for farmers. 6Distribution by method of committing suicide indicates the higher usage of pesticides (34 per cent males and 30 per cent females). It is much higher than the state average in Amravati and Aurangabad divisions and also in the selected districts of Wardha, Washim and Yavatmal. 1The analysis of 111 suicide cases indicates that the deceased were mostly males (91 per cent), currently married (80 per cent), below 50 years of age (71 per cent) and with more than 10 years of experience in farming (58 per cent).

2 The Russian roulette

Indias frontline journalist P Sainath wrote in one of his articles on Vidarbha agrarian crisis: It is a kind of rural Russian roulette. Only there is more than one bullet aimed at the player. Agriculture, as he pointed out, is itself a gamble. Every year, at the onset of monsoon, Vidarbha's farmers get involved in a deadly gamble that concerns the monsoon but goes far beyond it. No one sows till the last minute. Those who purchase seed hold back till they are confidence of rains. Many dont buy inputs for the season. Some cant even decide what they will sow. As Vijay Jawandhia, a farmers' leader in Wardha, says: "Most do not know till the day before whether they will be cotton growers or soybean farmers." The immediate gamble is on the rains. Many farmers in 2004 sowed not once but three times in this region. Like Namdeo Bonde in Kothuda village. He sowed three times; you might even say four," says his brother Pandurang (2005). But the showers only misled him. "He got a little bit with the third sowing. But the costs were killing. By his third try, input dealers were charging 50 per cent to 80 per cent more. And then his crop failed." Sunk in debt, Bonde took his life last November (2004 that is). No one has sown a seed so far in this village of Durga-Vaidya, says Vinayak Gaikwad, a farmer in Buldhana. Gaikwad, a kisan sabha leader, says: "Even when the rains come, people might wait a bit longer to make sure." That is Gamble 2. "Equally," says D.B. Naik farm activist in Bham in Yavatmal "if you buy and sow after the first showers and the rains stop, you're finished." That is what drove Laxman Wankhede of Ejani village to suicide last October. Gamble 3: "Acting late gives you some flexibility," says Gaikwad. "You can decide at the last moment what you will sow. If the rains are bad, you choose what needs less water." With three failed sowings himself last year, he should know.

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"Also, by waiting you can switch from `late' to `early' varieties of seed." `Late' varieties yield more but take much longer, up to six months. `Early' types yield less but are out in under five months. When the rains are late, farmers switch to the `early' type. Gamble 4: "Buying inputs too early means your loan burden is higher," says Suresh Deshmukh in Talegaon village, Yavatmal. "What if the rains come in July? A farmer buying inputs in May pays interest for two extra months." This is a big problem where perhaps 90 per cent of crop loans are from moneylenders. Their interest rates vary from 60 per cent to 120 per cent per annum. Deshmukh's brother Ramesh ended his life last year, crushed by his debt burden. This `flexibility', as many point out, can be a forced one. "I have no money to buy the inputs," says Ranjana, widow of Ramesh Deshmukh. "Who will offer us loans now?" Given her husband's fate, lenders see the family as a high-risk client. "Also," says Suresh, "dealers first attend to cashpaying clients. Those needing credit come much later." Gamble 5: Those who have bought seeds are betting heavily on BT cotton. K.R. Zanzad, quality control inspector at the Agricultural Office, Yavatmal, says: "Last year, 7,000 bags of BT cotton varieties sold in this district. This year - so far - one lakh." At around Rs.1,600-Rs.1,800 a bag of 450 grams, BT cotton costs three times or more what non-BT cotton does. This raises cost per acre massively. In 2006, the BT rates were reduced drastically, yet the gamble on seeds persisited. In Andhra Pradesh next door, BT cotton results have been disastrous. And approval has been cancelled for some varieties. Yet Vidharbha could see 70 per cent or more of farmers opting for BT in despair-driven hope. The risks are enormous. Gamble 6: Buying inputs late could jack up prices as everyone scrambles for seeds and fertilizer at the last moment. Unless, of course, the monsoon fails and there is no demand. Just now, it seems prices will go up. There will also be a last

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minute rush for labour as all seek it at the same time. Many small farmers work on the fields of others as well. But with a late start, all will be tied down to their own plots. That means a rise in cost of labour - and not getting it when you need it. Moreover, the last minute rush for crop loans will push up already high interest rates. So while holding back saves a month of interest, last minute credit comes at higher rates. The banks play no role at all in this. Gamble 7: Striking late deals could well force the farmer to sell his crop to the input dealer at way below the minimum support price (MSP). Last year, suicide victim Ramesh Deshmukh sold his cotton at Rs.1,600 a quintal. The MSP for his type was Rs. 2,300. Gamble 8: "If it rains well today, the farmer just has to buy seeds," says Sanjay Bhagat in Mahagaon tehsil, Yavatmal. Bhagat, a veteran journalist, is also a director on the Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) here. "Those pushing an artificial shortage can then sell at any price." This means many could end up buying spurious seeds. A fast emerging problem in the region. Fake seeds have been linked to several farm suicides across the country. Gamble 9: Late sowing could also expose the crop to higher risks of disease and pest attack. That again feeds into higher costs. "The great gamble is farming itself," says Vijay Jawandia. "This is what policy has done to the farmer. Be it on credit or support price." Some are cracking under the tension. Like young Abhay Shamrao Chavan in Mulawa village, Yavatmal. "The rains were just the last straw," says his brother Vasantrao. "He was in real despair about credit. Yet if it had rained on June 12, he would have been here to tell you about it himself."

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3 - The rising import of 'suicides'

Farmers' leader in Wardha Vijay Jawandhia once remarked: "If I were given a choice, I would like to be born as an European cow, but certainly not as an Indian farmer, in my next birth." There, a cow gets a US $ 2 subsidy per day and enjoys all the comforts. "And here, in India, a farmer is a debtor all his life. Post his death, his son inherits his debts and has to borrow money for his funeral." Jawandhia was summing up the mood sweeping through the farming community particularly in the crisis-ridden Vidarbha. But his sarcastic remark underlines the great paradox that underlines todays distorted global trade, touted by many a leading economist as an answer to all the problems. For many of those who have been singing to the tune of WTO, the Indian farm crisis is still the ugly fallout of "lack of enough reforms", though cotton was and still is the freest commodity of all agriculture items. Their argument is that there are too many government strings attached to the policies; we need to detach them for growth and prosperity of the poor agrarian masses. A close look at the processes that plague agriculture contrasts those claim though. Much before the distress set in, Vidarbha farmers rejoiced in near self-sufficiency on all fronts food, clothes, seeds, fertilizers, festivals, marriages, construction and you name it. Pre-1991, nobody ever heard of farmers taking their own lives, almost never. Veteran farmers and farm leaders in the region confirm this almost unequivocally. Farmers were poor, but they ate enough and were not in debt trap. With international price depressed and production cost increasingly, developed and industrialized nations follow the subsidy or tariff route, or a combination of both, to protect their farmers. India, contrarily, has shunned both these options at the cost of its poor farmers lives. As several economists have said, no country can afford to continue agriculture unless there is a direct state intervention and heavy protection to the farmers in this era. In 1999-2000, for example, eight developed nations had significant subsidy programme that distorted the prices.

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The same holds true for European Union. Its support programme began in 1981 when Greece and Spain joined EUs common agriculture policy (CAP). Together, Spain and Greece accounted for 2.5 per cent of the world production of cotton and six per cent of the world exports in 2001, but a whopping 16 per cent of the world cotton subsidies. If the EU subsidy is removed, the cotton crop will be wiped out from Greece and Spain, says a 2005 Oxfam report on subsidies. China follows a different route. Since it cant match the gigantic subsidies of the US or EU, it gives support to farmers and protection against imports. Chinas subsidy is close to US$ 0.2 per kg. Translated roughly in terms of Vidarbhas productivity (300 kg per hectare), it would stand at US$ 60 per hectare or Rs 3000. But with the productivity of Punjab (about 700 kg per ha), it would mean Rs 6,300. In China, with yields over 1000 kg per ha, it means farmers get close to Rs 9,000 per hectare for their cotton crop just in terms of direct subsidy. It also imposes steep tariff on imports up to 90% compared to global tariffs of 5.3%. In the US too, cotton production has reached historic highs in recent years. However, US demand for cotton has slumped, so US exports have surged. In crop year 2003, the USA exported 76 per cent of its cotton production and took a 41 per cent share of world exports. These drastic increases could not have been accomplished without government support. According to the US Department of Agriculture, without subsidies the average US cotton farmer would have lost $871 for each acre planted with cotton over the past six years. All told, between crop years 1998 and 2002, the USA spent $14.8 billion on cotton subsidies. This is virtually the same as the total value of cotton produced during that time$21.6 billion. Harvesting government subsidies is nearly as lucrative as growing cotton there. Without subsidies, most US cotton production would not be economical. Contrast this with the scenario in India: A briefing paper prepared by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), New Delhi, for its round table discussion on cotton to fabric on July 10, 2006, points out that the Government of India does not give its cotton farmers any direct subsidy. It only buys the crop based on the annually calculated cultivation cost

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through a minimum support price. If the market price is higher, farmers can (except in the case of Maharashtra till recently) sell in the open market. It therefore, offers at best a floor price, but not a subsidy. The only subsidy for agriculture is the annual fertilizer subsidy, which is paid to the manufacturing company and not to the farmers directly. The per capita subsidy has been calculated by officials in the ministry of commerce as averaging to a low Rs 12, mostly because of the trickle down effect of the fertiliser subsidy provided to the manufacturing units. If the number of farmers involved in cotton farming is considered estimates show 60 million depend on cotton for livelihood, then it can be computed on this basis that the government subsidy amounts to a measly Rs 5 crore annually. It is often charged that in addition, the government gives farmers free power used by them to energise their wells, which is a subsidy. But the fact is the government provides this subsidy in the absence of the infrastructure needed for irrigation. Concurrently, the late 1990s saw a spurt in the suicides, and indebt ness grew among cotton farmers of Vidarbha. Largely also because the state governments and the Centre have steadily lifted even a little protection marginal farmers had. Traditionally, India has been a net cotton exporter. But by 1998, the country emerged as a major importer due to policy changes. Imports were liberalized when the Cotton Corporation of Indias (CCIs) import monopoly was terminated in 1991. Now, imports are subject to the open general license (OGL), which allows for unrestricted imports even by the private traders. To attract imports, the duty was initially brought down to zero, but that did not help much since domestic prices were competitive. Imports rose sharply with the decline in world prices. This, invariably, meant, that to compete, Indian cotton farmers had to reduce their prices considerably. The late 1990s saw precise that trend a steep decline in the raw cotton prices. Between 1980 and 1995, says a recent Oxfam report, Indian prices for extra-long staple and short staple cotton lint were 40% and 15%, respectively, below the world price level. A fixed and distorted world price means

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disaster for Vidarbha farmers. For, as Indian government lifts subsidies here, the European and American farmers receive overwhelming direct subsidies. While cotton prices declined by more than 60 percent since 1995, U.S. subsidies to its barely 25,000 cotton farmers reached 3.9 billion dollars in 2001-02, double the level of subsidies in 1992. Interestingly, the value of subsidies provided by American taxpayers to the cotton barons of Texas and elsewhere in 2001 exceeded the market value of cotton output by 30 per cent. To put this figure into perspective, as an Oxfam report puts it, that subsidy was nearly twice the total US foreign aid given to sub-Saharan Africa. It is also more than the combined GDP of Benin, Burkina Faso and Chad, the main cotton producing countries of the sub-Saharan Africa. India too is among the countries worst hit by the rising US subsidies for its own farmers and lifting up of whatever little protection Indian farmers enjoyed. There is no study on the losses India suffered in terms of export earnings due to the depressed world cotton prices. But in one sample, Oxfam estimates that sub-Saharan African countries lost $305 mn due to US subsidies in crop year 2001. There is also dramatic fallout in that the subsidies deepen the poverty in the developing world. An International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) report in 2005 focused on Benin indicates that a 40% reduction in farm-level cotton prices leads to a 21% reduction in income for cotton farmers and results in an increase in rural poverty of 6-7 per cent. Its clear, that major policy shifts and rising imports are bringing about a loss in hard currency to Indian farmers. Despite a fluctuating productivity, farmers like those of Vidarbha are being forced to sell their cotton at much depleted prices than their current costs of production, which do not estimate the interests they pay on the loans from private moneylenders or government institutions. Even in the case of Gujarat, farmers are just able to survive and recover production cost due to low inputs costs. But they stand on the brink with no margin of error. The reasons for the distress therefore are policy-driven; any small natural trigger is enough to do the farmers in. For instance, the Water Resources Regulatory Authority bill passed by the Government of Maharashtra last year: It will place

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irrigation beyond Vidarbha farmers' reach at once, given that it calls for a steep hike in water taxes some thing like Rs 8000 per acre, according to the Prof H M Desarda, economist. In Vidarbha, irrigation is inching towards 20% today. It has more dams under construction than it has rivers, for the past three decades. Suicides by farmers are becoming ubiquitous in this country Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and elsewhere too, peasants are taking their own lives regularly. And those farm deaths are also a part of the larger crisis tearing apart Indias rural economy. Rising production costs, declining prices, inaccessible institutional credit, crashing rural employment rate, slackness in the off and onfarm activities, total shift from food crops to cash crops, weaning of indigenous seed varieties and many more factors are triggering these suicides. Of course, there are very many local spirals as well fuelling the crisis. But, undoubtedly, the lopsided global trade is accelerating not just the suicides but the farm crisis as well. Like Vidarbhas cotton farmers, Andhras and Punjabs cotton cultivators, who follow intensive farming techniques, are also falling prey to the volatility of highly rigged commodity prices. The productivity is rising, with the decline of farmers income. The states are pursuing liberalization on fast track. Former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh Chandrababu Naidu opened almost everything he could lay his hands on from water to procurement centers to power, in his pursuit of becoming the countrys best CEO of a state. His regime saw farm suicides breach all previous records, and migration rate climb up. As Sainath puts it: There are global factors, there are local factors. This agrarian crisis has both the features. Vidarbha is just one of the broken pearls. It is now happening elsewhere in the agrarian country of ours.

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4 Cash crops food-crops

Rupees 5 a kg of seeds to Rs 450 for a packet of 450 gm seeds to Rs 1800 for a 450-gm seed packet, the past decade saw a steep surge in cottonseed prices. It was driven by an unregulated, unaccounted and free-for-all market. But the productivity did not increase, though the seed companies propagated it would. In Vidarbha, where common and personal irrigation is inching barely 20 per cent for cotton area it is, according to the agriculture department, a dismal three per cent a manifold rise in production cost set in with the price recession is juxtaposed with the farmers total dependability on market in last one decade. From total self-reliance to total dependence on markets, it was a rapid downfall for Vidarbha farmers, who once grew pulses and cereals too. Which meant the economics of farming shifted hands. From being in their hands, the economics of farm, choice of seeds and procurement became market-driven, as the government withdrew itself from almost all the sectors supply of seeds to procurement. The malady plaguing the important component in agriculture went unheeded for a long time, destroying the micro and macro, economics of the countryside. Importantly, the hybrid cotton covers about 73% of the area, whereas the local (desi) varieties cover about 27%. Most of these produce medium to medium-long fibre. Area under Bt cotton has risen from a mere 0.4% in 2002-03 to 15% in 2005-06 in Vidarbha, according to the agriculture department statistics. Cotton area has declined from 16.12 lakh ha in 2001 to 12.18 lakh ha in 2005-6, as per the data of agriculture department. Only 3% of it is under irrigation. From 30% in the nineties to less than 3% today, the acreage of cereals like Jowar dwindled fast in Vidarbha. Pulses, which were also prominently grown, are merely reduced to being means for intercropping with cotton. This deceleration was by design. It was accelerated particularly post liberalisation with a shift in the governments many a policy. Its a countrywide phenomenon now with larger ramifications and long-term fallout. The decline in food productivity shows a

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direct link with the governments total migration to export-oriented policies, which push for the cash crops while neglecting food crops. It was a very consciously pursued policy initiative, which took ten years to roll out the crisis. Leading earthworm ecologist, Dr Sultan Ismail, says: In Maharashtra, the people earlier grew millets, but agriculture departments working as extension workers for seed corporations advised them to stop growing millets and start growing soybean, because they would get more money. They went in for soybean. Losses were obvious: The farmers while growing millets got foliage that became fodder for the cattle, which produced dung to make the compost, which in turn, went back to the farmers fields. Now when soya came to the market, the soya oil went to some factory, the soya cake was exported to USA for feeding pigs; the cattle had nothing to eat, the soil had no dung. It started to lose its fertility. The cycle started to work in the wrong way. The need of the hour is to look into the soil aspect of the farms. The concept of soil aeration is of utmost importance. Soil areation is not taken into account by the western education. We forget about the air. The earthworm is one such type of organism that helps in soil aeration. Further, GM crops endanger the soil component and the concept of living soil will vanish in the course of time if such crops are allowed. The need of the integrated approach to organic farming where the whole cycle of life is again rejuvenated. Chairman of the National Commission for Farmers (NCF) and father of the green revolution, Professor M S Swaminathan holds: Increasing privatization of our food and water security systems has important implications for the food, income and work security of small and marginal farmers, and agricultural labourer. The WTO agrrement, entered into at Marrakesh, in 1994 resulted in an unequal trade bargain. The growing privatization of food and water security systems is already leading to an unequal social bargain. The poor will not be able to withstand the tragedy of distress sales and inundation by low-cost foods and fruits from rich countries whose agriculture is driven by heavy inputs of subsidy, capital and technology. The present policy, if continued in the long run, may help some traders and multinational companies to become rich, but will render millions of farm women and men in rainfed areas paupers, warns the agriculture scientist. 30

Yet, the governments have toed the policies promulgated by the US and World Bank that speak of export-led agriculture. Promise was that the Indian farmers would make profits. In reality, they were and are still being robbed. It was a wrong social bargain, as Swaminathan says (The Hindu, Thursday, July 6, 2006) Not for nothing has the per capita food grain production stagnated and dwindled in the past decade. Food crop decline scripted the fodder scarcity for livestock, leading to a large-scale distress sale of the cattle by farmers, thereby bringing about a loss of subsidiary income and other securities such as fuel. The number of slaughterhouses in Vidarbha has increased phenomenally in two years. Today, Vidarbha exports meat to the Middle-East, as India promotes cotton imports. Farmers, feeling a pinching need for cash, have stopped growing cereals and shifted to soybean and cotton. The dependence on market for cereals and pulses even for household consumption has grown, triggering inflation due to mounting demand and declining food production. At the same time, the central policies of abandoning universal Public Distribution System (PDS) to targeted PDS meant a sure disaster for the poorest of poor families. It is all interlocked now. Adds Swaminathan: Global wheat stocks are down this year and the political leadership of the country should decide how to ensure the food security of 1.1 billion children, women, and men in an era where much of the foodgrain stocks will be controlled by national and international grain traders and cartels. Two years ago, India boasted of its mounting foodgrain stocks, while countless millions of her farmers couldnt buy food. At the end of last fiscal, the agriculture employment rate had dwindled below 1%. In a country where 60% (over 600 million) people depend of agriculture for their living, that rate of employment in farm-sector sounds no good. The agriculture spending is about 2.5% of the total GDP; that of the information technology is 14%. Results are not unexpected. As Professor Utsa Patnaik, a leading economist, points out: The average Indian family of four members is absorbing 77kg less of food grains annually than a mere six years ago and since in urban India absorption has risen, it is the rural family which is absorbing much less. This abnormal fall is because of the loss of

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purchasing power for several reasons, and it got reflected in massive building of unsold public food stocks, reaching 63 million tones by July 2002, nearly 40 million tones in excess of the normal food stocks for that time of year, she says. But, the then NDA government got rid of over 17 million tones of food grain by exporting out of stocks with subsidy, and it went mainly to feed European cattle and Japanese pigs. A poor Indian farmer, like in Vidarbha, continued to starve. Dwindling food intake among farmers showed up too. Two years ago, tens of Kolam tribal farming families in western Vidarbhas three districts starved to death. That prompted the Bombay High Court to take note of it and direct the government to supply food free of cost to the starving families. This year 200506, the problem of starvation has been checked in that community, but in others like dalits or backward classes, people are rotating their hunger by observing fast. Why did it happen? Because these marginal tribal farmers gave up growing food crops and shifted to capital intensive cash crops, as an invariable fallout of that past decade of policies. This robbed them of their strong in-built food security, and pushed them in to a vicious debt cycle. Exposed to markets for everything, they were unable to absorb the shocks of capricious neo-economy. Also, the government did not protect the marginal farmers from exploitative mechanisms. But what the declining food crops have done to the food security of the rural poor and the economics of farming is destroy the inbuilt farming systems and expose it to highly volatile and rigged international markets. It has spiraled living costs. And the growth in the acreage of cash crops has seen a surge in production cost, but a drop in earnings. High market volatility brings in high risks. Borrowings from private lending institutions and individuals go up, and the debt cycle sets in. This is what Vidarbha farmers saw in little over last one decade. The cash crop ate in to their food crop, and high market volatility cropped their assured earnings.

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5 Unregulated inputs markets

Who can open an agricultural inputs shop? Kashinath Milmile, a long time and reliable inputs dealer in cotton bowl of Pandharkawda town in Yavatmal district, says almost any one, who knows how to count money thats the only criteria. Gone are the days when an agriculture graduate would get a license to sell seeds and inputs he was also a part of the important extension system. Anybody and everybody can open such a shop, provided theyve got huge capital to roll in to the fiercely competitive market. There is no check, because the vigilance system of the government is fragile and weak. One vigilance officer for a district is like a jewel in ocean. And this officer does not have enough powers to prosecute the errant inputs dealer; he has to take the help of police to prosecute the guilty. Add to it the Maharashtra Governments freeze on recruitment; there are only four vigilance officers for the whole of Vidarbha. So, despite a few legislations in place, there cant be any monitoring of mischief. There is absolutely no deterrence to inputs dealers against selling fake or spurious seeds, fertilizers or pesticides. Also, with the opening of markets in the wake of liberalization, a minimum regulation on inputs market was also lifted by the governments, this to promote fair and square competition among the seeds and fertilizers and pesticide companies. This saw the number of inputs shops in Vidarbha rise at a mushrooming pace. Take, for instance this: In a small town called Mahagaon in Yavatmal district, between 1995 and 2005, these shops rose to 72 from 8. Across the rural pockets of this region, you get pesticide at any remote hamlet, but for a folic acid tabled youve to walk miles to get medicine. As a cumulative effect, the sales of the companies went up, and the inputs dealers became the neo-money lenders in rural parts. The companies credit the material to them, and they in turn lend it to farmers on a monthly interest ranging from two to nine per cent. This gives the dealers an unbridled power to decide what is to be sold and at what price. He is like a doctor prescribing pills. Which pill to

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sell, is largely decided by the percentage he would get in profits. The farmers suffer on both the counts they dont get technological know-how, yet pay more. The onus of selling quality seeds is on the companies, but a farmer suffers if these companies sell spurious or poor quality inputs. It is a joke that the companies themselves label their products as 100% tested and sell them to the farmers. And a farmer has to believe that the inputs he gets are of good quality. If the crop fails, blame it on the nature (drought of all, even in good monsoon season). If it succeeds, take the credit. The manufacturers are not accountable. In the past few years, hundreds of unregistered companies have walked away with roaring profits through direct sales to the farmers in the cotton growing districts of Vidarbha. Evidently though, Vidarbhas case is largely a part of the policy changes at the national level. Today, there are three kinds of producers of seed: Farmers, who have historically bred perennial seed varieties by reproducing themselves; Public Sector institutions, who have bred short term varieties for high yield; and Private Sector companies and Transnational corporations, which produce nonrenewable and thus non-sustainable seeds through hybrids and tissue culture. A farmer has to return to the company for seeds, each time he goes for sowing. The market deregulation saw a shift from indigenous varieties of seeds to the high yielding hybrid varieties scripting a paradigm shift from a farming system controlled by peasants to one controlled by seed corporations and international agricultural research centres. This shift implied that from being a free resource reproduced on the farm, seeds were transformed into a costly input to be purchased. Countries had to take international loans to diffuse the new seeds, and farmers had to take credit from banks to use them. International agricultural centres supplied seeds, which were then reproduced; crossed and multiplied at the national level, explain the farmers leaders and experts. Secondly, industry licensing policy was modified to attract greater participation of Indian companies as well as companies with minority foreign ownership. These policy reforms of the 1980s and 1990s led to lowering of many a legal barrier. It was typically characterised by a rapid growth in the number of

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companies. The MNCs arrived with lucrative job offers and marginalised public R&D centers of the country. Although the research component still persists, this drain has led to the decay of the government-run public breeding programmes. Along with the deterioration of the public sector research, the privatization of the seed sector accelerated the production costs without promising quality yield. And this process has simultaneously endangered local seeds and germplasm. For instance, how does one explain the fact that the countrys premier Central Institute for Cotton Research (CICR) fails to throw even one new seed quality in the last several years, while each private company dishes out at least ten varieties of seeds in one year? Its cant be a coincidence. Its result of a larger policies. As Vandana Shiva tells us: The Indian seed industry is undergoing a period of rapid change inaugurated by the economic liberalisation of the past decade. The World Banks structural adjustment programmes of the 1990s and the coming into force of the WTO agreements on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs), the New Seed Policy lifted restrictions on private sector import of foreign germplasm enabling larger seed producers, particularly those with foreign collaborations, to access seeds from international sources. This is because the Indian seed sector is worth around US $ 2 billion. While the public sector market share is reducing, that of the public sector is growing steadily.

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6 Chor Bt aur Bt Chor

Between 2002 and 2005, Vidarbha saw a steep rise in the land acreage under Bt (or genetically engineered) cotton, at the cost of last-remaining traditional and hybrid varieties of seeds. Desperate farmers, deep in debt, believed the Bt seeds would increase their yield multifold. And reduce their pesticide applications. But, it did not happen that way. For, one, the companies claims were untrue and two, Bt was and still is disastrous for un-irrigated Vidarbha farms. Besides, the onset on such a sophisticated technology coincided with the collapse of the much-important extension network of government and agriculture universities. As several study reports say, among the priorities for the government should be the resurrection and reinvigoration of the agriculture extension machinery. The push for Bt pushed the production cost upwards sharply. The yields did not increase. The cotton prices, on the other hand, fell, even as the state government withdrew the advance bonus that it offered to the cotton cultivators through the unique Maharashtra-specific monopoly cotton procurement scheme (MCPS). For a technology yet to be tested and tried, farmers paid a whopping royalty that went in to the pockets of a multinational corporation. Last year global shark Monsanto charged Rs 1350 royalty on every 450-gm packet of seeds that cost Rs 1800. With the government and high court intervention, the rates have been slashed to Rs 750 a packet his year. Without any resistance the Monsanto was ready to reduce its royalty, because by now the game has shifted to the Bollguard II variety, a supposedly better Bt variety. There were no questions asked for the failure of the earlier varieties. Vidarbha farmers paid a huge price though, and many of them did so with their lives. Even as the MNCs merrily made money, the state government aided them in all aspects in policies and in the marketing. Vijay Jawandhia points to the coercive design of the multinationals in pushing the Bt gene in the existing hybrid varieties some 400-odd already sown in the country. Those hybrids were first pushed on the pretext of increasing staple

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length and quality of cotton, the objectives that have eluded the farmers. The private companies have minted money, without giving desired results neither the staple length increased, nor the productivity. Farmers paid heavily though. American cotton Gossypium hirsutum and its hybrid varieties today cover 70 per cent of the cultivated area in India. Only 20-30 per cent of the area is under the Indian cotton, Gossypium herbaceum and Gossypium arboreum -- a species limited to India only and commonly called desi varieties.1 There is another species grown in India G. barbadense that is a tetraploid like G hirsutum. Roughly 50 per cent of the cotton growing area in India is under hybrid cotton (mostly inter-species hirusutum hybrid) and the rest is under open pollinated varieties. India is one of the very few countries growing hybrid cotton others being Vietnam and China, the latter recently entered into the hybrid research on a limited scale. The US does not grow hybrid cotton. The cottonseed determines the key parameters of the output staple length, strength and productivity. In India, seed research has by and large concentrated on developing hybrid varieties of the naturally long-staple American cotton. As a result, India has been at the forefront of hydrid cotton research in the world. We have produced the first ever-tetraploid cotton hybrid H4 (in the year 1970), first ever budded cotton G. Cot. 101 (1974), first ever released diploid cotton hybrid G.Cot.DH7 (1985) and first ever long staple deshi cotton hybrid G.Cot.DH9 (1988). Even at the advent of Bt cotton we have been amongst first and only countries to use hybrid Bt cotton. However, despite many firsts, our productivity is amongst the lowest in the world. This indicates there is something wrong in the directions of our research, says a paper circulated by CSE. Many experts argue that a key concern is our over-dependence on American cotton as a source of varietal research. The area under American varieties has increased from a mere three per cent at the time of partition to almost 70 per cent today. Though American varieties have higher productivity, it is increasingly found that its cultivation is not sustainable in India. Vidarbha is a great example.
1

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Since American cotton is not suitable for Indian situations as a matter of agroclimatic incompatibility, it leads to frequent crop failures. It has brought numerous diseases, including the notorious American bollworm. It also requires at least three times more water and other inputs and its yield plummets after three years, unlike Indian cotton, which gives the same level of yield for 30 years. Although not suitable for Indian conditions, the long staple American cotton is popular because machines to gin and spin Indian cotton are not readily available. The second issue is the research concentration on hybrids. The problem is that hybrids do not give consistent yield after one year. In US, Australia and China among the three top cotton-yielding countries in the world the focus of research has been to develop seeds on improved varieties and have by and large shunned hybrids. In recent years, there has been new and promising research on desi cotton varities. Scientists in India have found that these varieties outperform the hirsutum varieties by a margin of 35-50 per cent and are particularly suited to water-scarce conditions. The Bt technology in these seeds would be ideal. According to a report of the National Commission on Farmers (NCF), these varieties have good fibre quality, which is comparable in all respects to a leading hybrid variety. The farmers using them have done huge savings on the cost of cultivation and have done multi-cropping. But the report points out: In spite of outstanding performance of new desi varieties, their commercial popularization has been extremely poor. The Indian cottonseed industry in built on selling hybrids. Therefore, while the seed industry can meet the hybrid demands, it is not able to supply farmers with cotton varieties. The NCF report says that the gap is substantial and that the availability of cotton varieties is limited to about 80,000 to 90,000 quintals against the requirement of 0.42 million quintals. Information from the seed industry reveals that over 70 companies market more than 550 hybrids. It is estimated that cottonseed is marketed completely by private seed sector with a negligible share of the public sector seed companies. Cotton and vegetable seeds are the most prized possessions of private seed industry, because this is a cash crop and government seed companies dont market it. Even during 1970 cotton 70 per cent of the cotton seeds were sold by

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private companies today its more than 90 per cent. Indias largest seed company Mahyco was instrumental in the growth of cottonseed industry in India. This private sector dominance has shaped the research in cotton. Now its Bt gene: Many experts say the onset of Bt technology does not augur well for the Indian farmers. It would only lead to the monopolization of the seeds market. As Hope Shand, RAFI, USA puts it: Twenty years ago there were thousands of seed companies, most of which were small and family owned. Today the top ten global seed companies control one third of the 23 billion dollar of the commercial seed trade. Twenty years ago there were about 65 agrochemical companies involved in the manufacture of crop chemicals. Today, the top ten pesticides manufacturers account for over 90% of the global market. Twenty years ago the top twenty pharmaceuticals corporations controlled about 5% of the world pharmaceutical market. Today the top ten account for over the 44% of total sales. And today the top ten firms hold the 61% of the animal veterinary market. If you look at the dominant companies, all of these different sectors in plant breeding, pesticide, veterinary medicine and pharmaceuticals, you find the same companies dominate in all sectors. And these are the gene giants and they include the world largest agrochemical and pharmaceutical corporations. In the field of genetic engineering of agriculture, there are essentially five corporations that dominate globally. These are Syngenta, Aventis, Monsanto, Dupont and Dow. Genetic engineering in agriculture is being seen as economically viable option for hybrid agriculture of green revolution. Its proponents advocate the merits of this technology and the benefits. But its development is not easy. So far, given the huge investment requirements, only private sector companies in the world are developing genetically engineered crops. Which makes it out of public domain. As activist Vandana Shiva tells us: In addition to the encouragement of foreign capital inflows, liberalization overtly courts the transfer of new technologies from industrialised countries. It is anticipated that imports of new technology will precede the diffusion and assimilation of these by domestic industries, boosting international competitiveness in the global marketplace.

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However, such transfer cannot be expected to occur on the basis of deregulation of technology import alone. State intervention to nurture domestic research and development projects may also be needed. According to Bhaduri and Nayyur, the assumption, strongly advocated by the government, that direct foreign investment will transfer technology automatically, is both simplistic and dangerous. They claim it is clear that market structures and government policies have not combined to provide an environment that would encourage the absorption of imported technology, or create a milieu that would be conducive to diffusion and innovation. Biotechnology development of new transgenic crop varieties in India relies heavily upon western technology and investment. Development proceeds, either through branches of transnational companies or a marriage of convenience between western biotechnology firms and national seed companies. In 1998, private seed company Mahyco in collaboration with Monsanto started the first open field trial of Bt cotton with the intention of commercializing it in India. In the process all the rules and regulations of transgenic trials have been taken over by this corporate venture. Concerned government departments were also not serious on the implications. The department of Biotechnology provided the clearances and the field trials were given green signal. For the field trials Mahyco contacted the individual farmers based on prior acquaintances. But ironically, much of the propaganda to sell this new miracle was steered by companies using farmers suicides in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Punjab and other states of India as the garb. The excessive use of pesticides in these states was related to the vulnerability of the hybrid seeds. Bt cotton, for instance, is being offered by Monsanto, the leading US based Agricultural Biotechnology Company as a miracle to end the use of hazardous pesticides to save the cotton crop from American bollworm attack, and to increase the yield. The primary justification for the genetic engineering of Bt into crops is that this will reduce the use of insecticides. One of the Monsanto brochures had a picture of a few worms and stated, You will see these in your cotton and thats O.K.

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Dont spray. However, in Texas, Monsanto faces a lawsuit filed by 25 farmers over Bt. cotton planted on 18,000 acres which suffered cotton boll worm damage and on which farmers had to use pesticides in spite of corporate propaganda that genetic engineering meant an end to the pesticide era. In 1996, 2 million acres in the US were planted with Monsantos Bt. transgenic cotton called Bollgard, which had genes from the bacteria called Bacillus Thuringensis (Bt). The genetically engineered cotton generates a natural toxin to kill caterpillars of their pest: cotton bollworm, tobacco budworm and pink bollworm. However, cotton bollworms were found to have infested thousands of acres planted with the new breed of cotton in Texas. Not only did the genetically engineered cotton not survive cotton bollworm attack, there are also fears that the strategy will create super bugs by inducing Bt - resistance in pests. In Vidarbha too, field experiences show that the use of Bt did not bring down the applications of pesticides and chemicals. The pest attacks were even more severe. Last year, those who used Bt were devastated. For their cost of production went up phenomenally. Bt technology is not free of cost to the farmers. It has been observed that the performance of Bt cotton is not always profitable even in much better irrigated countries, leave aside the rainfed agricultural lands of Vidarbha. According to a study by Sutton (1998) it was not profitable to grow Bt cotton in Arkansas (USA) during 1997. The study involved two similar fields on the same farm at seven locations for comparing cost of production and net returns from Bt versus non-Bt cotton varieties. The study noted that the differences between the Bt and non-Bt fields were in the area of technology fees, cost of insecticides and their application, growth regulators and second harvest costs. In most Bt fields, the additional cost of seed, the necessity of using plant growth regulators, the technology fee and the need to make second pick were responsible for higher cost of production. The total cost for Bt crop exceeds on an average fifty percent more to that of non-Bt crop, according to the studies and field-level experiences. In Vidarbha though, the area under Bt crop is on the rise. Last year 2005-06 agricultural season, Bt cotton was sown on 171,048 acres of land, up from 26,069

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acres of land the previous year. From 65,400 packets of Bt seeds sold that year, the companies upped their sales to 427,675 packets in Vidarbha last year, this as per a note prepared by the divisional joint director of agriculture, Nagpur. For every packet of Bt-cotton, three packets of spurious Bt or non-royalty Bt were sold to the farmers across the region, according to independent study groups. A report submitted to Government of India by the commissioner of Agriculture, Maharashtra, regarding performance of Bt cotton says the yield has been on the decline over the past three years. And there is not much difference between the productivity of Bt and non-Bt hybrid seeds. Vidarbhas average yield is 2 quintals per acre. Given even a 30% rise, the yield wont touch 3 acres. But the cost of production is at least twice that of the hybrid cotton. Experts warn that the introduction of genetically modified crops will escalate the cost of cultivation with the increase in added costs on seed, technology fees and use of chemicals. The Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar was also on records to state that the use of Bt in Vidarbhas rainfed conditions was not advisable. Yet the policies of his own government in Maharashtra push for the use of Bt, for odd reasons.

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7 The rise of moneylender

When the Democratic Front Government in Maharashtra found itself in the dock over farmers suicide issue in December 2005, it needed a character to put the entire blame on. Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister R R Patil found one in that all pervasive character called moneylender. Skin him alive, was the Patils order to his policemen. Soon, hundreds of so-called lenders were behind the bars, many of them were small time lenders, even marginal farmers, or petty workers, who had lent some money to the farmers instead of keeping them safe with the banks. They came out of the jail as fast as they were put inside. The police could not run cases against any of them; alas it was just a stunt by the government to buy time. In a few instances of vigilante justice, villagers killed the so-called moneylenders. Like the one in Akola village of Dadham, where angry farmers lynched a usurious moneylender after he asked one of his debtors to send his wife to him at night. In the same district, a Shiv Sena legislator is running a beat moneylender, save farmer campaign. But the MLA has never questioned the policies that starve the farmers of institutional credit in the first place. His and his partys argument was and is that moneylenders are forcing the farmers to commit suicide. This has given an easy leeway to the governments, instead of putting them on the mat. Yet, the fact remains that the spate of suicides by farmers continues. And growing indebtedness among farmers of the region is one of the major reasons for rural distress and distress-driven suicides. Its a countrywide phenomenon though. Mounting debts are an important cause for farmers desperation. The National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) in its 59th round (January-December 2003) of the situational assessment of farmers indebtednesses in the country estimated that 60.4 per cent of rural households were farmer households of them 48.6 per cent were indebted. The incidence of indebtedness was highest in Andhra Pradesh (82 per cent), followed by Tamil Nadu (74.5 per cent), Punjab (65.4 per

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cent), Kerala (64.4 per cent), Karnataka (61.6 per cent) and Maharashtra (54.8 per cent). In distress-ridden Vidarbha, particularly, it would be even more. Not surprising the survey finds that farmers took loans for farming current expenditures and capital expenditures. At all-India level, out of every Rs 1000 taken as loan, Rs 584 had been borrowed for these two purposes taken together. Marriages expenses, health and education needs came next. But what is even more important is the fact that farmers borrowed heavily from the professional moneylender. The survey found that at all-India level, on an average, 29 out of 100 indebted households borrowed from professional agricultural moneylenders. The highest incidence was in Andhra Pradesh (57 out of 100 indebted households), followed by Tamil Nadu (52 out of 100 indebted households). The NSSO report also mentions that the incidence of loans from co-operative societies was highest in Maharashtra (61% of the indebted households). Thus the issue of rural credit and indebtedness is far from being a simplistic usurious lender-farmer spiral. It is about much more than that. It is about antifarmer policies pursued by the Indian government for the past 15 years now. It is also about lack of access for them to credit. Its easier to buy a Maruti car in India than seeds. Also, you buy a car at 6% interest, while crop loans, till last year, could be availed at an interest ranging between 13 and 16 per cent. The availability and the utilization of the agriculture credit are under severe strain, with an estimated gap of 50% in agriculture requirements for the credit. There appears to be a shift of the credit availability to urban areas. Even the strong network of cooperative banks is under severe strain in Maharashtra. Today, in Vidarbha, desperate farmers are taking desperate measures to get cash for almost every single function of theirs from farming to marriages to buying monthly ration, every thing depends on how much money they get from markets. In Akola, for instance, a chit-fund-like trend called Bhisi is being played big time and gullible farmers have run in to huge collective debts as well. In Yavatmal, a class of neo-moneylenders the inputs dealer, governments revenue officials

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and even primary and secondary school teachers has emerged. These are lethal sahucars, more brutal than the traditional Shylockian landlord of the village. All the 11 districts of Vidarbha have a good banking network consisting of 823 commercial banks, about 200 regional rural banks and close to 60 other banks, according to RBI records. The direct finances to agriculture are Rs 2449.76 crore as on March 31, 2005. However, 80% farmers are defaulters, meaning they are not eligible for fresh loans, which makes access to institutional credit for them difficult. As Planning Commissions fact-finding mission members found out that nearly 2.8 million of the 3.2 million cotton farmers in Vidarbha are defaulters. So of every Rs 100 they borrow, approximately Rs 80 go in to servicing of old loans. The team found that the current outflow of credit was miserably insufficient. Also unless the existing loan burden on farmer is eased, he wont get fresh loans. The timing too is important. If a farmer doesnt get loan in time, he opts for private lending. To fill the gap between availability and need, the farmers take loans from private moneylenders, who then clearly gain from any profit in agriculture. Take the case of one Vidarbha district of Washim. According to the Planning Commissions fact-finding committee, a total of Rs 85.41 crore worth of loans were disbursed to 49,000 farmers in the district, which was a little over 50% of their total requirement of Rs 150 crore. Nearly 45% farmers were still out of that net, meaning they had no access to the credit. Of even that loan, much of the money would come back to the banks for servicing of outstanding loan. In that district, the study shows, the gap of Rs 75 crore between credit needed and credit available from institutional sources is then filled from private sources illegal moneylenders, who lend close to Rs 30 crore, inputs dealers who give a credit of Rs 21.5 crore, grain merchants with a credit outlay of Rs 10.7 crore and other sources pay Rs 10.2 crore in credit. The informal credit sources charge whopping interest on the principal sum, the study found out. It appears that a large number of farmers are out of the formal credit system, that study report mentions. Over the years, the three-tier structure of disbursement of loans to the farmers has proved detrimental. NABARD gives crop finance through state cooperative bank at the rate of 5.75%; the state cooperative bank lends it to the district 45

cooperative banks at 6.75%, and they in turn lend this money to the primary agriculture cooperative societies at 8.75%, who levy an additional interest of 3% on it to give the loans to farmers at 11.75%. If we consider deduction of shares the final rate of interest to the borrowers comes to a whopping 13%. Today all the primary agriculture cooperative societies are suffering from heavy losses. The default scenario in loan recovery of these societies, for instance in Washim, is dismal: As many as 228 primary agriculture cooperative societies out of a total of 423 societies have an accumulated losses of Rs 98 crore. The fact-finding committees report shows only 71 societies have been able to maintain a healthy recovery of above 50%, 151 of them have a recovery rate of between 30 and 50%, while a majority 201 of them have a dismal recovery rate of less than 30%. The neo-moneylenders rose as Vidarbhas farmers bit the dust and became indebted. Small time unregistered companies popped up, spreading their noose around the farmers, deep in debt and desperate for cash. Public representatives, far from being peoples saviors, are in the same bandwagon. A congress MLA from Khamgaon in Amravati built his empire on farmers sweat. He is among the top ten moneylenders of the region, facing nearly 40 pending criminal cases. Dilip Sananda, who hit the headlines on the eve of the Prime Ministerial visit to this region, has been among the biggest land grabbers of Vidarbha, levying a hefty interest on loans to marginal and sub-marginal farmers in his own constituency. Farmers choose this option to cooperative loans, which also come with heavy interest and are marred with red-tapism and unsolicited corruption. Today, mortgages are out; land grab is in. Farmers are alienated from land. Some of them have even become slaves to their creditors, working like the beasts of burden. There are reports that creditors have even molested women and girls. But there are deep-rooted factors for the dawn and dominance of this neo-lender, who has become so indispensable, that cotton farmers complained against the state governments fatwa saying punishing moneylenders is like punishing the farmers. Who will give us credit now? is the question being asked by hundreds of cotton farmers across Vidarbha. In the absence of institutional credit, farmers

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have no option but to turn to private creditors. This rise of moneylenders is a part of an emerging phenomenon of corporate feudalism aided by the governments. Take this: Withdrawal of low interest credit has been a key element of the World Bank led economic reforms. As cooperatives and rural banks close down, and public sector banks are privatized relentlessly, rural credit dries up and farmers are pushed into borrowing from moneylenders. The failure of the private sector in Indian banking was what had ushered in the nationalisation of banks in the late sixties. The pre-nationalisation period witnessed the growth of a banking system, which, driven by profits, could not cater to the development needs of the nation with virtual inaccessibility to credit for the vast rural and poor population. Lending policies were turned to the advantage of industrialists with banks being under the control of industrial chairmen. A few communities, enjoying political clout, are controlling the rural banking systems. In the sixties, the nationalisation of banks was followed by a sharp increase in the number of bank branches. Consequently employment shot up. Further, banking policies were tuned more to cater to the development needs of the nation as priority sector lending took headway over profit driven lending. Protecting the poor from the clutches of unscrupulous money lenders, the nationalisation of banks had succeeded in building up the productive base of regions and areas which would have otherwise remained neglected, through a number of projects and programmes targeted particularly at women and other weaker sections of society. The opening up of the banking sector to competition from domestic private and foreign banks has been accompanied by a reversal in the above trends. For instance, there has been a fall in the proportion of credit received by the household sector, which had earlier received relatively larger share of bank credit. Further, the incremental expansion during the post-reform period for the household sector has not only been the smallest during the post reform period but also smaller than the expansion in favour of corporate enterprises. Similarly, the financial assistance sanctioned by the all-India financial institutions suggests that while disbursements of Development Financial Institutions (DFIs) generally assisting large scale industries expanded by 197 per cent between 1990-91 and 47

1994-95, those of DFIs assisting small scale and medium industries have risen by 62 per cent only (Shetty, Alternative Economic Survey, 1996, quoted by Vandana Shiva in Seeds of Suicide, 2005). The area and group wise classification of banks shows the concentration of foreign banks in metropolitan areas and a complete absence of foreign banks in the rural areas, while private banks are mostly concentrated in the semi-urban areas. In the event of the nationalised banks giving way to private participants, it wouldnt be long before the rural areas are isolated from the financial scene. These trends are but suggestive of a return to the pre-nationalisation era that had doomed to be a failure. Even today, banks are refusing to give farmers enough credit, because they are not sure if they would be able to repay the loans, this despite the Prime Ministers intervention into the issue. The government has asked the banks to give farmers the credit, but that is of no use, until the government gives them a guarantee against defaults. Rising input prices, declining income: A farmer in Waifad village in Wardha district informed me during one of my visits that his production cost had risen sharply to over 100% in the last five years, but his incomes have steadily dwindled. Today, hes unable to recover even the production cost. Thats largely due to the stagnated prices of commodities, and a heavily rigged international market that is integrated with local markets in the post-globalisation era. There is not enough protection to the farmers from the international market volatility, in terms of commensurate import duties etc. This glut now plagues Soybean, since this was the crop the farmers diversified in to when cotton prices fell. Indebtedness among farmers here grew as production costs surpassed the incomes, which was in term fuelled by lack of access to cheap and timely credit from the governmental institutions. It paved way for the private moneylending systems to set in, despite the fact these are high exploitative. A report of the fact-finding mission of the Planning commission says the cost of production for per quintal of cotton is Rs 2215, whereas the Minimum Support Price is Rs 1990. The MSP for soybean is RS 1000, and it requires Rs 885 to grow one quintal of soybean. Even in case of Jowar, the MSP of Rs 515 is lower that the production cost of Rs 629 per quintal. These production costs may in reality be 48

much more than the estimation of the mission, since many hidden costs havent been included in it. For instance, the interest on the credit goes in to production cost, but the mission has not included it for the estimation of cost in its report. Actually, while the inputs costs rose sharply during the last decade, the minimum support prices of the Centre have been kept more or less the same, this in a deliberate effort to keep the prices of raw materials cheap for the industries. The un-remunerative prices are fallout of the rigid policies of the Centre. These prices have not been revised for many years now, forget any increase in them. The private moneylenders who have made heavy profits in Vidarbha are mostly inputs dealers or shop owners. In each village there exist at least five such krishi kendras. The shop owners and dealers get their supply of the stock from pesticide companies on credit. So there exists a chain of credit system, and the shop owners are only the mediators. In reality the farmers indirectly get the credit from the company itself. The interest rate varies from 36 to 60 percent per annum. Since the chemicals are easily available on credit, the farmers have no hesitation in using it at short intervals, usually once a week and at a higher intensity. There is no government agency to finance the farmers and bank loans are negligible. This has forced farmers to approach the private moneylenders. As a report prepared by the Tata Institute of Social Studies (TISS) on Vidarbha situation tells us: Past years of drought and crop failure led to increased burden of debt. In some cases, families invested in construction of wells for irrigation, for which they needed to borrow; in almost all cases, the money came from private moneylenders. It did not matter if the household owned little or more land, if they came from higher or lower caste, were educated or illiterate. They shared a common distress.

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8 Monopoly mess

The Maharashtra State Cooperative Cotton Growers Marketing Federation was originally setup to procure cotton from growers at reasonable prices and sell it to mills and traders. The idea was to develop cotton-to-cloth infrastructure and benefit the growers from its profit. Instead, with government policies not helping, it first trapped itself and then cotton farmers in a vicious cycle of debt and losses. Until 2002, Maharashtra was the only state in the country with a state run monopoly scheme to procure cotton from the farmers. The Federation, which is a state government venture, purchased cotton from farmers at guaranteed price, over the market rates, and then sold it in the open market to the mills and traders. But throughout its existence, it never had a farmers representative. The scheme ran well till mid-nineties. Farmers did not make big profits then, but were at least assured of returns that did not fluctuate. But mal-administration and rampant corruption saw the Federation sink in huge debt, and the state government never bothered to set the things right. The Federation also became a coterie of political leaders who had failed to get a cabinet berth. The scheme ran well because it was managed well till the early nineties. The federation first bought cotton at the Minimum Support Prices and after the business distributed profits equitably among farmers around April-May as Advance Bonus. This small but timely money helped farmers buy inputs at the onset on the season. The debts never piled up and the vicious cycle did not engulf them. It was before the crucial 1994 elections that it all started. The then chief minister of Maharashtra Sharad Pawar was staring at a sweeping loss to the Shiv Sena-BJP combine in Maharashtra. In a last-ditch effort, he integrated the advance bonus and MSP to give the farmers a Minimum Guaranteed Price, profit or no profit, in a bid to woo them into the folds of the Congress. This political price rise made the farmers happy in a short run, but in the longer run, it has completely devastated them. Around the same time 1994 as the world cotton prices began fluctuating in the wake of liberalized markets, the Federation wanted to procure cotton at cheap 50

prices. The manipulation in gradation of cotton varieties began. Even the quality cotton was graded in as low variety yield and priced accordingly. Also around the same time, a huge influx of cotton imports led to the Federation beginning to incur losses, since it could not resell its procurement at higher prices. It was the season of 1995-96 that spelt the first signs of doom for farmers. The Federation, already in losses, failed to make timely payments to the growers. The BJP-Sena government had raised the Federations procurement price to Rs 2,100 that year from Rs 1,700 per quintal, to woo a constituency that was hitherto a Congress stronghold. The Federation had no say in the governments decision. In Maharashtra, till 2004-05, cotton was procured from farmers between Rs 1700 and Rs 2500 per quintal depending upon the variety. Vidarbha grows a variety that fetched an average of Rs 2,100 per quintal. (One quintal = 100 kg) On the one hand, it defaulted in paying dues to farmers, and on the other it ran into financial doldrums. Without cash in hand, farmers took the stick the hard way. Year after year through nineties fertilizer and seed prices doubled up. Costly hybrid seed varieties flooded the market, virtually riding on the governments dictates. Farmers were forced to take loans from private moneylenders to fill the gap between the need and availability from the banks and institutions for the following agriculture seasons at whopping interest rates. The debt trap spread. The central governments policies hurt farmers here too. For instance, while the sugar import duty steadily rose to over a hundred per cent, the duty on cotton remained ten per cent. In 1997, local markets crashed for the first time. That was also the year when Vidarbha cotton countryside first heard of farmers suicides. As the crisis was unfolding, unregulated seeds and fertilizers penetrated remote villages. In the 2003-04 fiscal year, the state government discontinued the procurement monopoly and opened it up, with the Federation still remaining a player. This was also the year when cotton produce plummeted in Australia and the United States, driving up demand for Indian cotton. International prices for cotton were good. With procurement now opened up, traders in Vidarbha procured cotton from farmers directly at Rs 2800 to Rs 3200 per quintal in 2003

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and sold it at much higher prices in the international markets. Even the Cotton Corporation of India had opened the procurement centres in Vidarbha. But traders also made further merry of the situation. Many traders had become moneylenders to the farmers by then. Input dealers-turned moneylenders milked the farmers for cotton against recovery of loans. The state-run Federation could have also bought from the farmers to make up for its own losses. But it managed to procure only 3200 quintals of cotton in 2003-4 as against an annual average of 200,000 lakh quintals. Why? The key reason was that private traders offered a higher price to the farmers that year, and two, traders made a one-time payment, unlike the Federation. Also, traders purchased cotton at farmers' doorsteps thereby saving transportation costs of farmers. To sell to the Federation, farmers had to bear the transportation costs on their own. In the 2004-5 agriculture season, things went the other way. International prices declined drastically. Also, delayed rainfall in Maharashtra resulted in the first two sowings (June-July 2004) in some districts failing. Vidarbha's cotton yield, usually expected in November, declined considerably. But the Federation wrongly claimed in the first week of December 2004 that there had been a bumper crop in the state. (Produce usually reaches markets in December after plucking.) The Federation's statement was enough to bring about a price crash in the local procurement markets dominated by private buyers and emerging moneylenders. Private traders offered a mere Rs 1500-1700 per quintal to the cotton growers. The Federation however was one of the competent buyers in the open market last year too. At the dictate of the state government, it announced the minimum guaranteed price of Rs 2500 per quintal for the best variety of cotton. The state government said it had made it mandatory for any buyer (traders included) to procure cotton at a price not less than the minimum guaranteed price. Ironically, as Kishor Tiwari of the Vidarbha Jan-Andolan Samiti tells us, "The traders never follow the rules, and there's no mechanism with the government to ensure that they give minimum guaranteed price to farmers."

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There were two options for the farmers who had cotton to sell. To sell to private buyers at the rates fixed by them for a one-time payment or to sell the produce to the Federation and wait endlessly for it to pay the money. Many farmers preferred the first option. They got the cash immediately and as in 2003 they also settled, in several cases, the loans with their buyers, who were also their lenders. But more was to transpire. Even as its statement about bumper crop enabled local traders to buy cotton at low prices, its own offer of a higher MSP, triggered a flow of cotton towards it. Private traders under the garb of local farmers and other farmers made a beeline outside the Federations centers. Traders sold cotton to the Federation at profits. And to sell to the Federation, they misused the green cards of the cotton growers. The farmers naturally prefer cash in one installment. They sell their cotton to the traders, who then cart it to the procurement centres, bribe the graders so that they certify the yield as the best variety, and pocket the huge commission. A trader earns a minimum Rs 400 for every quintal of cotton sold. Its a whopping income. Going by the average procurement, a few traders would make a minimum Rs 8 crore, just in commission, explains Kishor Tiwari. And more. The Federations price offer was also much more than the prices in Andhra or Gujarat that year (2003-04). Even the rate of Rs 2100 for an average quality grown in Vidarbha was more than procurement prices in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh or Gujarat. The farmers of those states transported their produce in Maharashtra. Outstation farmers also tied up with the local farmers. They also used the green cards of the locals to channel the produce in to the Federation procurement centres. The payments were delayed. And the Federation paid the money in three installments over one year. For its part, the state government promised to make financial arrangements for the Federation. Originally setup for the benefit of the state's cotton farmers, the Federation thus had trapped itself and farmers in a vicious cycle by 2003-04. First by delaying and then defaulting on cotton payments. This forced the farmers to go for private loans. Later, indebted and cash-strapped, they sold their produce to the private

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lenders at low prices for quick cash and more loans; the loss riddled Federation's continually poor payment cycles do not help. The traders themselves then sell back the cotton to the Federation illegally. In the meantime, the Federation is in need of bailouts from the government, which traders know will come. Capital formation fund: The Federation began deducting 3% of money from payments to cotton growers since the monopoly scheme began. That deduction was for building a corpus to build an infrastructure for ginning, pressing and manufacturing of yarn from the farmers money, through a chain of cooperatives. The farmers would own all the mills in that way. But this money was plundered by the political heavyweights. In the garb of staring mills, they siphoned that money off. Mills and the dreams they weaved for the farmers never saw the light of the day. But that federation kept on cutting that fund from the payments, until Shetkari Sanghatna protested against the loot and asked the government to stop the cuts due to its futility. The Sharad Pawar-government stopped that practice in 1994. But over Rs 700 crore of the farmers money lay with the federation. The government returned it this year 2005-6 after having announced a package of Rs 1075 crore. The Rs 750 croresop was nothing but farmers own money towards capital formation fund and price fluctuation fund. The federation gave up this corpus at the behest of the state government. But there was a clich. In that, this money went more to the third party sellers, who sold cotton to federation after first procuring it from the cultivators. A few green card holders, who did not route their cotton through the traders, could get some money back. But that chunk was miniscule. The indebted farmers always sold their cotton through traders to skip the cooperative banks, who would otherwise deduct their loans from the cotton payments directly. The system worked in a way that was detrimental to a farmer. In bad season, hed suffer losses. In good season, his profits would go into repayment of loans. In 2004, Maharashtra went in to elections and the incumbent Democratic Front government offered several freebies to farmers. But cotton growers in Vidarbha saw their problems only worsen after. None of the political parties seemed interested in a real way out. 54

Just before the 2004 elections in Maharashtra, Sena Chief Bal Thackeray pleaded with the farmers not to commit suicide, but bring about a parivartan of power. That came a cropper. Much though Thackeray would like to forget, the suicides were first reported in the cotton-rich belt of Vidarbha when Sena-BJP was in power in the state seven years ago. A few cheques given in aid to the farmers had bounced then. On August 4, 2004, in a run up to the elections, the then CM Sushilkumar Shinde announced relief measures supposedly for the farmers -- a free electric power largesse. Ironically, none of those who ended their lives consider even the small number that the government machinery said were genuine suicide cases had electric pumps or irrigation. Not a single one. The one unfortunate family whom Sonia Gandhi visited in Talegaon near Wardha had an electric pump, but the electricity supply had been disconnected by the MSEB almost eight years ago. In Vidarbha, the state electricity board concedes the number of motor-pumps is just about 92 per 1,000 farmers. Which means, less than 10% farmers could benefit from free power that the government announced. In fact, the day the government announced the free power sop three peasants ended their lives in just one tehsil of Yavatmal, while two others consumed pesticides to end themselves in Amravati district. The death toll had touched 44 in Yavatmal alone. And together, across Vidarbha, the toll crossed the 70-figuremark since the agriculture season began in the first week of June 2004. Before the elections, the state government also announced a waiver of interest. But again, this benefited less than ten per cent farmers, who had borrowed from the nationalized banks. And those farmers were not the ones in distress or debttrap. That measure too did not help those in distress. Post-elections, the government reneged on its promise of raising the guaranteed procurement price of cotton to Rs 2700 per quintal (1 q = 100 kg). The Democratic Front had made this promise in its pre-election manifesto. The free power sop was discontinued. In 2004-5, the Federation saw two records come its way. One, it broke all the past records by purchasing a phenomenal 212 lakh quintals of cotton from cultivators. And, two it saw its cotton on fire all over the state; 111 fire incidents gutted cotton worth about Rs 36 crore at several of its godowns and yards. (1 lakh = 100,000) 55

In two cases, the Federation handed over the probe to Crime Investigation Department (CID). It fired five of its employees "prima facie guilty of negligence" in three separate cases, suspecting their involvement. Dr N P Hirani, the Federation Chairman, confessed: "It's a black scar on our efforts." However, there was some solace for the federation. Since the cotton was insured, the Federation could claim a full insurance. Local leaders and cotton farmers charged the federation with high-handedness. They wondered how it procured cotton at 216 centres without any regulator or vigilance squad to monitor them. Amidst the charges and counter charges regarding the fires, farmers did not get their money in time. The season 2005-6 began with farmers having no cash. The funds-starved Federation could pay in pieces. Hirani said the problem of disbursing money to the farmers is with the banks. The banks begged to differ. The process of payments is complex. A farmer gets a cheque from the respective procurement centre of the Federation. He is expected to withdraw his money from the nearest branch of the district central cooperative bank after the government intimation. The government, through the Federation, pays the money to the district treasury, which in turn, disburses the money to the cooperative banks on the basis of a financial statement prepared by the procurement centres. When the treasury releases the money, the banks open their counters for the farmers for disbursement of the cotton payments. Unless the banks get money from the treasury, the banks cant and dont pay to farmers. The bumper production and purchase threw the Federation, already steeped in accumulated debts of Rs 5000 crore, into tatters though. It procured 211.53 lakh quintals of cotton, about 43 lakh bales and 117.66 lakh quintals of seeds (Sarki, in local parlance). And the procurement continued till late April. Consider this: Federation's average procurement always stood at 90100 lakh quintals. Which means, its cotton procurement more than doubled in 2004-5. So did the bills to a little over Rs 4,700 crore. Delays in payments to farmers were natural, as they stemmed from a huge losses that the procurement scheme had run into over the past decade. The loss of the Federation that year 56

alone was pegged at around Rs 1,600 crore. Sadly, there were no takers for the local cotton, even as cheap cotton imports went up. This meant market prices remained low and the Federation was unable to sell cotton profitably. Instead of bailing out the federation, the governments continued to neglect it, and farmers. In 2005-6, what happened was largely expected. The government withdrew the advance bonus of Rs 550 over the minimum support price to cotton growers, bringing down the cotton prices to Rs 1700 from Rs 2300 the previous year. Its argument was that the federation could not buy cotton at a premium price when the market rates were low. The same government gave an excise duty waiver of Rs 5000 crore to just one private cement company in Chandrapur district. So, it first integrated advance bonus with the MSP and pushed a farmer to adopt the intensive farming technology, and then silently withdrew it when the inputs prices had pushed the production cost manifold in the same span. The government did not support infrastructure growth, and it withdrew from the responsibility of procurement at better prices and marketing. Simultaneous with the inputs price rice, the government pushed farmers to adopt costly Bt-seed technology. The federation stood a mute witness to the mayhem wrought by the governments hit-and-run approach. The Vidarbhas graveyard grew by tens of miles, even as the federation became a shield for private traders instead of being the saviour of the farmers in a span of little less than ten years. Rising production, stagnated demand In 2005-6, the crisis had fully set in. And the government said that the farmers must increase their productivity. They must, but not at greater costs. That the per-acre yield has to be raised is among the oft-repeated remedies suggested by the government and experts. But the figures indicate that the global cotton demand has stagnated, and there is recession in the prices. If the farmers here grow more cotton, is the government giving a guarantee that the prices will not fall below the current prices? No, is the answer. The government cant give that guarantee, just as it cant guarantee that inputs prices will also not go up.

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While propagating the transgenic hybrid technology among the farmers, the state government said the rise in production would bring some succour to the farmers, but lakhs of cotton bales lay in its stocks as surplus, unconsumed, the same time. In Liverpool, England, National Cotton Council Chairman Woods Eastland in September 2005 challenged the worlds cotton-producing countries to grow global demand for the fiber by five million bales per year for the next five years. He told attendees at the 64th International Cotton Advisory Committees (ICAC) 64th Plenary Meeting that the only reason that goal seems unachievable is lack of confidence by those countries in their ability to apply the right tools and right financing to the task. Or, maybe we are just lacking imagination and willingness to work together toward a mutually worthwhile goal. What we are now doing is fighting each other desperately for market share because our production potential is growing much more rapidly than the demand for our fiber. As Ron Herring of the Department of Government and DGN, Cornell University, says: International market rigging by richer nations and improvements in yields in nations such as China threaten Indian cotton farmers both domestically and internationally. Yet it is difficult to imagine an India without cotton. Eastland, who is a cotton producer and chief executive officer of Staplcotn Cooperative Association in Greenwood, MS, said the U.S. cotton industry is convinced that the ICAC is correct in its assessment of the impact of cotton promotions thus far. The ICAC estimated that had it not been for promotion over time, such as that of Cotton Incorporated and the NCCs export promotion arm, Cotton Council International (CCI), the world of cotton in 2005 would be lacking around 12 million bales of demand or roughly one tenth of the total demand for cotton on an annual basis. He noted that according to USDA, had cottons global market share of fiber consumption held onto its 1990 level, then the world would be consuming an additional 26 million bales of cotton annually today. In other words, if cotton had simply held its own in the rising world demand for fiber, world demand for cotton would be 20 percent greater than the current level and this is on top of the 10 percent additional that the U.S. industry built

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through its national consumer promotion programs. Eastland made it loud and clear: The global cotton industry has a cotton demand crisis, not supply deficit.

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9 Rich daddy, poor daddy

Money flows freely in western Maharashtra; penury in Vidarbha. Leaders of that region dominate the politics and policies of the state, which protect their interests at the cost of the interests of other region. Economic disparities are by design and not just a coincidence. The crisis has crucial linkages with all those disparities. Politically, Vidarbha was part of the erstwhile Central Provinces and Berar. It was ceded to Maharashtra in 1953, though the States Reorganisation Commission had strongly recommended the formation of a separate Vidarbha state. The erstwhile leadership of the Congress opposed it, because it would have been a terrible loss to the entire state. The western Maharashtra could not have afforded to lose this resource and mineral-rich region, which would breed their interests for years. The economic disparities showed up in first few years, but they took alarming proportions in late seventies. After public and political protests, The Government of Maharashtra first appointed a fact-finding committee of experts under the chairmanship of Dr V M Dandekar on August 3, 1983, to decide on the indicators for assessing and quantifying regional imbalance in development of the state. The committee did a study of backlog in nine developmental sectors, which were: Roads; irrigation; village electrification; general education; technical education; health services; water supply; land development, soil and water conservation; and veterinary services. In its report submitted to the government in 1984, the committee said the total sectoral backlog of the state, as on June 30, 1982, was Rs 3186.77 crore. Vidarbha was the worst affected. Its share in that stood at Rs 1,246.54 crore. The statewide irrigation backlog was Rs 1385.93 crore, and Vidarbhas share in the backlog of that sector was Rs 527.31 crore, or 38.05%. The then government did not accept the Dandekar committee report, but made some small allocations ranging from Rs 200 crore in 1985 to Rs 500 crore in 1993-94 for the removal of backlog to silence the protests. The committee had said that 85% of annual budgetary allocations be earmarked for backlog removal.

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In 1994, the President of India passed an order on March 9, 1994, bestowing on the Governor of Maharashtra a special responsibility for the establishment of separate development boards for Vidarbha, Marathwada and the Rest of Maharashtra to ensure equitable allocation of funds for development of regions. The statutory order provides for the allocation of funds made by the Governor or recommended by him to be reflected in the state annual financial statements. Consequent upon the fresh protests for the removal of backlog, the Governor appointed another committee in 1995, the Indicators and Backlog Committee. This committee submitted its report to the Governor on July 11, 1997. The state government accepted its report in principle, but it said the views of respective departments should be referred to the Backlog committee for consideration and calculation of physical and financial backlog with regard to irrigation, higher and technical education, energisation of pumps, and land, soil and water conservation sectors. The Governor then asked the committee to consider the views of each and every department in respect of the relevant sectors to assess the final backlog. The reconstituted Committee submitted its fresh report to the Governor on September 27, 2000, which was accepted by the Maharashtra Government. The reconstituted committee arrived at a total sectoral backlog of Rs 14,006.77 crore, of which Rs 6624.02 crore (47.6%) was of Vidarbhas share alone, Rs 4004.55 crore (28.77%) of Marathwada and Rs 3378.2 crore (23.63%) of rest of Maharashtra. In irrigation sector, the backlog of the state was pegged at Rs 7418 crore, which came to about 52.96 per cent of the total developmental backlog. And the backlog in this sector for Vidarbha was calculated at Rs 4083 crore, or 55.04% of the total irrigation backlog of the state. Marathwadas irrigation backlog was Rs 2401 crore (32.37%) and that of the rest of Maharashtra Rs 934 crore, or 12.59%. In other words, the irrigation backlog of rest of Maharashtra drastically dropped from 39.1% as on March 31, 1984 to 12.59% in 1994. This has since declined dramatically to a mere 4.7% by 2002, as per the updated figures. Significantly, in the same period, Vidarbhas irrigation backlog rose exponentially from 38.02% in 1982 to 55.04% in 1994 to 62.2% of the total states backlog in that sector in 2002. In rupee-terms, it means an exponential rise from Rs 537.31 61

crore to some Rs 8000 crore by 2002 at 1993-94 prices. This would come to around Rs 14,434.64 crore as per 2003-04 prices, and more by the current. Backlog in Irrigation: Total irrigation potential created by June 2004 in the state is 51.5 lakh hectare, which is about 22.85% of culturable area and 48% of the ultimate irrigation potential of the state, according to a planning commission report. Compared to this, the irrigation potential developed in Vidarbha by July 2004 is 11.67 lakh hectares, which is about 20.46% of the culturable area and 31.6% of its ultimate irrigation potential. About 1.8 lakh hectare of land is under irrigation in Vidarbha due to ex-malguzari tanks constructed way back in the 16th and 17th century. Many tanks built in the pre-independence era have created an irrigation potential of 0.48 lakh ha. This implies that only 9.43 lakh ha land has been brought under irrigation since independence by the government. Which is only about 0.16 lakh ha per year. Other regions of the state, which were way behind Vidarbha in irrigation development before independence, have now marched way ahead of it in the post independence period. The Pune region for instance has a share of 37.23% of the states irrigation development, followed by Marathwada at 22.24% and Nashik at 17%. The two regions of Vidarbha are way behind these figures 12.25% for Nagpur and 9.34% for Amravati. The created irrigation potential is in contrast with the water availability in the region. Since Marathwada region has only 8.5% of the available water compared to the state; Pune and Nashik region put together may hardly equal the Vidarbhas share if the west flowing rivers in Konkan are excluded. Considering this aspect, the backwardness of Vidarbha in irrigation sector gets highlighted starkly. The total culturable area, gross sown area and net sown area in the 11 districts of Vidarbha are 6.0627 million ha, 6.3151 million ha and 5.1752 million ha respectively. The region falls in Godavari and Tapi basins. The irrigation potential developed so far till June 2005 is 0.874 m ha from state sector schemes and 0.304 m ha from local sector schemes (total 1.178 m ha). Potential created as a percent of gross sown area is only 19% for the region as a whole.

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So far 10 major, 49 medium and 650 minor schemes have been completed creating a potential of 0.6487 m ha. The 15 major, 30 medium and 164 minor schemes are ongoing with an ultimate potential of 1.259 m ha, which will need a massive funding of Rs 10,600 crore by the current prices. Agriculture pumps: A member of Statutory Development Board for Vidarbha, Advocate Madhukar Kimmatkar, says out of total energy consumed in the state for agriculture pumps during 2003-04 (which is 10,155.2 million units), Vidarbha consumed only 1166.3 million units, amounting to 11.49%. In Western Maharashtra, consumption was 6659.64 million units, about 65.58% of the total consumption, while in Marathwada, it was 2258.91 MU, or 22.24%. The physical backlog of energisation of agricultural pumps in Vidarbha stands at 2,15,00, in Marathwada at 1,09,073, where as western Maharashtra has an excess of 3,57,320 pumps that has been energized. As on March 3001, Amravati revenue division with five districts had 2,85,160 agricultural pumps, and Nagpur division with six districts had 1,78,187 pumps. Compare it with just two districts Nashik and Ahmednagar of the western Maharashtra. Former has 2,00270 pumps energized, while Ahmednagar has 2,33,068 such pumps. The reason for this enormous difference is not the water table level but huge pendency in clearing applications by farmers for electricity connective for their agricultural activities. This issue becomes even more significant in the view of the fact that the state government gives an annual subsidy of Rs 9,250 per pump. This is perceived not only as a loss of irrigation potential, but also a denial of financial assistance in the form of subsidy here. The regional economic disparities are glaring in all the sectors roads, allied agriculture activities, education, marketing of produce, banking network, credit availability and anything you name. It was by a political design, not decay. The political heavyweights dangled carrots to Vidarbha and successfully hijacked its funds to western Maharashtra almost every time for the last five decades now. Why did the regional imbalance rise? Because, the states leadership harnessed a constituency in western Maharashtra, and dominated the politics and policies of

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the state, which continued to fuel their interests. Successive governments harped on the backwardness of the regions like Vidarbha, and spent more and more money on western Maharashtra. They pauperized the people here and pampered the constituencies there, through public finances and through private money. An estimate Rs 200,000 crore worth of public and private money is due to be spent on the transformation of western Maharashtras agriculture in to horticulture and allied hi-tech activities, according to many independent sources. This money will be ploughed into from the banks, non-banking financial institutions and the private funding. Its possible because that region first built infrastructure through the government money, by eating into others share. More money brings more capital. Now, with the government budgets dwindling for all the activities, the region of western Maharashtra is ready for embracing private money, though the small and marginal farmers even there would lose ground and perish slowly. The shift will be from production to marketing. Meaning, deferred marketing, which will give the politically controlled corporate rich a cutting edge. They will eat only butter, while the growers will grapple for two square meals. Sugar monopolies control the entire state, but the much-trumpeted cooperative structure, on which they grew, has collapsed. Its no more alluring or paying. The game, of controlling the constituencies, has shifted to water sector from the sugar cooperatives, which once controlled the sugar-cane farmers of that region. That is why the czars of the western Maharashtra, who sit both in the state as well as the central governments, have deftly pushed in policies that are brazenly anti-farmer. Like the one that brings in back-door water privatization Pani Panchayats, run and controlled by the politically powerful, will eventually rule the constituencies. While the creamy layer in western Maharashtra sets that region on the express highway of development, small and marginal farmers there and the entire agrarian peasantry in Vidarbha will hit the new troughs of despair. The lack of off and on-farm activities in this region was not due to the so-called laxity of the farmers. It was due to the stifling of the region of funds through a stark neglect.

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The Planning Commission member, Dr Bhalchandra Mungekar, once aired his concern on the growing regional disparities in Maharashtra. He said unless the state government corrects its policies and make enough budgetary allocations it will always be riddled by regional conflicts. There will be islands of prosperity and ocean of poverty and despair, and it cant be called as development, he said while suggesting the region-wise and district-wise allocation of funds in the annual financial statement itself. He wondered where did the state government spend the Rs 1.35 lakh crore worth of loans that have plunged the state into an economic crisis. How much has the government spent this money on Vidarbha? How much did it spend on Marathwada? The government has no answers. The governments changed, and every government assured to bring out a white paper on the backlog of the region and increase the spending on sectors. Yet the fact remains that the regional disparities over five decades have divided the state on regional lines, both politically and economically. It hardly matters whether Vidarbha gains the status of statehood. Its already a separate state of desolation.

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10 - What next?

If you look at the farmers suicide map and indebtedness map of the country, they fit in. Vidarbha is not some sort of an isolated planet, it is part of the same distress that rips the rural India, only some regions are particularly more vulnerable due to many factors, including the high cost model of farming, excessive cultivation of cash crop at the cost of food crop and integration of rural economy with the volatile global economy. The whole point about the center and state packages is that they are so irrelevant, in that they dont address the basics. Tackling suicides is not as tackling the agrarian crisis. The only difference between a suicide household and a non-suicide household is loss of the breadwinner; in economic terms, theres very little difference. But there are many things that both the state and central governments can do that will at least slow down if not stop the farmers suicides. First, it can honour its commitment of paying Rs 2700/quintal price to cotton on which it came to power. Who has stopped it from doing so? Two, almost every one who has studied the problem including the National Commission on Farmers (NCF) has argued in favour of setting up of a centrestate price stabilization fund, like the one India has for petroleum, to protect farmers from the shock of plummeting prices. Then, the state government can immediately restore advance bonus to cotton that it gave its farmers over and above the minimum support price till a year before last. Any number of people predicted at the time of its withdrawal that it would be disastrous. That has come true. Its return will restore confidence in farmers though it wont solve the problem. It would eradicate the middlemen and touts. Whatever may be the rhetoric at the top credit flow remains dismal on the ground. The government has done nothing to raise income levels of farmers. It has not waived the debt too.

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Any banker in the villages will ask how a farmer could repay the increased credit if he wasnt able to repay the previous one. What has the government done to raise a farmers income level? Maharashtra should take leaf from Tamil Nadu government, which waived loan burden for the whole state to the extent of Rs 7000 crore. The point is you waive or you dont people cannot pay. Mind you, the same governments have had no problems in waiving tens of thousands of crores of NPAs of the corrupt industries, but face a resource-crunch in waiving off Rs 1200 debt of the farmers that accumulated as a result of its own faulty policies. So while you waive the existing debt and create a new line of credit, income levels have to be raised. For that, you will have to take a number of steps, including clamping of duties and variable tariffs so that you do not disturb your own domestic crop and farmers. Cotton price is suffering because of heavy subsidies that the US and European Union give their farmers. Also while you fight subsidies given by the developed nations, there are at least seven to eight measures that need to be taken. The agrarian crisis is not just about the agriculture crisis. Non-farming sections of agrarian communities are also taking a stick. Look for instance, how privatisation of education and health sector has crushed the rural masses in the past decade. Health expenditure is now the second highest component of expenditure of rural households. Also the NSSO data tells us that one in every four households is not seeking health aid, because it simply cant afford. A lot of it has to be done with the central development pattern since 1991, where the development expenditure fell down from 14.5% of the GDP to 5.9% in the last decade and a half. In cash terms, as Prof Utsa Patnaik tells us, it means a drop in the investment by Rs 30,000 crore annually. In income terms, it means a drop of Rs 1,50,000 crore a year. In Vidarbha particularly, the government can encourage cultivation of food crop, particularly jowar, which has dwindled significantly. In bad times the family could at least have food, and fodder for the livestock. Instead the government has joined the insanity by giving a thousand hybrid cows in every drought-prone district. Its insane to give cows to a poor

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farming family that does not have fodder, water or money. Either the cow will eat the family out or the family will have to eat the cow. What will help? 1 A complete loan waiver; generation of fresh line of credit and raising income levels of farmers through remunerative prices, protection from volatile global markets by clamping duties and variable tariff while remaining under the WTO norms and setting up of a center-state price stabilization fund. 2 Giving incentive for growing food crop. A crop like jowar or pulses will restore food-security of a household and generate fodder for livestock; it will reinstate subsidiary income through dairy and generate manure. And slowly shift to organic farming from capital-intensive inorganic farming. A shift back to modified desi varieties of seeds 3 Strengthening of off and on farm sectors, assured irrigation to expand scope of crop choice, resurrection of development expenditure, ensuring credible access to health and education, and plug regional imbalances through an equitable region-wise allocation of funds in annual budget. 4 - The viability factor: Rate of returns on cotton is less than 4% today due to unremunerated prices and zero value addition. A family of five needs at least Rs 50,000/- per annum for subsistence living. This income would need an investment of Rs 12.5 lakh at 4% returns irrespective of farm size. For distress-ridden cotton farmers, it is next to impossible. Vice-a-versa, on barely Rs 5,000 investment, a family would need to jack up the rate of returns to 300% - at least 12 value additions to earn Rs 50,000 (value of produce goes up with every value addition. In Vidarbha, its zero today. The farmers get price on raw, and not end produce.) In the current scenario, either of the two possibilities is impossible. Also, no amount of packages guarantees this aspect Rs 50,000 earning for a family.

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What is possible though is an increased CC (cash credit) limit (on the lines of Kisan credit card) for individual farmers at lower interest rates. He can then borrow from institutional sources even in Rabi. There is currently an upper limit for cotton farmers, which is abysmal as compared to the limit for sugarcane farmers in western Maharashtra, where the value chain has no limits. For instance a five-acre farmer gets Rs 3 lakh loan in sugar belt, here he gets Rs 5,000. The rift will obviously be more. The timing of the loan release needs to be advanced in Vidarbha. Instead of May-June, ideally, banks should disburse loans to the farmers in March-April so that they can buy inputs by May end and be ready for sowing in the first or second week of June. An acre of land costs Rs 1 lakh in cotton belt, which means even a small and marginal farmer of up to five acre holding should get a farm credit matching his assets for crop and allied activities for better rate of returns, thereby reducing the dependence on private moneylenders. Farmers, who get the bank loans, still borrow from private lenders to bridge the gap between the demands and need. As the rate of interest on private borrowings is more, his annual rate of returns becomes less. Increased credit will ease pressures, and channelise more money in the village and farm economy. Institutional support to the viable agricultural projects and experiments credit support for on and off-farm value addition. Share in marketing for farmers has to go up, because therein lies the money. Raw produce currently invites low prices. The western Maharashtra model is based on the viability factor in view of the per capita income for subsistence living. Nearly 67% farmers are part of their value chain ranging from on and off farm activities that are based on the strong sugar economy, backed by an overpowering institutional support and political backing. Independent estimates suggest that the economy of 11 districts in western and northern Maharashtra stands at a staggering Rs 1.3 trillion crore annually, considering a chain of value additions supported by the financial institutions. The political and legislative backing ensures laws and rules that match the need of the constituency from cooperative to private sector.

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Revive traditional crops. Pump money back into the rural economy, say experts. "In Vidharbha, it is too risky to adopt expensive technologies. Small farmers who take loans for cultivation have no capacity to meet the calamity of crop failure. Traditional crops like jowar should again be revived. The funds allotted under the Prime Minister's package for seed replacement should be used to promote jowar, pulses and legumes. Also, organic farming and crop-livestock integration should be promoted on both ecological and economic grounds. Vidharbha can be declared as the Organic Farming Zone of Maharashtra, so that its oranges, jowar, cotton and other crops become known as organic products and thereby gain in market value. MS Swaminathan Chairman, National Commission on Farmers "Its not true that suicides are taking place only in Vidarbha. They began in Andhra and spread to other parts of the country. But why did farmer suicides begin after 1994? The answer is we liberalised the economy and devalued our rupee. As a result, the cost of energy went up, the cost of agriculture rose and living costs soared. The 5th Pay Commission was a vindication of this. But the farmers remained in a low-cost economy. The promise that exports in a free market would bring profits to farmers was never kept. We imported 110 lakh bales from 1998 to 2004. Vijay Jawandhia Wardha farmers leader. "The point is we need to understand that green revolution has collapsed. Continuing suicides by farmers is a reflection of that. Suicides are more alarming in those areas where green revolution was pushed with force. But that doesn't mean there is no agrarian crisis in other areas; it's all over the country now. A few areas like Vidarbha are peculiar with socio-economic, agro-climatic and other factors. We borrowed a technology that did not fit into our socio-economic milieu. Tractor is today a symbol of suicides. Devinder Sharma, Former journalist, agriculture expert.

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II Along the famished road

1 2004: A suicides diary

Finally, there was some rain to save the third sowing. And Sumitra Mattes face bore signs of some relief. Its not been the best of the times for us, she says, squatting on the floor of her dilapidated hut that stands on the land they encroached years ago. Sumitras husband, Ganesh ended himself in this Bhambraja village of Yavatmal in early August, a week after his neighbour, also a farmer, had ended himself. Both the farmers consumed Endosulphan, a poisonous insecticide. The seemingly endless burden of debt and long spells of drought, the widows say, caught up with their men. My husband would never tell us about the borrowings, but we could see tension on his face. He would talk very little with us, Sumitra says, with her eyes set on the floor. A number of women from the neighbourhood surround her. Ganeshs suicide was in the news before the 2004 assembly election. It had drawn the attention of the BJP-Sena Opposition in Maharashtra. A bandwagon of the Shiv Sena and BJP leaders descended on this village to visit Sumitra soon after Ganesh ended his life. They promised to give her Rs 25,000 in aid, and help her two daughters and son get back to education. Sumitra hasnt got anything till date. But thats a different story. On the other hand, the Government of Maharashtra does not count Ganeshs suicide as one out of distress. Meanwhile, Sumitras problems have only just begun. Ganesh has left behind for her: two unmarried daughters, a young son, a dilapidated hut and loans. The Mattes belong to the Maratha Kunbi community, which means Sumitra is not eligible for a slew of government schemes that benefit the Dalits and tribals of the region. And being poor does not help her, since the saffron-coloured ration card that the family possesses means nothing. The food prices in the fair price shop

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here are compatible with the private shops. Thats why I prefer to purchase the ration from a private shop, because its good in quality, cheap and the shop keeper gives us credit, she adds. Sumitra says she has no knowledge of bank transactions, no idea of loans that she has to repay to the unknown lenders from whom Ganesh borrowed money. She has no other source of income apart from her three-acre land. After the death of her husband, she was helped by the neighbours to procure the seeds, and pesticides for the third sowing from a seed-dealer in the village. The bill was Rs 10,000. And shes yet to repay that. But the total sum of capital and interest by the end of December had become Rs 12,500. The yield has not been good. And this family is now set to be doomed. She and her children have already begun working on other farms on daily wages of Rs 20 a day. But why did Ganesh end his life? A landless labourer, he purchased three-acres of land about four years ago. And from the first agriculture season on his land, he could never recover from the loans. First he defaulted on the payment to the village credit cooperative society, then a cooperative bank, followed by private usurers. Coupled with that, he had borrowed huge sums for the marriage of his two elder daughters, Sumitra reveals. In 2004, Ganesh borrowed money for sowing in May end. It must be at an interest of Rs 25 per Rs 100 borrowed, says Jaimala Gomase, the loquacious neighbour of Sumitra whos been helping her run the show since the tragedy struck her. The first sowing failed; there were no rains till the first fortnight of June. He went in for the loans again, for the second sowing. That too failed. By that time the entire region looked headed for a drought. Several farmers from the surrounding villages and districts had begun taking the extreme steps. In this village, Ganesh saw his neighbour end his life by consuming pesticide. By the first week of July, things had come to a boil. Two failed sowings and outstanding loans; there was no way he could have obtained money for the third sowing. There were still no signs of any rain, or government declaring any help to the farmers then. He had run out of his patience.

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With the things having gone wrong on agriculture and financial fronts, Ganesh could no more bear the guilt of keeping the family starving. His daughters and son had to drop out of the school in 2004. And that proved the last straw. The simple man silently walked out of his hut that fateful day, went to the backyard and consumed the pesticide in the veil of darkness. *** Around the same time, in a distant village of Jhatala in Ghatanji tehsil of Yavatmal, a Gond farmer of big land holding was also grappling with his finances. Babji Maruti Masram was in the midst of a crisis never seen before by the family that once owned vast stretches of agriculture land in and around the village. Babji himself was known to be a seasoned farmer, and was the Sarpanch of this village for a long time. He had relinquished the post only six months before his death. His father was known popularly as Maruti Mahajan, who owned about 100 acres of land even after much was procured by the government under the Land Ceiling Act. Babji was the key man in his family. He cultivated all his familys land, including the share that went to his brother. Babji ended his life by jumping into the well. The government has not yet accepted that his was a suicide driven by agricultural distress. After all, how could a farmer of such a big land holding end his life? But Babjis son, Arvind, insists the reason for his father ending himself is nothing but agriculture. He was under huge debt, he says. Some of his lenders are from this very village, he reveals. In the early nineties, Babji decided to shift completely to the cash crops cotton, followed by soyabean. The family cultivated cotton always, but not on the entire stretch of land. Babjis father also cultivated jowar and pulses besides cotton in his time. May be this complete shift from the food crops to the cash crops proved suicidal for him, his old mother Zamrabai feels. I used to tell him dont invest huge money on hybrid seeds, pesticides, but he would not listen, she cries. Amazingly, Zamrabai understands agro-economics better than most of the new generation farmers of this village do. And she makes no secret of the fact that it was Babjis foolish run for the costlier inputs than threw the things awry. In

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older days, we paid more attention to the pulses and food crops for household needs, she tells me. Even in the worst years of drought, this family never faced any major problem, as it did in good years of monsoon in the recent times. Babji was known for introducing high-yielding varieties of cotton and soyabean seeds in his farm and the use of latest and costlier pesticides. But he never built up his own water resources. After the division of the land, he tilled the lands of his two brothers as well, but the farms remained and still remain parched. He never addressed the basic issue water scarcity. So, much though he tried improving his land, it remained rain-fed. It still does. On the one hand he exhausted his finances on seeds, pesticides and chemicals, and on the other he slowly delineated himself from the traditional ways of farming. He had to purchase seeds every year, a shift from his fathers way of farming. "Maruti Mahajan supplied seeds to the entire village once from the stocks that he saved from his own produce every year," informs Kisan Belabe, a villager and close friend of Babji. Thus while his father never spent on seeds or pesticides, Babji not only purchased seeds and pesticides every year, but also spent heavily on the inputs. The more the land, more were the inputs required. In the midnineties, when the state run Monopoly Cotton Procurement Scheme went into a mess, Babjis financial problems soared. Cotton prices crashed around the same time. So with huge input costs and less produce prices, Babji plunged into huge losses. The losses only soared in the years to come because he stuck to the cash crops, and could never take up a second crop due to lack of water. The wages that Babji paid to the farm-labourers also added to the big input costs, Belabe says. In 1997-1998, Babji had to borrow money, perhaps for the first time. That was also the year when the region faced its worst drought. The dwindling yield pushed him further, as his loans and interests added to his losses. In the last five years, his loans from the private usurers and interests on it compounded his problems. Babji had to sell his produce in open markets twice in distress, informs Belabe. That year the 2001-2002 season Babji piled up unprecedented losses.

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In 2004, his sowing failed completely in June. He went for a re-sowing on the huge area of land that he cultivated. Which meant he needed to borrow money for seeds, again. He did, and sowed seeds a second time. But when the monsoon failed to smile on the region, the seeds failed to germinate once more. Babji needed to purchase seeds again, this time for the third sowing. The lenders played their part in fueling the situation. They demanded the reimbursement of previous loans. Since that day, Babji never recovered from the tension, his mother says. On July 8, when the things looked bleak on the agricultural front, he took the extreme step. *** In Sonbuldi village near Pandharkawda, Devidas Lengure was perturbed when his sister Nirmala called on him in August 2004. His brother-in-law Atmaram Shende had been in distress a month ago. This time, it was Nirmala. Would the Sahukar help once more in less than a month, he thought. He gave it a try, and got some money from the Sahukar for Nirmala. Within 15 days of her husband committing suicide in village Pada in the crisisridden Yavatmal district, Nirmala had landed into the same trap that saw her distressed husband committing suicide. Two failed sowings and private borrowings that kept mounting with compound interest had driven a tense and broken Atmaram to end his life. The banks offered no loans to those who didnt have an account. So bank aid for the Shendes was out of question. The owner of the village seed and fertilizer shop wouldnt have helped for the second or third time; he had lent the seeds and chemicals to Atmaram on credit for the first two sowings. So he too was out of question. Nirmala desperately wanted money to perform the last rites of her husband, and then purchase the seeds for the third time. Devidas knew of only one person who could help the bereaved family once again. He had no alternative but to get money from a private lender for his sister. The interest could have been a whopping 50% for three months. But that was the only option.

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It was just the beginning of Nirmalas multiple woes. She sold the bullocks and the cart, went in for fresh borrowings. The liabilities had soared to Rs 50,000 in all. She had become a victim of the agriculture crisis within a week of her husbands death. After the death of their husbands, the burden of debt from private moneylenders, the village cooperative societies and other sources is catching up with their widows now, says Ritesh Parchake, a stringer with a vernacular newspaper in Pandharkawda. Nirmalas son Satish has, in the meantime, taken up a small job. He herds the goats of the villagers. He earns Re 1 per goat every day. Ive about 15 to look after, so I earn Rs 15 a day, he says. Its too little, but still better. I could be of some help to my mother in repaying the debts of my father, he says. He and his three sisters have dropped out of school. But at 13, Satish has matured fast. He knows hes already a debtor by inheritance. And that is a different story.

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2 The numbers rising every day

June 2005: Santosh Naitam has a peculiar job. As an assistant at the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti's office at Pandharkawda, he has to enter the name, age, and other details of farmers, often culling the information from language newspapers. They are all dead," he explains, entering one more name in a neat list of 115. "This is since June 2, 2005." The list is growing with every passing day, he says. Sanjay Jiddewar, 36, is the latest. He committed suicide on November 11. "Often we have to depend on newspapers for information as the officials either don't have it or don't want to give it to us," says Naitam, pointing to a pile. "We first enter the farmer's name followed by his age, village, and the day he ended his life." The office of the Samiti has ledgers that contain records of some 600 farmers who ended themselves in the past five years. But the spurt in suicides dates back to a decade now, informs the Samiti convenor Kishor Tiwari. The farmers, who committed suicide, were bound by a single thread: cash crops. The last two decades have seen the regions cropping pattern, once dominated by paddy, change drastically. Today, of the region's 11 districts, six are dominated by cotton while only five, including Nagpur, cultivate paddy. Jowar, grown all over once, has less than five per cent of acreage. Nagpur, of course, is also famous for its oranges. Apart from cotton, farmers have migrated to soybean and flowers. "An agrarian crisis is set to devour Vidarbha," warns Tiwari. "This year suicides will increase because a number of factors are at work." Sumitra's husband Ganesh ended his life in Bhambraja village of Yavatmal last year. A week later, his neighbour killed himself. Both consumed Endosulphan, an insecticide. Endless debts and long spells of drought had caught up. "My husband would never tell us about the borrowings, but we could see the tension on his face. He talked very little with us," says Sumitra, gaze fixed on the floor, as women from the neighbourhood surround her.

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As Ganesh's suicide was close to the assembly election, almost all parties promised her help. Till date, Sumitra has got nothing. But what affects the frail widow the most is the government's refusal to acknowledge that Ganesh's suicide was the result of distress. Inaugurating a sugar mill near Nagpur in December 2004, Chief Minister Vilas Deshmukh had this to say: "Cotton is no more a paying crop. You must grow sugarcane like western Maharashtra farmers." That, of course, is akin to asking farmers to jump from the frying pan into the fire. Sugarcane is an even more water-intensive crop, a fact that former Shetkari Sanghatana leader Vijay Jawandhia, from Wardha, does not miss. "Not only are farmers from un-irrigated areas committing suicide, even farmers from irrigated areas are ending their lives," he says. Jawandhia is convinced they are not doing so because of water scarcity. "The monsoon has been good in Vidarbha," says AS Zadgaonkar, in-charge of the weather forecasting department at the Nagpur meteorological office. Yavatmal Collector Harshdeep Kamble seconds him. "Yes. This looks like a better year for agriculture," he says. But Kamble is worried. "Yavatmal is leading the districts in the suicide spree. The district has seen the number of farmer suicides double every year since 2001, with the toll close to 300. This year, Yavatmal alone has seen 50 farmers end their lives. "Wrong policies, declining investment, soaring input prices with dwindling earnings, unregulated seed market, unforeseen market fluctuations, a badly run monopoly cotton procurement scheme, lack of organised irrigation, reduced purchasing power, rising health expenditure, unchecked private usury, and many more factors are at work," says Jawandhia. "Agriculture has become very risky," he says. "There are more risks involved in farm activities now. Even a small mistake costs heavily." The government admits that nearly 200 farmers have ended their lives in Vidarbha since January. But it

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is not forthcoming about the causes. An official in Amravati admits that many suicides go unreported. "We are getting reports of suicides every day now," he says, "and this is just the beginning of the season. There's a long way to go for the harvest. That is when the real trouble will start." (Post script: By May 31, 2005, the list ended at 540. A fresh season has started. And from June 1, 2006 to July 17, 120 farmers had committed suicide.)

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3 The Russian roulette

(Indias frontline journalist P Sainath wrote in one of his articles on Vidarbha agrarian crisis: It is a kind of rural Russian roulette. Only there is more than one bullet aimed at the player. This story shows just how risky is agriculture today.) July 2005: Every year, at the onset of monsoon, Vidarbha's farmers get involved in a deadly gamble that concerns the monsoon but goes far beyond it. No one sows till the last minute. Those who purchase seed holding back. Many dont buy their inputs for the season. Some cant even decide what they will sow. As Vijay Jawandia, a farmers' leader in Wardha, puts it: "Most do not know till the day before whether they are cotton growers or soybean farmers." The immediate gamble is on the rains. Last year's pre-monsoon showers caused a lot of confusion," says Yavatmal Collector Harshdeep Kamble. "So they are being extra cautious this time. I am really worried about how the rains will work out." Many farmers in 2004 sowed not once but three times in this region. Like Namdeo Bonde in Kothuda village. "He sowed three times, you might even say four," says his brother Pandurang. But the showers only misled him. "He got a little bit with the third sowing. But the costs were killing. By his third try, input dealers were charging 50 per cent to 80 per cent more. And then his crop failed." Sunk in debt, Bonde took his life last November (2004 that is). No one has sown a seed so far in this village of Durga-Vaidya, says Vinayak Gaikwad, a farmer in Buldhana. Gaikwad, a kisan sabha leader, says: "Even when the rains come, people might wait a bit longer to make sure." That is Gamble 2. "Equally," says D.B. Naik farm activist in Bham in Yavatmal "if you buy and sow after the first showers and the rains stop, you're finished." That is what drove Laxman Wankhede of Ejani village to suicide last October.

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Gamble 3: "Acting late gives you some flexibility," says Gaikwad. "You can decide at the last moment what you will sow. If the rains are bad, you choose what needs less water." With three failed sowings himself last year, he should know. "Also, by waiting you can switch from `late' to `early' varieties of seed." `Late' varieties yield more but take much longer, up to six months. `Early' types yield less but are out in under five months. When the rains are late, farmers switch to the `early' type. Gamble 4: "Buying inputs too early means your loan burden is higher," says Suresh Deshmukh in Talegaon village, Yavatmal. "What if the rains come in July? A farmer buying inputs in May pays interest for two extra months." This is a big problem where perhaps 90 per cent of crop loans are from moneylenders. Their interest rates vary from 60 per cent to 120 per cent per annum. Deshmukh's brother Ramesh ended his life last year, crushed by his debt burden. This `flexibility', as many point out, can be a forced one. "I have no money to buy the inputs," says Ranjana, widow of Ramesh Deshmukh. "Who will offer us loans now?" Given her husband's fate, lenders see the family as a high-risk client. "Also," says Suresh, "dealers first attend to cashpaying clients. Those needing credit come much later." Gamble 5: Those who have bought seeds are betting heavily on BT cotton. K.R. Zanzad, quality control inspector at the Agricultural Office, Yavatmal, says: "Last year, 7,000 bags of BT cotton varieties sold in this district. This year - so far - one lakh." At around Rs.1,600-Rs.1,800 a bag of 450 grams, BT cotton costs three times or more what non-BT cotton does. This raises cost per acre massively. In Andhra Pradesh next door, BT cotton results have been disastrous. And approval has been cancelled for some varieties. Yet Vidharbha could see 70 per cent or more of farmers opting for BT in despair-driven hope. The risks are enormous.

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Gamble 6: Buying inputs late could jack up prices as everyone scrambles for seeds and fertilizer at the last moment. Unless, of course, the monsoon fails and there is no demand. Just now, it seems prices will go up. There will also be a last minute rush for labour as all seek it at the same time. Many small farmers work on the fields of others as well. But with a late start, all will be tied down to their own plots. That means a rise in cost of labour - and not getting it when you need it. Moreover, the last minute rush for crop loans will push up already high interest rates. So while holding back saves a month of interest, last minute credit comes at higher rates. The banks play no role at all in this. Gamble 7: Striking late deals could well force the farmer to sell his crop to the input dealer at way below the minimum support price (MSP). Last year, suicide victim Ramesh Deshmukh sold his cotton at Rs.1,600 a quintal. The MSP for his type was Rs. 2,300. Gamble 8: "If it rains well today, the farmer just has to buy seeds," says Sanjay Bhagat in Mahagaon tehsil, Yavatmal. Bhagat, a veteran journalist, is also a director on the Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) here. "Those pushing an artificial shortage can then sell at any price." This means many could end up buying spurious seeds. A fast emerging problem in the region. Fake seeds have been linked to several farm suicides across the country. Gamble 9: Late sowing could also expose the crop to higher risks of disease and pest attack. That again feeds into higher costs. "The great gamble is farming itself," says Vijay Jawandia. "This is what policy has done to the farmer. Be it on credit or support price." Some are cracking under the tension. Like young Abhay Shamrao Chavan in Mulawa village, Yavatmal. "The rains were just the last straw," says his brother Vasantrao. "He was in real despair about credit. Yet if it had rained on June 12, he would have been here to tell you about it himself."

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4 Of desperate times and desperate measures (This year, when the agriculture season began, farmers didnt know whether they would be soybean farmers or cotton cultivators by the end of the harvest. The risk in agriculture has grown multifold, and it is only getting worse with every passing year. As this story suggests, farmers are doing everything they can to bail out themselves. But nothings working. Exploitative mechanisms are bountiful.)

July 2005 (AKOLA): With debts piling up and rain gods failing him yet again, 45-year-old Ganesh Bhimrao Thakre had to take a gamble. He played Bhisi, a local version of the chit fund game, and lost. It was a game, which he couldn't have won. He knew it, but needed money to get his young daughter married. Ganesh, who owned three-and-a-half acres, was already neck-deep in debt, paying an interest of 5 per cent a month for the money he had borrowed from private lenders. Three years ago, his elder brother had helped him get a bank loan of Rs 25,000, which was outstanding. Four crop failures, a dramatic rise in input prices and a decline in output prices had pushed this cotton grower in village Dahi-Handa to a point of no return. Last year, Ganesh's medical expenses had increased, with wife Rekha requiring ear surgery and daughter Sushma needing hospitalisation for typhoid. With mounting expenses, his elder son had to drop out of a polytechnic college in Akola. "He was upset and tense for past few months, but it never appeared to me that he'll take such a step," cries Rekha, recounting Ganesh's suicide. Ganesh hung himself to death on June 6 this year, when his first sowing failed. He left a note that he was ending his life due to indebtedness, a crisis that now engulfs almost all of Vidarbha. In the past five years, Ganesh spent heavily on agriculture. He purchased better hybrid seeds, went for costly pesticides and chemicals -- and suffered huge losses. "Since he borrowed from private lenders, he had to sell his produce to them and not the cotton federation," says his brother Himmatrao. It meant that Ganesh

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had to sell his cotton at a loss of at least Rs500 a quintal. The federation offers Rs2300 to a quintal, while traders offer only Rs1800. Ganesh's total debt shot well up to Rs 100,000, but his earnings steadily dwindled. "We sold our cattle," informs Rekha in her cramped hut. She has no idea who the lenders were, but is sure that when Ganesh played Bhisi he had an outstanding amount of Rs 40,000. Ironically, Bhisi, which started among the wives of farmers as means to save money, is now devastating the farmers. The rules of the game are beyond the comprehension of players like Ganesh who're already bankrupt. Consider 10 people playing Bhisi, each contributing a thousand rupees. The jackpot of Rs 10,000 will go to each one of them through a draw every month till the Bhisi ends after ten months. But if three of them are desperate for it in a given month, the jackpot will go to the one who bids the lowest. Say, one bids Rs9,000, the other Rs 8,000, and the third Rs 7,000, the Bhisi will go to the one who bid the lowest. The remaining nine will get a share from Rs 3,000. Sometimes, the lowest bidder can quote as low as Rs 4,000 at a loss of 60 per cent. Ganesh was so desperate that he didn't mind going for it at such a loss. He also played in four groups, simultaneously. "Sometimes the operator rigs Bhisi to push a desperate player to bid much less," says Sanjay Thakre, Ganesh's nephew. "Many farmers are playing this dangerous game, while ending up with huge losses." Across this belt, market operators and lenders have spread the web of Bhisi on gullible farmers. Ganesh was just one among hundreds of farmers playing the game for some relief. Now, Ganesh's worries have befallen Rekha. Sushma is to be married off. Loans are to be repaid. Her son, who dreamt of becoming an engineer, now runs a vegetable shop in local market. The younger one is going to school, but may be not for long. It's a treacherous journey ahead and Rekha knows it.

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5 - The grim reality of moneylenders (As institutional credit is hard to come by, and with a majority 80% farmers already defaulting on repayment of previous loans, its an open ground for the private moneylenders or loan sharks. The story is about the rise of a usurer.)

July 2005 (AKOLA & YAVATMAL): If you thought the Shylockian moneylender squeezing the life out of a poor farmer was a construct of Bollywood, think again. In debt ridden Vidarbha he is a grim reality. Desperate for money, farmers have no option but to approach the Sahukars. Across Akola, Washim and Buldana there are stories of farmers falling into debt traps and losing their land for a pittance. "Won't a farmer commit suicide, if the government neglects massive exploitation through the usury and debt? If banks offer timely credit, private lending could be curbed," says Shiv Sena legislator from Akot, Gulabrao Gawande. "In Akola alone I've got cases where only 20 lenders have grabbed 900 acres of land from marginal farmers." Santosh Sontakke recounts a gory tale. "The lender got my father murdered when he found that I was ready to return his loan. With my father dead, he automatically became the owner of 3.5-acre land. My father had signed a registered sale deed without actually knowing that he was writing off his entire land for a paltry borrowing. Our land that costs Rs1.5 lakh an acre was gone for barely Rs 40,000. Today I farm my land, but the lender owns it," says a visibly angry Sontakke. Sheshrao Sontakke, the lender, who's also the principal of a local school, allegedly got Navalchand Jadhav, a young farmer in Januna village, eliminated to grab his five-acre land. Navalchand had also signed a sale-deed in the deputy district registrar's office when he borrowed Rs 50,000 in two installments from the lender. "He was ready to return the money, but the lender had an eye on the land

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that costs Rs 2 lakh an acre," laments Meera Jadhav, Navalchand's sister. "The Sahukar has papers in his favour." There are similar tales in other villages. In Sawargaon-Jire village of Washim, Kailash Nivrutti Wankhede is ready to pay double the money he and his father borrowed from a moneylender. But the chances of getting his land back look grim. "He got me and my father to sign a sale deed after we borrowed Rs 60,000 from him at 120 per cent interest rate. I have made all arrangements to pay his money along with interest, but now he refuses to return my land," says a worried Kailash. "Seven more farmers borrowed money from the same lender. Three got back their land only after paying a staggering interest over the capital." If the Sahukars don't kill the borrowers, the harrowing weight of debt pushes the farmers over the edge. Seven-year-old Ravi is a silent testimony, his eyes reflecting the horror of waking up in the middle of the night to see his father hanging from the ceiling. "Ravi was alone at home when his father ended his life. I had gone to my maternal home with my daughter Puja the same morning," says Sunita, the child's mother, with a haunting stillness. Santosh Bhaltilak, her 35-year-old husband, fed young Ravi on the night of September 6, before putting him to sleep. Then, he quietly hung himself to death in his small two-room hut. It was the night before Ganesh Chaturthi, inform villagers. Sanglud village, about 25 km from Akola, is still to come to terms with the tragedy. The villagers have decided not to celebrate Ganesh festival this year. "Who has money for celebrations anyway? And Santosh was our main person; he played dholak in the festival. We can't even think of celebrations in his absence," says Ranjeet Kale, a neighbour. This one's not the only village, which did not celebrating the ten-day fest. Even in Yavatmal's temple town Kalamb, popularly called Chintamani Nagri, festivities are down. Says a grain merchant Chaturbhuj Kariya: "The business and pilgrim flow have shrunk by 20 per cent, which is unusual." 86

"We can't be celebrating when many farmers are taking their lives," says Vasudeo Jiddewar in Sunna, Yavatmal. This village saw a veteran farmer Shyamrao Martawar drown himself in a rivulet along his farm, in distress a few days ago. He had a massive loan to repay. Santosh Bhaltilak too had debts. His father Sahebrao rotated his four-acre land among four sons for cultivation every year. Each of them worked as a farm labourer for three years till his turn came. This time around, it was Santosh's turn to farm. He first borrowed Rs 14,000 from the Syndicate Bank and sowed cotton. Unfortunately, a spell of heavy rain last month ruined the crop. For the second sowing, he sold whatever ornaments his wife had for Rs 7,000. "The seeds of cotton and soybean did not germinate," laments Sunita. Santosh was left without options. "I decided to go to my parents to see if I could raise some money for the third sowing, but he did not wait," Sunita cries. (Post script: Akot MLA Gulabrao Gawande stunned the state of Maharashtra and the legislature in particular on December 6, 2005. The burly legislator attempted to immolate self on the floor of the assembly house in Nagpur when the winter session of the legislature had just started, to draw the governments attention to the spate of suicides and agrarian crisis. The House suspended him for six months. But the incident rocked the conscience of the state government.)

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6 - Spurious BT cotton is the secret killer (With each packet of Bt seeds of GEAC-approved companies, three packets of spurious Bt seeds were sold in the market in 2005 agriculture year; but both legal and spurious seeds were secret killers. The victim was obviously a farmer.)

August 2006 (AKOLA/YAVATMAL): Strangely, BT cotton has sowed the seeds of distress and tragedy. It drove 36-year-old Ramkisan Namdeo Thakre to suicide 10 days ago. Thakre's is a story of unscrupulous dealers, lack of quality control, and misleading information. It is an agricultural chain whose weakest and most helpless link is the farmer. When Thakre's first crop failed this season, he was hard-sold into purchasing BT cotton - a genetically-modified pest-resistant variety - by a moneylender-cumdealer in Kumbha village, Yavatmal. But what Thakre bought wasn't genuine. When his second crop failed, his hopes crashed. Already soaked in debt, he gave up, ending his life on September 8. But this is not an isolated case. Vidarbha's farmers are coaxed into buying seedpackets, which do not have the company's name, address, and other manufacturing details. "Forget fake BT, who can guarantee genuine BT," asks Suresh Bolenwar, a farmer from Hiwra-Barsa village. He sowed BT in his 25-acre field, and discovered that bollworms came before the bolls did. "This is BT cotton," he says, picking up a worm from a plant in his field. "It's bad. My production cost tripled when I opted for BT, but the returns have nosedived." Companies selling BT seeds promise big yields, but farmers are not sure. "No one knows what's inside the packets sold illegally," says Kashinath Milmile, a dealer at Pandharkawda. "About 90,000 packets of BT were sold in Yavatmal district this year. But 250,000 packets of fake seeds were sold as well. The farmers will face huge losses this year," he fears. "What if the seeds fail to germinate? Every company introduces new varieties in the market. While our research institutes can't introduce one variety in five years,

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private companies introduce 10 every year. Even one failure can drive a farmer to the brink," says Vijay Jawandhia, a farmer. Kashinath Milmile, a dealer, shares his concern: "Seed markets are deregulated. There's only qualification for opening up a krishi Kendra - you should be able to count the money at the counter." "It is impossible to check what's fake," says K R Zandad, a quality controller. Preceding the monsoon, the government ordered a crackdown on dealers selling spurious (read non-royalty) Bt seeds in an apparent bid to help Monsanto. Hundreds of packets of seeds being pushed into the market without license by such companies were recovered and seized by the agriculture officials. Under the Seed Act, 1966, selling of fake or spurious seed is a cognisable offence. Much of that action was taken in Jalna and Nanded, even in Yavatmal. Welcoming the action, Ranjana Smetacek, Director (Corporate Affairs), Monsanto Holdings Pvt Ltd, said that Government had done the right thing since fake and unbranded Bt cottonseeds have zero accountability. By November 2005, it was clear that even the legal Bt seeds sold by Monsantos licensee companies had failed. But where was the accountability? The blame was simply put on the natures vagaries. The CICR report Take a look at what the apex cotton research institute of India has to say on legal Bt-cotton. For the proponents of Bt-cotton, it would of course sound like a bad news. In complete contrast to the claims by seeds giant Monsanto and its Indian partners, a study by the Central Institute for Cotton Research (CICR), Nagpur claims that the Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) cotton varieties in Indian market are no protection to the flowering plant against the lethal pest Bollworm. The CICR is an apex research body, under Indian Council for Agriculture Research (ICAR), to carry out research and development on cotton. The work funded by the Centre's Department of Biotechnology asks the farmers sowing Btcotton hybrid varieties "to be mentally prepared" for the use of more supplemental insecticide sprays than being used on Bt-cotton varieties anywhere in the world. The study covered eight varieties of Bt-cotton commercially sold by

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Jalna-based Mahyco and Tamil Nadu-based Rasi Seeds, both under the license from Monsanto, USA. Technically, Bt cotton varieties carry a foreign gene that expresses the protein Cry1Ac to kill bollworm (Helicoverpa armigera). Importantly, the study (published in the June issue of leading journal Current Science) identifies that the critical expression level for the protein Cry1Ac, below which the bollworm would be unsusceptible, is 1.9 ug/g in the plant tissues. But, the study finds that the Cry1Ac content declines substantially and progressively after about 100 days of sowing, thus leaving the plant to be devoured by the pest. The quantitative levels and seasonal decline in expression of the gene differed significantly among all eight commercial Bollgard hybrids tested. The leaves of Bt-cotton plants were found to have highest levels of Cry1Ac expression followed by squares, bolls and flowers. Lowest levels of expression were found in the ovary and boll rind. Scientists and farm leaders from the region say the findings are crucial, since the beleaguered cotton farmers have gone for the Bt cotton varieties big time, hoping for a rise in the yield and reduction in pesticides use. In Maharashtra, the agriculture department's figures suggest, more than 7 lakh packets of Bt-cotton seeds have been sold this season. Recent studies in the central and southern parts of the country show that pesticide use with respect to Bt cotton in India reduced only by 2.5 insecticide applications, while that in China reduced by 14, South Africa by 7 and in Indonesia and Australia, it reduced by 5-6 applications. The farmers go for up to 20 pesticide applications in India currently. Says K R Kranti, a senior entomologist who led the CICR research: "This vulnerability is because of peculiar conditions of Indian Bt cotton and a reduced expression of genes that limits the plant's imunity to pest." Informs another CICR scientist: "Our field experience with Bt-cotton hybrids showed that the bollworm survived more on particular fruiting parts and the pest infestation exceeded economic threshold levels more readily on some specific commercial hybrids compared to others."

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Meanwhile, the suicides continued with more vengeance in the harvest amidst the Bt fields. And many of the debt-burdened families did not qualify for the compensation of Rs 1 lakh because of funny rules. Out of the 284 cases of farmers suicides recorded between January 1 and December 31, 2004, by the revenue department in Yavatmal, only 52 were found fit for compensation. "That's foolish," says an official. But that's the saddest story of Yavatmal. (Post script: Dr Kranti, under huge pressure, had to offer a rejoinder to a few newspaper saying that he had not completely ruled out Bt technology. And that, he was misquoted by the magazines and newspapers on this issue.)

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7 A crackdown on moneylenders.

September 2005: In the face of suicides the Vilasrao Deshmukh-government wanted to a character, a villain, to skirt fundamental issues such as pricing and market regulations. It got one in Sahukar. Expectedly, the Deputy chief minister, R R Patil, whos known to be a blue-eyed baby of Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, ordered for a crackdown on the private unlicensed moneylenders holding them central to the cause of large-scale suicides by farmers. Skin them, was Patils reported orders to the police department in Maharashtra, particularly Vidarbha. What followed thereafter was a massive crackdown on private lenders against whom the police found or managed to find complainants. Within two months of the oral directives, the police had booked about 600 moneylenders across the region. By the end of the season, that figure crossed 1000-mark. All of them were arrested and let off on bail. The government took the credit that it was working. It still believes that once it tames this villain it could solve half the problem. Only it was far from the realities. The first fallout was evident: The Rabi crop dwindled to less than 50%. Why? The farmers had no money to buy seeds. In the absence of systemic or institutional rural credit, the peasantry turned to the private lenders. However, the crackdown on them by the police saw the moneylenders refusing to lend any money to the farmers fearing action. The backlash proved brutal for the farmers again. And the government, which continues with the drive, failed to provide for the rural credit. The deputy chief minister, who also handles the home portfolio, had issued the directives to the police across the state to deal strictly with private moneylenders, who are harassing their debtors and levying a huge interest on the loans. In many cases, the arrested Sahukar was a small farmer. The big sharks went untouched. Some of them are the regions leading politicians or their workers. The police

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were directed to set up special cells at district headquarters to nail the private usurers. For the first time ever such action was taken by the government. Ironically, while the police carried out the drive, over a hundred debt-ridden farmers committed suicide in Vidarbha for more deep-rooted reasons.

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8 Even death is no solution (Compensation to the next of the kith and kin of the farmers who commit suicide is still out of reach. A farmer needs to meet 40 requirements post death for his family to get the Rs 1 lakh aid. A deputy collector in Wardha reasoned with me that it was this aid that was driving farmers to commit suicide. That sick argument spoke less about the farmers, more about the insensitivity of the babu. Nevertheless, this story indicates that it isnt easy to get Rs 1 lakh for the families of the deceased farmers. They have to first prove, he was a farmer indeed.)

September 2005, Yavatmal: It seems we cant even die peacefully. We need to fulfill many pre-conditions before taking the extreme step, chuckles Sandeep Kadam, a farmer of ten-acre land in remote Malvagad village of Mahagaon tehsil in Yavatmal. Hes right. For, Sandeeps next-door-neighbour Digambar Ramji Agose, 55, did not fit into the lost list of Sarkari Nikash (government pre-conditions) when he ended his own life last January. His family his wife, three sons and a daughter did not get the compensation of Rs One lakh from the government for more than one reason. There were about 40 clauses to be fulfilled by Agose post-death to be liable for compensation to his family. And Agose failed on most of the counts. Also, the Agose family, belonging to Andh tribe, is much below the poverty line; in fact too poor to run from the pillar to post, and do the needful and prove its case. For now, Agoses wife Rukmabais task is to feed her family. We have been eating much less since he left us in January 2005, reveals Rukmabai in her cramped hut. Under huge debts, the familys earnings dwindled dramatically. So have energies. Rukmabais 12-year-old son Madhav works from 6 am to 8 pm at a nearby farm for a paltry Rs 20 a day. Madhav, who now heads the beleaguered family, helps his mother earn a living with excruciating pain. Digambar had consumed pesticide in his village to end his distress. A farmer of two and a half acres of land, he had run into debts of about Rs 50,000, mostly

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taken from private moneylenders. And that, by the government rule, was a wrongdoing. An illiterate Digambar had never been to a bank in his entire life. He had never had any bank loan. The tehsildars preliminary enquiry stated that the farmer was not under any bank loan, a condition that did not do any good to Digambars family to get Rs 1 lakh corpus. As per the government rules, private loans make no sense, though we know that 90% of more farmers have private borrowings; but we have to see whether a farmer committing suicide had any bank or institutional loan, says one official at Yavatmal district collectorate. Pity, but that is what the government rules say; we can not take into account the private loans, he laments. I dont personally approve of this subjective report. The government must acknowledge the farmers are dying out of a crisis, a result of bad policies hammered for some time now. Across Yavatmal, as per a log-book maintained by the collectorate, 134 farmers from one-acre land holders to 60-acre land owners ended their lives owing to farm debts, crop loss, and resowing last year. That, says, this official, is a small number. Many families dont report the suicides fearing for a social stigma and getting dragged into a long drawn criminal case, he says. Of all the suicides, only about ten got the aid before the 2004 assembly elections for obvious reasons. In Padha village of Kelapur tehsil in the same district, 50-year-old Atmaram Pandurang Shende ended his life in June 2004. He too had run into huge debts both private and bank loans. But the ariculture land was not on his name. That turned out to be the reason why the government declared that Atmaram was not a farmer in the first case. (Post script By the end of 2005-6 agriculture season; the state government had been forced to relax the criteria to deliver the aid to the families, because by then the crisis had taken the gigantic proportions hogging the international attention. Many high-profile visits of the likes of Professor M S Swaminathan, the chairman of National Commission on Farmers, saw a few families get the cheques quickly. The government did not even inquire if the victim met the 40 conditions or not.)

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9 Distress and the end of innocence (Countless children are dropping off the schools, tens of them are taking up ploughs and working like beasts of burdens at an age when they should actually be studying. Agrarian crisis of Vidarbha has ended the innocence of children)

November 2005: When cotton farmer Digambar Agose, 55, swallowed pesticide in Malvagad village near Mahagaon town in Yavatmal on January 18, 2005, his 12-year-old son Madhav became a debtor by inheritance. Today, ten months after his father committed suicide, Madhav toils from 6 am to 8 pm to herd the cattle of a big farmer for a paltry Rs 20 a day. Education? Forget it. He has to help his mother Rukmabai feed the family. Then, he has to tend to his three younger siblings. Cut in to Padha village, also in Yavatmal: Satish Shende, 15, is slowly learning to farm, but has dropped out of the school. In June last year, his father Atmaram, also a cotton farmer, consumed pesticide to end himself. Satish is too young to understand the complexities that forced his father to commit suicide. He knows his father is dead, but doesn't know why. He's yet to know that the debt burden has automatically shifted on to his shoulders along with the family's responsibilities. Satish will now have to marry off his two sisters, besides paying off the liabilities of his father by helping his mother Nirmalabai. Atmaram married off his eldest daughter, but had loans of about Rs one lakh (100,000) outstanding. "I first started herding goats, and got Re 1 per goat per day till recently. I had to look after 25 goats of the villagers," says Satish. In Akola's Dahihanda village, Ganesh Thakre's son Sushil, 20, wanted to become an engineer. "We spent Rs 25,000 on his admission and fee to a polytechnic college," his mother Rekha informs. After first year, he left the college and joined his father to run a vegetable shop. In June, with every thing gone wrong at home and farm, a debt-ridden Thakre ended his life in distress, and Sushil left his studies forever. He says he has no option but farm and run vegetable shop to make ends meet.

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"This is the saddest fallout of farmers' suicides," says Ritesh Parchake, a stringer with a language daily in Yavatmal. Adds another journalist Sanjay Bhagat, in Mahagaon, Yavatmal: "It can't get any worse than this. The Agose family was virtually penniless and still the government inquiry into the suicide of Digambar concluded that he had ended his life due to depression. Had the government taken a sympathetic view and given the compensation, this Andh tribal family could have breathed a little easier, and all the children could have continued with their education." The state government and the Centre have refused to move, though. "The situation is responsible," was the flat answer Maharashtra Marketing Minister Harshwardhan Patil gave at a press conference in Nagpur, to persistent queries on reasons for unabated farm suicides. Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar was more forthcoming. "The state (Maharashtra) is doing as bad as any other state in the country in the agriculture sector due to declining private and public investments," said the Maratha strongman touring Vidarbha. But about suicides, he shrugged off the responsibility to point out: "Agriculture is a state subject." But if agriculture is a state subject, why does the Centre not send the state's ministers to WTO meetings instead of the Central ministers? Pawar skirted this and further questions on the issue and his thrust still remained on private and corporate partnerships. He told reporters that a significant drop in investments in agriculture was the reason for the serious agrarian crisis prevailing in the country. A slew of measures, he said, would be needed to bring that sector back on the rails. Meanwhile, Yashodabai, Ratilal Rathod's widow in Bandargaon, a remote and backward village in Yavatmal inhabited by the Banjaras (tribal community), has no knowledge of this backstage politics. She has lost her husband to an agrarian crisis that has for long been not just neglected but also blatantly ignored by the nation's polity.

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When Dr M S Swaminathan, widely known as the father of green revolution and Chairman of the National Commission on Farmers, visited this family and offered to provide for the education to her children, a perplexed Yashodabai refused to part with her less-than-12-year-old daughters, Ranjana and Kalpana, both of whom dropped out of school after their father's suicide on August 21, 2005. "They help me eke out our living," she told a cavalcade of NFC members, agriculture department officials and some of top bureaucrats. The two girls work as farm labourers for Rs 20 each and contribute to the income of house. Their brother, Sadanand, is too small to work yet. More than 20 cotton farmers ended their lives and many others continue to do so in the dusty villages of Vidarbha, after the NCF toured the region. One estimate suggests that a farmer is committing suicide every 22 hours, and that rate, fear farm leaders, would accelerate over the next three months. Vidarbha alone has reported 110 suicides since 2 June 2005. That is since the fresh agriculture season commenced in the cotton belt. Sadly, even widows are following the footsteps of their husbands who ended themselves in the past seven years. Meerabai Hatti Chavan, a Banjara woman, consumed pesticide on Diwali day (Nov. 1), in Ambezari village of Ghatanji, Yavatmal. Seven years ago, her husband had done the same thing. And the reason for both suicides was soaring debts. Now, their four children are at the mercy of the village for food and work. In Chandrapur's Bhisi village, Baba Wanjari, another marginal cotton farmer ended his life out of distress on November 8 barely a year after his wife ended herself in their dilapidated hut. Four children, including two daughters, of the Wanjaris are staring at a grim future. Suvarna, 14, their eldest daughter, is still in a state of shock. She now has the responsibility of her young siblings. It was last year after scoring 60% marks in SSC she dropped out of school. In village after Vidarbha village, amidst the graves of farmers, young girls and boys are fast losing their innocence to a piling debt and daunting responsibilities, after the suicide of their fathers. In every farming family that has seen the

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headman commit suicide, the children have eventually dropped out of schools to take up the plough and work like the beasts of burden at tender age. Girls are among the worst hit. Problems prop up when they get ready for marriage. Finding a groom for a girl whose farmer father commits suicide proves to be tough. The prospective groom could reject the proposal for two more reasons: One, the economic compulsions of bride's family would force the marriage to be a low-key affair, and two it could shift some of family responsibilities (including debt of bride's father) on to the groom. "That's why many families don't report the suicides, fearing for the social ramifications," says a high ranking police officer who asked not to be named because the issue was politically delicate. But now, these kids are potential suicide candidates, fears local stringer Parchake. And he is not wrong. Neeta Pundalikrao Bhopat, 19, a bright student of BA first year in Aasra village of Amravati district snapped her life by consuming pesticide on November 4, during Diwali vacation. "My family can't make even a thousand rupees a month. And I have two younger sisters. My parents can't bear the burden of our marriages when we don't have enough to eat. So, I am ending my life. Nobody should be blamed for it," wrote Neeta in her neat handwriting, minutes before she took the extreme step. She had lots of aspirations, the villagers remember. But back home, things had slowly come to a boil, and she could sense, most certainly, that if it weren't her, it would be her father any moment. Pundalikrao is a marginal farmer of four acres of unirrigated land. He has private debts amounting to Rs 75,000. So, this student of a nearby Mahatma Jyotiba Phule College consumed Endosulphane and bade good-bye to the world. The suicide note speaks much more than those four lines. It insists that the agrarian crisis has ripped apart farming households in rural Vidarbha. It has ensnared its every member infants, young and old, alike. It's not just the death of a farmer when he commits suicide but the end of innocence for his kids as well.

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10 Farmers' commission travels through the graveyard (It was the first indication of the central government waking up to the crisis. The father of the green revolution air-dashed to Vidarbha and painstakingly traveled across villages, penning down the points and trying to find some panacea.)

October 21: Shyamrao Kathale did not live long enough to narrate his story. Barely 24 hours before the visit of the National Commission on Farmers (NCF) team to his dilapidated house in Ashti (Wardha) on Wednesday, the old farmer breathed his last following a protracted illness. He had stopped taking medicines for six months for he had no money for that. His youngest son Prabhakar had committed suicide last June owing to huge debt and deep distress. Kathale's wife has lost her mental balance since. So has his eldest son Arun. The second son Prahlad worked as a labourer in Amravati. But he had to come back home to look after Kathale in his last days. The youngest sibling Ganga, 31, is unmarried. The house runs on Rs 447, the monthly interest on the government aid. While the NCF team makes futile attempts to speak to the bereaved family members, there is no response from them. But they've already spoken aloud in their silence! "It's bad. Farmers should not be in this state," M S Swaminathan, the chairman of NCF, laments, as he comes out of the house on the first day of their field visit. Standing in the crowd is Amol Digambar Mohekar, a teenager from the next house. "My father too ended himself last month," he says piercing through the crowd to reach out to the team. In the same lane in Ashti, the team finds to its shock three households with suicide cases all owing to "agrarian crisis". Next morning, as the convoy reaches Pandharkawda in Yavatmal district, it is greeted with the news of another suicide this one's the 79th. A marginal farmer with burgeoning private loan, Narayan Sankurwar ended himself at Patanbori. "His body is lying in the rural hospital," a local stringer informs the NCF team.

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"There have been five suicides Sir in the last two days," adds another. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, he explains. "Many suicides go unreported here." Maruti Mahadevrao Rasse's family in Pisgaon near this town got compensation just two days before the high-profile visit. The 28-year-old farmer committed suicide in June 2005 when his third sowing failed. He had loans on his head. The government first rejected his case for compensation, but released the same when the NCF team included this household in the itinerary, a villager informs. As the sun sets on the horizons on Thursday, the team reaches Bandargaon. Cut off from the highway, the village has no electricity. It's a village of Banjaras, a nomadic tribe. And the team is in the house of late Ratilal Bapurao Rathod. They speak to his wife, presently perplexed by the presence of so many state guests. The village is happy though to see so many vehicles at one go. Ratilal's two daughters 14 and 11 years old respectively have dropped out of school; they now work as farm labourers with their mother to eke Rs 20 each per day. The son still goes to school. After Ratilal's death, their land is fallow this year. It is the Sarpanch of the village who runs this household after the headman passed away. This is the last stop in their field visit. The young Minister of State for Agriculture Rana Jagjitsingh Patil, who accompanies them on the tour, says this has been an eye-opener for him. Villages are in crisis, he admits back in Nagpur. There has to be urgency in our action, he adds. The NCF team also expresses shock as its visit comes to end. "There are complex problems at the root of this crisis, because of which farmers are committing suicide; we have to reverse it," insists Swaminathan. He says he's pained to see the horrible state farmers are in. But as the farmers' leader Vijay Jawandhia puts it: "The team saw how farmers are dying; it should also analyse how they are dragging along with their life."

(The NCF submitted four voluminous reports to Union Ministry for Agriculture, and is due to submit its final report in October 2006, with a draft policy for the farmers. The Ministry has not accepted even one recommendation. The NCF recommendations, if accepted, would show a roadmap to the revival of a sinking 101

agriculture sector in this country. It would however take a strong political will to get started, but it seems the show is already in the pocket of the multinationals.)

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11 The blackest Diwali ever.

November 2005: Even as the country was in a festive mood in Diwali, the countryside in western Vidarbha was busy counting its dead. Burdened with huge debts, nine cotton farmers have put an end to their lives in the past week, and 15 since the National Commission on Farmers (NCF) toured the dusty region between October 19 and 21. The NCF toured Vidarbha taking note of several newspaper reports. One cotton farmer is ending his life every 22 hours now, says Kishor Tiwari of the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti. Since June 2, when sowing commenced, the total number of suicides committed by farmers has by now crossed 90. Tiwari warns the next three months could see a dance of death among the farmers. Maximum number of suicides has been reported from the Yavatmal, Amravati and Akola districts. But even as the tragedy unfolds, the Vilasrao Deshmukh government in Maharashtra seems to be least inclined towards tackling the crisis. The government is least bothered about the plight of the farmers, says Tiwari. Significantly, the NCF had issued an appeal for higher prices of cotton this year after noticing that the minimum support price (MSP) is lower than the per-acre production cost. The MSP on cotton does not reflect the average production cost, the NCF had said. This year, there is a drop of Rs 500 per quintal in the price of cotton on every single variety of the crop following the governments decision to withdraw the bonus from cotton prices. This might trigger more deaths this time around, says Vijay Jawandia, a farmers leader. He says the prices need to be hiked immediately if the government wants to save the lives of the peasants. In Akola, the police swooped down on five moneylenders on Friday following a complaint from an old farmer whose son committed suicide three days ago. Sanjay Lod, the deceased, took his own life to put an end to the harassment by his creditors. In Chandur-Bazar, unable to sustain his family from his four-acre farm,

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a 24-year-old farmer Manoj Dhote committed suicide four days ago. He too had huge debts to repay. Officially, procurement of cotton under the Monopoly Cotton Procurement Scheme (MCPS) is slated to start on November 7, but the kheda-kharedi (village procurement) by private traders has begun at much less prices. Already, the signs of distress sales are visible. This ones the blackest Diwali ever for Vidarbha cotton farmers, adds Tiwari.

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12 Another farmer ends life, villagers distraught

("In the time of crisis, when no helping hand is coming forward to rescue us, we have to manage ourselves," says Bhagwat Jadhav, a resident in the Banjara dominated Bondgavhan village of Vidarbha. His neighour, cotton farmer Ramesh Rathod committed suicide recently. "It could be our turn tomorrow," says a worried Jadhav). December 2005 (Bondgavhan, Yavatmal): When Ramesh Rathod was nearing his end, the villagers of Bondgavhan assembled for a quick meeting in one corner of the rural hospital. After a brief discussion the illiterate and poor villagers began collecting all that they had in their pocket at that time. Yet the total collections were still short by Rs 120; they needed Rs 450 for the postmortem and transporting Rathods body to the village in a hearse van, and they could collect only Rs 330. Then a veteran had a word with the hospital superintendent. Ramesh died on November 8, 2005. "He was a kind man; he did not press for payment of full money after Ramesh's death," say the villagers in gratitude. They have yet to pay the remaining amount to the hospital, they inform. The villagers, 17 of them, equally poor, performed last rites the next morning from the collections again. Thirteen days after his demise, villagers pooled in more money this time for the post-death rituals. Banjaras, who are nomads, follow the Hindu rituals. So they performed the rituals sans a Brahmin, says Ramesh's 12-year-old son Pintu. There was no money to pay for a priest, he says. The Banjara families have settled here, leaving their nomadic traditions for long to do farming like the original inhabitants. Dharmibai, Ramesh's widow, shivers at the thought of her future. "Had the villagers not contributed money, we would not have been able to cremate him," she cries, grieving the untimely demise of her companion. The widow says they suffered losses on their three-acre farm for years. Its her son Pintu, who works as

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a labourer on the weekends to earn some money. That, she says, is a small amount, but still its something. When Ramesh consumed pesticide on November 8, his bank balance had tanked to Rs 52. "We made all efforts to save him," lament villagers. "But it was too late when we finally reached the hospital in a bullock-cart from our village that evening. Ramesh had consumed a full bottle of pesticide." Ramesh had borrowed around 800 rupees in 1995 from a cooperative bank and failed to repay the loan. "It had shot up to Rs 15,000 along with the interest on the capital," says Dharmibai. "A few days ago, we received a notice from the bank to repay the loan. He was under tension from that day. For, he had also borrowed money from private moneylenders." A day before his death, bank officials had visited them. The day since her husband died, Dharmibai has taken ill. The widow is gripped with fever, fear of the moneylenders and burden of the entire family her mother, a son and a young daughter. "All we've got with us is Rs 52," she wails, as the beleaguered villagers contribute more for this bereaved family since government help is far from the sight. This is harvest time. Vidarbha's cotton cultivating districts are witnessing death and distress, with the number of farmers ending their own lives rising dramatically with each passing day. "It is as if the farmers are staging a suicide protest against the unheeding government and a society that has not cared to take cognizance," fumes Kishor Tiwari, convenor of the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS). "The fact that there is no intervention from the government indicates that it is no more an issue for the thick-skinned insensitive rulers of the state." Tiwari notes that the crisis tells upon the entire village. "Only one farmer may commit suicide, but the economic problems confront the entire village. It is the economy of the village which is in the peril," he says. From all angles, Ramesh's death looked imminent. For seven long years, he struggled hard to break even, but the economics of farming fueled by the fast changing global processes had set in a crisis that was beyond his apprehension.

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"He made every effort to come out of the debt sold his cattle, went for better seeds, even Bt this time, but every time he ended up with more debts and more losses. He had no irrigation facility either. Of late he was ailing but had no money to treat himself," says Madhukar Rathod, a veteran, unrelated to Ramesh. "It's not as though we did not know his condition. We tried to help him in all possible ways, but his pride was hurt every time. He was aware that all the villagers were also in the same condition." Rathod says that Ramesh's loans had soared to roughly Rs 55,000, including private debt. Because he had an outstanding loan at the district central cooperative bank, he could not get any fresh credit. "Last year he married off his daughter to his nephew in the neighbouring village. That was because he had no money for dowry and a lavish marriage ceremony. His elder sister knew his problems and agreed to accept his daughter as her daughter-in-law. He was much relieved." Apparently, there was a severe pest attack on the Bt (Bacillus Thuringeinsis, genetically modified variety) cotton crop in Ramesh's farm. There were other complications too. The leaves of his cotton plants turned red before drying up. Ramesh had purchased legal Bt seeds -- Bollgard brand MECH 162 variety costing Rs 1800 per 450 grams -- from companies having commercial license from Mahyco/Monsanto. He was certain these were not spurious seeds. The official price is Rs 1600, but the local inputs dealer in Vidarbha levies an additional Rs 200 when a farmer like Rathod procures it on credit. "He was staring at further losses because he had spent a lot of money on inputs this year, and the yield was destroyed irreparably," say villagers. "Who will compensate for the loss of his life now?" asks Dharmibai. "We were told that Bt seed will change our lives," she adds. It has, but for the worse. "In three acres of land we haven't got even three quintals of cotton this year. It has all been eaten by the pest despite spraying chemicals." Dharmibhai says she used Endosulphane and Tracer - two costly pesticides -- used against the bollworm pest, which attacks cotton crops.

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Add to these losses the rising health problems in the region. Strangely, for some reason, many villagers are sick. That is partly due to the power crisis. "Sometime we get power at night, so those who have irrigation and pump have to water their farm in the dark, and doing so in the winter comes with the obvious risks to health," explains Mainabai Chavan. "Yes, many of us are running fever because of that, but where is the money for treatment?" ask villagers, still to come to terms with Ramesh's suicide. The tragedy is pervasive. Dharmibai's old mother Totibai has stopped eating for three days now. She is having an acute stomach ache. "But we can not take her to a doctor, that will be an additional expenditure of Rs 300 for one trip. We can not do anything, it's left to God now," murmurs a distraught Ramesh's widow. Notes Sunita Raut, the village Sarpanch: "We never thought a person as strong as him would commit suicide." Imagine if this crisis could shatter the confidence of a mentally strong person like him, what it would do to weaker people! (Yes, they are Sunitas words). "These days when men go to their farm, women pray for their safe return home, such is the concern among them. At the back of their mind they fear their men too could take the extreme step." Ramesh, remarks another neighbour Bhagwat Jadhav, epitomized the condition of every villager here in this Banjara-dominated village of the district's Ner block. In fact, he was a symbol of crisis-ridden farmers in entire cotton belt of the western Vidarbha. "All of us are bankrupt and indebted to private lenders," says Umesh Raut, Sunitas husband. "Some of us have multiple loans. We don't know how we will clear all our debts." Umesh Raut is among the villagers who raised money for Rameshs funeral. "We feel it's our responsibility to help this family. It's in the worst state. We will do whatever we can, collectively," say villagers. "In the time of crisis, when no helping hand is coming forward to rescue us, we have to manage it ourselves the way we can," says Bhagwat. "Who knows!" he adds, "It could be our turn tomorrow. If we don't help them today, nobody would help our families if God forbid we too end ourselves."

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13 Of money, sex and loan sharks

December 2005 (Akola): There is an air of defiance in Dadham village. On September 20 the farmers of this village in Akola district, around 180 km from Nagpur, attacked moneylender Bandu Wakhare with hatchets, disfigured his face and left him to die in the choupal. The sahukar had used their women, a villager me during my visit. Officially the state government is mum on the entire episode. Politically it can turn out to be an explosive issue with farmers already buried under failed crops and crushing debt. Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh was learnt to have asked the intelligence wing to discreetly probe the allegations of moneylenders sexually exploiting women. DNA (with whom I am currently employed) had first reported (See DNA, September 17) how farmers of Vidarbha are committing suicide unable to repay their debts. Following the report the National Commission of Agriculture headed by noted scientist M S Swaminathan had visited the affected villages. The possibility of lenders using farmers women and girls to settle the loans cant be ruled out; such exploitation will always be there, says a police inspector in Yavatmal. Over 40 private lenders have been arrested in the district in a massive crackdown. Interestingly the crackdown came within a week of Wakhares brutal murder after Home Minister RR Patil issued oral directives to the police. Across Vidarbha that figure is now close to 150. Moneylenders never had such a bad time, says a police inspector. But Superintendent of Police, Yavatmal, Himmatrao Deshbhratar strictly adheres to the official line. We dont have any complaint of sexual harassment of women by Sahukars, he says. Flatly denying the recent suicides of farmers were due to exploitation of their women by sahukars, he adds, Thats a far-fetched theory. The Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti convenor Kishor Tiwari doesnt buy the top cops argument. The chances of villagers lodging a formal complaint are dim in

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this region. It is a very delicate issue involving self-esteem and dignity of the entire village. It is a life and death thing for them, he says. Nishikant Raut, a Yavatmal-based journalist, agrees with Tiwari. It may be prevalent but farmers will commit suicide instead of lodging a complaint with the police, for the fear of social ostracisation and humiliation in the village. What lends credence to allegations to sexual exploitation are certain numbers. In Kelapur belt, for instance, the number of single mothers (Kumari Mata in local parlance) has shot up alarmingly over the last five years. This is a shocking trend among tribals, reveals a police officer in Pandharkawda. I cant say if this has linkages with money lending, though it is possible that the exploitation of adolescent tribal girls mainly by big landlords or their children has something to do with agrarian crisis. But Nagpur Superintendent of Police Yashasvi Yadav toes the official line denying receiving any complaints in this regard. We have arrested a few moneylenders who grabbed lands and levied interest to the tune of 300% on the capital lent to a farmer, he says. We will probe the sexual exploitation angle if we receive such a complaint. The villagers of Dadham arent bothered though. If any moneylender crosses the limit, they warn they would kill him.

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14 Believe it or not, this village in Wardha is up for sale

Writing in young India of October 13, 1921, Mahatma Gandhi had said: I must refuse to insult the naked by giving them clothes they do not need, instead of giving them work which they sorely need.

December 16 (Wardha): Dorli village lies 26 km from Sevagram Ashram in Wardha. Forty families, as many houses, 600 acres of agricultural land, 500 livestock, cart tracks and trees comprise the village. Nothing shocking, except the banner that greets you on the outskirts of the village: Dorli village is up for sale. Every house, cattle head and even trees have two words painted on it: For Sale. People are ready to move out the moment a deal is struck. Two years ago a Punjab village had upped itself for sale. Now, it is the turn of a village in Maharashtra, that too in the prosperous belt of Vidarbha. "We await a customer," announces Sujata Halule, member of the gram panchayat at Lon-Saoli in which Dorli falls. "Negotiations are now open." Astonishing and rather unprecedented it is, but Dorli's 270-odd villagers unanimously arrived at the decision a day after the Vilasrao Deshmukh government announced its 'package' on December 8 for six districts of Vidarbha. The relief, note angry villagers, does not address their real problems or help anyone. Dharmapal Jarunde, a vocal villager, says: "All of us came together to discuss what next? We unanimously decided: 'Let's sell our village, pay the dues and move out. It's better than committing suicide'." All families, without an exception, are indebted to village society, with an average debt of Rs35,000. "We can't return it this year; we won't be able to pay it ever, looking at the falling cotton prices and rising input rates," Jarunde says. "Our children can't go to school; old can't afford health care; marriages are falling off;

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festivals are hard to celebrate. What do we do? Commit suicide? This is a much better option than that." Adds another villager: "We'd better run a 'pan' shop which has some income assured, than going through this grind for nothing in return." "If you are a vegetable vendor you can make at least Rs50 in a day. Here at the farm, do anything and you'd still end up in a loss," fumes Sukhdev Mohite. Vikun taka ekdacha and pada yethun baheer (Let's sell this village and move out once and for all)," remarks this veteran farmer. Balveer Omkar, one of the village's poor marginal farmers, asks: "Why did the government promise us Rs2700 before elections? Why did it ask us to sow costly Bt-cotton seeds? Has the government gone insane now?" "This is our protest against the government. We will sell the village, for, we can't run our families and coexist as defaulters or debtors," he says. Take for instance the case of Kisan Halule. This veteran villager borrowed Rs27,000 in 1990 from the District Land Development Bank. Till date, his son Mohan has paid back Rs 60,000, but the bank recently served notice to him to pay back the remaining Rs 24,000. "What do we do if the government also acts like the sahukars (moneylenders)? We won't return the money," says Halule. Jarunde says no farmer has sold cotton this year. "Everyone hoped the government would raise the prices looking at the failure of crop. It didn't. We have no other option but to sell our village," says Jarunde. (Post Script: Several researchers, journalists and politicians visited Dorli. It became an international story. But it remained and still remains where it was. The villagers are open with their bid. We are open for negotiations, they told me when I recently visited the village. Nobody will buy our land, because it does not pay. Why would any one buy losses, villagers explained sarcastically. But Dorli made its point that, villages of rural India are doomed and are on oxygen.)

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15 Mah. Govt. declares a package

December 2005 (Nagpur): The farmers needed better prices. Instead, the government game them a raw deal in the form of a package for six cotton cultivating districts of Vidarbha. The Chief minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh, announced the Rs 1073-crore package during the winter session of Maharashtra Legislature in Nagpur on December 10. There is no correlation between suicides and cotton prices, Deshmukh said while rejecting the demand for higher prices. Last year, we gave Rs 2500 a quintal price for cotton, but the suicides were still the highest at more than 500. Although the price this year is Rs 1980, the number of suicides is comparatively less than last year. This was the argument of the states custodian. In its package the government said: Farmers who have taken loans from moneylenders without requisite licence need not pay back their loans as they stand waived. Secondly, whether licenced or not, no moneylender is allowed to charge interest rate more than the one charged by the co-operative banks. The opposition went silent on the issue since the government had taken all the prominent Opposition leaders into confidence before finalising the package. The package included of restructuring of crop loans up to Rs 25,000 each this adds up to Rs 203 crore as capital amount of the loan and an interest of Rs 61 crore on it. The state has decided to bear the burden of the interest, while the capital amount will not be recovered for the next two years. After that it will be restructured and recovered in three consecutive years, Deshmukh said. A maximum of nine per cent interest would be charged on the restructured loans and the farmers, who would be paying their repayments in time, would be given a waiver of another 4 per cent of interest. But the experts say it is eyewash.

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(Post Script The implementation of the package was shoddy. The Vasantrao Naik Shetkari Swawalamban Mission, which implemented the package for the six affected districts, did not get money from the government immediately. It did not provide any relief, but aggravated the desperation. More suicides were reported after the package from the same six districts which were the area of its focus.)

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16 200 plus and counting (How did the New Year end? And where did the figure of suicides stand?)

December 31 (Nagpur): Deepali Kolhe was too young to die. Just about 15, she was old enough though to understand the woes of her father, Balkrishna, a cotton farmer whose debt and despair seemed endless in Akolas Umra village. Last week, the tenth standard student committed suicide, disturbed by the familys soaring loans and burgeoning problems. Deepali couldnt see the runners trophy she won in an elocution competition at her school. The subject was: Compelling reasons for the rising farmers suicides. While Deepali died facing some of the very reasons shed quoted in her speech, the indigent farmers steeped in debt are harried by mayhem around, with the number of their counterparts committing suicide since June 2, 2005 (the day sowing starts) crossing 200-mark. The figure for the whole year is nearing 400, laments the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti leader Kishor Tiwari. Over a hundred farmers have ended themselves since November, more than 60 of them in this month alone! And 35 since December 10, the day the chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh announced the relief package. The rate at which farmers are committing suicide in the region is mind boggling, notes economist Dr Shrinivas Khandewale. We did not claim that the package would immediately stop suicides. Our effort is to create an atmosphere of faith, where the farmers would feel confident, the CM said during his recent visit to Nagpur. He was here to attend the centenary function of the Agriculture College of Nagpur, where he acknowledged the fact that the scientific institutions and agriculture colleges too need to do some introspection for their failure to reach out to farmers with solution. After all package that we announce is a temporary measure, he said. 115

Yet, the government is far from reality while addressing the wrongs it did with the policies. The package it announced for the six districts plagued with suicides is a classic example of packaging old schemes wrapped in new cover, say farmers leaders. Much of the Rs 1073-crore package is from the farmers own pocket, says farmers leader Vijay Jawandhia. He notes the government has skirted the key issues such as pricing, import duty hike, regulating inputs market and reviewing GM technology. Ironically, a fortnight after the package was announced in the assembly, its implementation is out of sight, apparently due to the folly of the CMs office. The government appointed Manoj Sounik as the officer to oversee its implementation at his designated headquarters at Amravati. Sounik, currently Managing Director of Maharashtra State Farming Corporation, had expressed his inability to shift to Amravati from Pune owing to some personal problems. The government is learnt to have acknowledged that the reasons for Souniks reluctance to shift from Pune are genuine but did not announce his replacement. However, the CM assured on Tuesday that two officers would take charge at Amravati in the next two days. Meanwhile, Tiwari has moved the state human rights commission saying the suicides were a result of gross violation of human rights. Admitting the petition the commission has issued notices to the concerned officials, seeking their reply by January 2, 2006. It would hear the case in the New Year. Question is how many cotton farmers would live on to be heard!

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17 - May we kill ourselves, Prez? (Another village joins the protests, this time around, its a demand to the President of India to give permission for mass suicides!)

January 2006: A little less than a month after the Vilasrao Deshmukh-government in Maharashtra announced a 'special package to bail out the beleaguered cotton farmers' in Vidarbha, a thousand farming families of three villages in Amravati have stirred the administration by seeking permission of the President, Dr A P J Abdul Kalam, through a letter to end their own lives. Apparently, all the families in Pusada, about 21 km from Amravati town, and two other villages under its Panchayat have defaulted on payments of electricity bills. The bills stand at a staggering Rs 35 lakh, including the penalty of about Rs 10 lakh. Officials in the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company (MEDCL) admit they had served notices for disconnection a few days ago. They say the villagers haven't paid the electricity charges for the last five years. "We are unable to pay the charges," maintains Jagdish Bonde, villager of Pusada. "We expressed our inability to pay the bills many times but haven't got any respite; ending ourselves is the last resort," he says of their decision to write to the Prez, through the Sub-Divisional Officer. He says power bills are soaring despite 9-10 hours of daily load shedding. In the letter, the villagers have said they are fed up with the collection drive of the MSEDC. Due to crop failure, they are not in a position to pay the high bill amount, and therefore they be allowed to end their lives. Four months ago, farmers from Fubgaon village in Chandur Bazaar block had also written to Dr Kalam seeking permission for mass suicide. "What else can we do; we are not getting good prices to cotton, the losses are soaring, debt burden rising, load-shedding is rampant, families are tattering,

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children are falling off the schools, what else can we do?" asks another villager, seething in anger. Pusada saw one of its farmers commit suicides two days ago, in the New Year. Across Vidarbha, the number of farmers committing suicide is rising. By the end of 2006, it had kissed the 200-mark since June 2, 2005. It stands are 228 today, going by the records maintained by the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti in Yavatmal. Bonde informs that Pusada, Rohankheda and Nandura Gram Panchayat passed a resolution against paying up the electricity bills. Following it, the MSEDC officials rushed to the Amravati district collector Ravindra Jadhav for his intervention. Though the electricity company had served notices for disconnection, it had not snapped power supply as a humanitarian gesture and extended the deadline, says Jadhav. The collector is learnt to have held a series of meetings with the irate villagers and company officials on Friday. He also had talks with representatives of BJP, Shiv Sena, the Swatantra Bharat Paksha and Shetkari Sanghatna to find a way out of the imbroglio. With a strong backing of Shetkari Sanghatna, the villages are clearly on the warpath against the government and in no mood to pay the dues. Holds Bonde: "We've made them clear that we will pay only electricity charges, not the surcharge or tax or any other cess, whatsoever."

(Postscript: The outstanding electricity dues were waived to some extent, but the story exposed the state government free electricity sop before the 2004 elections. The promise was more political than economical. It was just a election stunt.)

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18 - Loan after loan

(A farming family holding 27 acres in Vidarbha has become a marginal landholder in a span of few years, and a vicious cycle of usurious debt robbed their lands and hopes. There are hundreds of others in the lurch similarly. The farming crisis has different shades of exploitation; this is one.)

January 2006 (Fubgaon, Amravati): The Kitukles had hit the nadir of their desperation, and there was only one thing left to try. It was their only hope out of the crises, they realised. So, thirty-yearold Babita Kitukle handed over her mangal-sutra to her husband Vilas. Mortgaging it would fetch them Rs 500 - an amount enough to lodge a complaint with the police, and do the paper work in which lay their hope. But that too has been futile; a month later the Kitukles are still waiting for the police at the block headquarters to act decisively on their complaint. "This was the last option," holds Babita, the family's rallying point. "We had no cash. We decided to mortgage my mangalsutra to raise some money for paper work and lodge a police complaint," she adds. Babita hasn't lost hope yet. Vilas had given up in between, but he is hanging on now. Having twice attempted suicide in the past month, the 35-year-old farmer in Fubgaon is lucky to be alive. But villagers say he may attempt to end his life again. He is perilously on the edge, to be next on Vidarbha's growing list of farm suicides in the cotton belt. "We are with him," declares the village veteran and a Shetkari Sanghatna activist Babuji Patil Kitukle. "Don't lose hope," he tells Vilas and Babita. The couple is clinging on to a fresh hope of retrieving their 19-acre land grabbed by two private usurers. Maharashtra deputy chief minister R R Patil, who also holds the Home portfolio, had ordered the police to "skin the private money lenders", who are exploiting the gullible farmers. Two months since that order, close to 600 private

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unlicensed moneylenders have been booked and arrested in Vidarbha. The Kitukles hope the police would book their tormentor and help get back their fertile land. "The same money lenders have similarly grabbed land of other peasants too," says Khushal Bhorgade, a dalit farmer. Bhorgade lost his land to a lender, and is now trying to retrieve it by lodging a police complaint. Back in their small house in this village, about 50 km from Amravati, gazing at the ceiling listlessly while lying on his bed is Vilas's 65-year-old father Ambadas, a farmer who worked very hard in his youth. "He has become insane; he lost his mental balance in 1998 when we got our first shock," says a worried looking Damayanti, Vilas's mother. That year, this family suffered staggering losses in their 27-acre farm. Steeped in worries and harried by private lenders, Ambadas crashed mentally. He stared at losing his five-acre land mortgaged with a private moneylender at Chandur Bazaar in 1989. He can't speak now, but his condition does. "I had not dreamt that we'll have to go through this," she Damayanti, squatted on the floor. "When I married him, our combined family owned 70 acres of the most fertile land, we did not depend on the market for any thing," says the frail woman, a shadow of distress and despondency. Vilas, the youngest of Ambadas' three sons, inherited the debt from his father. His elder sons are employed with private companies in Pune. When Ambadas went insane, the usurer mounted pressure on Vilas to repay his debt or allow him to sell off the mortgaged land. In nine years, the Kitukles had already repaid a little over Rs. One lakh as interest on the principal amount of Rs 30,000, but the unscrupulous moneylender demanded his capital amount back with more interest. "He had an eye on the land that bore about 400 orange trees," says Vilas. "I resisted him and kept paying interest in the successive years despite bearing huge losses in agriculture," he recalls. To salvage this land, Vilas went to other Sahukar in 2000, and borrowed 60,000 against his two-and-a-half acre land that was registered as a sale deed against the

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loan (by this time, mortgages were pass and land sale was in). Vilas immediately paid that money to the first sahukar, Munot, with the hope of getting back the five-acre plot of farm. "He did not return our land papers still; he had mounted more interest on it." In the next 16 months, Vilas paid an interest of Rs 1.15 lakh to the second sahukar, who he identifies as Rajesh Chandak. Incidentally, this sahukar was Vilas's classmate till tenth class. Chandak left studies after 12th, while Vilas had to drop out after passing his tenth. "Chandak wanted to sell my land to a third party, but I resisted. This was the best plot I had. I told him that you return me this one and take another plot of eight-acre." After much persuasion and help from a middleman, Vilas got back his two-and-ahalf acres, but lost his eight acres. The cost of that land, going by the market rate then, was Rs 1.5 lakh per acre, say the villagers. "I was desperate to retrieve my best plot, and there was no purchaser for my eight acres then." The eight-acre plot he lost to the lender had about 950 orange trees. Vilas says the sahukar agreed to pay his outstanding bank loan and electricity bill together amounting to Rs 1.2 lakh, and settle his own loan that had scaled up to Rs 1.15 lakh in this deal. Thus, Vilas lost his eight-acre land for a paltry Rs 2.7 lakh, managing to get back his previous land papers for which he had already shelled out an interest of Rs 1.15 lakh on the principal amount of Rs 60,000. That deal was struck in May 2000. In August the same year, Vilas sold six more acres of his farm to Chandak for Rs 80,000. "We needed hard cash again, and I could turn to no one but him. The banks had refused to give us loan for some reasons. From that amount I repaid a small loan borrowed from a villager and invested the remaining in farm," he says. While these developments were unfolding, the first Sahukar mounted his pressure on Vilas to relinquish the five-acre land mortgaged with him. Finally, Vilas gave in 2002. The five-acre plot went out of his hold. There were two reasons for Vilas's crisis. One, he was strongly in the clutches of the two usurers. And two, he had suffered huge losses in 1999 and 2000, when he sowed onion after laying a pipeline on his farm for irrigation. That investment

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was huge. "I got a good crop that year, but the prices of onion had crashed phenomenally," he laments. Vilas had to sell 500 quintals of onion for Rs.30 a quintal. The previous year onion prices were Rs.500 per quintal. Per quintal, he suffered a loss of Rs 470. In 2003, he raised a good orange crop, but just before plucking, a hailstorm destroyed the fruit irreparably. "We could have settled all our loans that year, but destiny had something else in store for us," he laments. For the sahukars it came as a golden opportunity to wrest the prime land of the Kitukles. "This year, Chandak earned Rs.5 lakhs from his orange orchards," says Vilas. In all these years, Vilas' elder brother gave him about Rs 1.5 lakhs to be pumped in agriculture, and all of that money too went in repaying loans. Also, he spent heavily on his father's illness. Finally, in 2004, Vilas had to sell three-and-a-half acres more. This time to the first lender. That fetched him a price of Rs.43,000 per acre from which he cleared all his remaining liabilities. "I've finally settled all my debts", he says. But he's bankrupt. All that he's left with is a little less than three acres of land. And the cotton that he grew on it has fetched nothing. "For the last seven-eight years we haven't celebrated any festival," murmurs Babita. "We had no peace of mind. Our land slipped out of our hands like sand. We kept paying and paying hoping for one good crop that would bail us out. It did not happen. Poor prices have done us in." Babita may not know that a series of government policies also had something to do with their woes. Dramatic declines in rural credit, rising input prices, dwindling output prices, lack of irrigation or processing of agriculture produce in the region, and declining state investments in the sector, have all been responsible for the misery of not just this family, but tens of thousands of other cotton farmers of Vidarbha. Why did the web of private lenders spread in the first place? As farmers' leader Vijay Jawandhia puts it: "It was the lack of availability of institutional credit at low interest rates that added impetus to private sahukari in the region." The interest rates on cooperative bank loans too add up to around 20 per cent per annum, he points out. "Is the government not a sahukar then?"

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Now, the state government's purported intention to act severely against the Shylockian moneylenders has brought a little cheer to the Kitukles who lost their precious land. The indigent family may never know the difference between the sahukar and sarkar, though. Those who do say there is hardly any; the sahukar and sarkar are simply two sides of the same coin.

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19 - Your govt. is of traders! (Planning Commission sends a fact-finding committee, one more after several committees and panels make their recommendations. As it travels along the famished road of Vidarbha countryside, farmers lend a voice to their anger.) Seloo (Wardha), March 2006: "If the prices of our crops are falling so drastically, what and how do you think can we plan? Your systems are bad, bad. Your government is made of traders." For Shyamrao Mahadevrao Zade, a veteran farmer in Mahabala village, speaking about the problems of farmers in this crisis-ridden region was never going to be a problem. Question was would the visitors understand him in his local tongue. Finally, by the time the 50-minute meeting ended, it was good for the high-profile fact-finding committee of India's Planning Commission that they did not know Marathi. And with the district collector's translation lacking in the fiery tone and sense with which Shyamrao spoke, it meant a mechanical end to a sensitive discussion. "It's too premature to speak about our impressions, but it seems there are a lot of factors at play in the building of this crisis," reflected team's chairperson Adarsa Misra, the principal adviser to the commission, talking to the media persons. The plan panel's team comprising nine members arrived in the city for its threeday tour of the region to "study regional development disparities, effectiveness of the existing mechanisms to overcome them, factors fuelling the rural distress and review of the package announced by Maharashtra Government to alleviate the farm situation. Divided in three groups, the members will tour different districts in a programme finalised by divisional commissioners of Nagpur and Amravati. The team, which is the seventh or eighth study panel to visit Vidarbha in the current agriculture season, is to submit its report in "three months", but Misra admitted that its recommendations would not be mandatory on the Centre. The state government had itself commissioned three to four studies earlier in the season to find out reasons for farmers' suicides and distress, which was followed

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by the visit of a team of the National Commission for Farmers led by India's ace agriculture scientist Professor M S Swaminathan. The government then announced a Rs 1075-crore special package for cotton-cultivating six districts in December last, but the spell of suicides has not stopped; it has worsened. Against that backdrop, the farmers and their leaders meet the arrival of another study team with a lot of skepticism and doubts. "It's all a farce," charged Kishor Tiwari, convenor of Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti, in a vitriolic attack on the union and state governments. "Between the visits of the teams, a hundred farmers are committing suicides," he lamented. "Stop sending the teams and announce genuine measures that even the governments know are needed to be taken if you've to lift the farmers out of this sort of a distress."

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20 - Suicide in a distant land (In Vidarbha, where over a thousand farmers have taken their own lives in last the four years over unabated distress, Venkanna Ramayya Rayee's suicide has an unusual edge. A farmer from neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, his name won't figure as an entry in the suicide ledger in either state.) March 2006 (Zari Jamni, Yavatmal): Venkanna Ramayya Rayee was escaping distress in Andhra Pradesh, his native state. He couldn't escape it in Vidarbha, a distant land. So, when the 21-year-old chilly farmer, originally from Guntur, suffered staggering losses last year and stared at a certain disaster this year too, he swallowed pesticide in his cramped hut at his farm on February 2. Venkanna's became an unusual suicide in the cotton belt of Vidarbha, a land where over a thousand farmers have taken their own lives in last the four years out of debt, losses and unabated distress. In Maharashtra, Venkanna's name won't figure as an entry in the suicide ledger, and neither will it in Andhra. His suicide would go down unnoticed as a death in the alien land. As the agrarian distress threatens to engulf crops other than cotton in not just this region but other states too, the young farmer could not escape the fury. It was just a matter of time. "He suffered staggering losses," says Yellamanda Kotaiyya Bellam, an old farmer and distant relative of Venkanna. As did the tens of other chilly growers who farm the land taken on lease from local cotton farmers. But Venkanna could not have recovered the production cost from the yield even this year, which was the cause of his tension, says Narayana, a relative, who farms the plot next to that of the Venkanna's in Mucchi village, 40 km south of Pandharkawda in Yavatmal. Chilly prices have dipped to an all time low today, even as the inputs prices skyrocketed. Tens of Andhra farmers lease agriculture land from cultivators in Vidarbha every year, a trend that picked up in the mid-nineties when Telangana was devastated 126

by successive droughts and policies belting the peasants. Venkanna cultivated about nine acres of land at a lease rate of Rs.4500 per acre. Which means, he paid Rs 40,500 on lease alone. Add to that the per-acre production cost of Rs.35,000, plus the transportation costs post-harvest. The largest component of the production cost is seeds, chemicals, and electricity, constituting nearly 40-50%. "This year chilly prices stand at Rs.2500 a quintal down from Rs.5000 at least in 2002-03," mumbles Narayana, worry writ large on his face. The price drop has been caused by a bumper crop and price rigging by market players at Nagpur, the main hub for chilly. There is no minimum support price (MSP) for chilly currently, and volatility in international markets has also impacted prices. With chilly economics turning the other way in a span of two years, Andhra farmers here were plunged in huge losses. Their debts obviously piled up. Explains Suresh Bolenwar, a farmer from Hiwra Barsa village in Kelapur tehsil: "If a chilly farmer fails to get an average 20 quintals of yield, he is set to be doomed. The economics would not work out in his favour then." Indeed, when they made profits, they made it big time. But in the volatile markets as the prices slid down, these farmers too ran into trouble, says Kishore Tiwari, convenor of the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS) at Pandharkawda. "They do intensive farming, involving greater risks." Adds Venkatrao, another chilly farmer: "Every crop failed last year, but chilly failed totally." Also take this: Venkanna's risks were manifold the crop was his but the farm was not, and there was nothing to fall back upon once the crop suffered irreparable damage without any insurance cover. "Every farmer is in trouble, and chilly grower is no different," Tiwari says sarcastically. The issue of pricing is central, he adds. And until that is addressed, the government won't be able to bail them out of debt-trap. Venkanna's name does not figure in the list of 367 suicides of Vidarbha in the current agriculture season till March 10. He does figure in the post-mortem logbook though at Pandharkawda sub-district hospital. And that's the only proof of distress that the Telugu farmer was in, in a land away from his homeland. 127

21 - Poison reaches them, government does not

Suicides by consuming poison contribute to over two-thirds of the total autopsies performed at a sub-district hospital in interior Vidarbha, Maharashtra. "Pesticide could be bought from any Krishi Kendra. But for medicine, they've to walk miles before they could get it," says one health official. March 2006 - Yavatmal, Maharashtra - He was too young to die. But Ayya Baheru Atram, 28, was sure he could not get out of debts in this life. So, the Kolam tribal farmer in the remote Dubhati village, in south Yavatmal's Zari Jamni block, hung himself from a tree along his farm on February 8, leaving a shattered Suman, his wife, and two young kids Sunanda and Charandas, to face the Sahukars. A few miles from this village, two sisters are yet to come to terms with the suicide of their father, Ganpat Naitam, in Shibla. Pranita, among the two, is remorseful to say the least. It was the worries of her marriage that did her father in. Ganpat had run out of patience, and money. Cotton prices did not give any breather. He ended his life in September, last, when he saw no chance to fish himself out of the muddle. He consumed poison that is pesticide. But before closing his eyes, he told Pranita of his debts. Both, Atram and Naitam, figure in the logbook maintained by the sub-district hospital at Pandharkawda of the post-mortem cases. Poison and hanging the two modes leave behind all other causes for death going by the post-mortem logbook here. Also, it shows, a dramatic rise in the number of poisoning and hanging cases. So much so, that poison cases have become synonymous with farmers' suicides across Yavatmal. "An overwhelming number of poison cases that come for post-mortem are farmers," reveals Dr Rajesh Dhatrak, in-charge of sub-district hospital. Look at the trend: Suicides by consuming poison contribute to over two-thirds of the total autopsies performed here. Elsewhere too, the trend is similar. "These cases increase in the period of October-January," notes Dr Dhatrak. In those months in 128

2003-04, this hospital saw 23 cases of poisoning. It went up to 39 last year, and 48 this year, that is 2005-06. Adds Dr S D Dhale, a health official in Ghatanji: Suicide's instant source is available in the market easily. "Pesticide could be bought from any Krishi Kendra. But for medicine, they've to walk miles before they could get it," he says. In September last, the state government issued instructions to the post-mortem centers to run round the clock, even in the nights. They do now. Meanwhile a new study stirs up the issue with fresh data. The Indira Gandhi Institute for Development Research, Mumbai, which looked at the agrarian distress in Yavatmal, Washim and Wardha districts, has a devastating finding on the state's suicide mortality rate or SMR. A team of researchers also studied the larger trends of suicides in Maharashtra. "The SMR (suicides per 100,000 population) for male farmers," it says, "trebled from 17 in 1995 to 53 in 2004." That was the period when farm suicides grew appallingly. In contrast, adds the report, for overall males in the state, it stabilized at a level of 20 or 21 after 2001. Concurrently, the SMR for women actually fell after 1999. Evidently, the farmers are in for trouble, having taken a stick on many fronts. As the report indicates, farmers' suicides have actually pushed up the state's overall SMR level. "In 2001," the study states, "age-adjusted SMR for males was 20.6 in Maharashtra as compared to India's 14.0." So, at 53, the SMR for male farmers is nearly four times the national average for all males. In the crisis-ridden district like Amravati, the SMR for male farmers shot up to 140 in 2004, ten times the national average and seven times the state's average for all males. Over two-thirds of the 111 suicide cases that the study looked at were of farmers less than 50 years old. Close to 60% of them had been farmers for over ten years, two in five had completed their matriculation, and four in every five suicides were deaths by poisoning. That is, by consuming pesticide.

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22- 350, and counting

(Inexplicably, Maharashtra's bosses went into hiding after announcing a "bailout package" for Vidarbha's beleaguered farmers. Not a single pie was distributed in the first two months after the chief minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh, announced it. Farmers' suicides had failed to move a heartless government.)

March 2006 : It's only getting worse and worse. The first nine days of this month have seen 25 farmers commit suicide in Vidarbha. The register of farmers' suicides is swelling with every passing day 367 according to the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS) at the last count on 10 March -- for the agriculture season that started on June 2 last year. Over 150 suicides have happened in the last three months, and a hundred of them are in Yavatmal alone. Those who are clinging on to a hope for better life and an end to the crisis are unfortunately discovering far greater levels of distress and desperation, even as the marketing season silently comes to end. Inexplicably, the state bosses have gone in to hiding, after much brouhaha over the announcement of, what they call, a bailout package. Ironically, not a single pie of even that package has been distributed yet to the beleaguered farmers, two months after the chief minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh, announced it in Nagpur. "Continuing spell of suicides is a concern; the implementation of package is being delayed," Deshmukh himself admitted in Yavatmal, while addressing a farmers' rally on February 27, 2006. He had announced the much-trumpeted package during the winter session of the Maharashtra Legislature at Nagpur. That delay though has cost over 150 lives that's the number of farmers who committed suicide since the announcement of the package in Vidarbha. The Rs.1075 crore package is for only six cotton districts of Vidarbha, but the ugly spell of suicides is spreading in eastern districts of the region that grow paddy. Over 30 paddy growers too have ended themselves in the past three months in

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Gondia, Bhandara and Chandrapur districts. And the central reason, evidently, remains the same: declining market prices and rising production cost. "The trend is not surprising," says farmers' leader Vijay Jawandhia at Wardha. "Paddy cultivators are not getting the minimum support price, which is why they are unable to recover the high production cost." A little trigger is disastrous then. The losses to the cotton growers are phenomenal this year, says Kishore Tiwari of the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti. Maharashtra government withdrew advance bonus of Rs.500 a quintal over the guaranteed price before the commencement of the season that alone amounts to a loss of thousand crore rupees to the cotton cultivators, notes Jawandhia. "By March 9, the federation's procurement stood at 15 lakh quintals, while that by the private buyers had crossed a hundred lakh quintals," says a high placed federation official at Nagpur, who preferred to not be named. "That's a phenomenal dip considering the last year's record 250 lakh quintal procurement by us," he adds. "Whereas the total bills stood at Rs.4000 crore last year, this year we've had to pay only Rs.180 crore to the farmers so far." Add to that the abysmal prices in private markets that have picked up about a hundred lakh quintals of cotton from the growers. (1 lakh = 100,000) Former General Manager (Procurement) of the Maharashtra State Cooperative Cotton Growers Marketing Federation S N Deshmukh says the yield may not be more than 170 lakh quintals this time around. That means about 50 lakh quintals of cotton is still with growers, procured neither by the federation nor by private buyers. And the clamour for selling it is just picking up. "It's clear, the government is pushing the farmers to private buyers," Jawandhia points out. By the end of January, the state-run federation had silently closed down its procurement centres without giving any reason, leaving the farmers in the lurch. In Yavatmal, tens of farmers awaited the federation or private traders to buy their cotton. Nobody did so for days, pushing the cultivators to a point of desperation. So much so that at one centre angry farmers resorted to violence. But the state government remained unmoved, negligent towards their plight. What is more, the government had clandestinely applied a clause to its policy of

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procurement. The federation decided not to buy substandard cotton (called Kavdi in this region), mostly the one that comes with the third or the fourth picking. Kavdi forms a substantial quantity and is processed into bales and sold at cheaper rates to the mills. The decision not to buy Kavdi was not made public. Farmers did not know this. It was a silent move -- the government feared it would have triggered a political storm. However, in February the government rolled back that decision apparently under fire from the Centre over the suicides. "We had decided not to buy cotton that was below par on its micronear quality, but we've withdrawn that condition now," marketing minister Harshwardhan Patil said at a news conference in Nagpur on March 1. He said that was the reason why the federation's procurement centres did not buy cotton from cultivators for some time. "Now that we've issued the GR, the centres will start procurement." "We can't keep cotton beyond March. Its quality will start deteriorating fast if it is not sent for ginning soon," Deshmukh says. If their remaining cotton is not bought now, farmers are doomed. But this is the trick, says Tiwari. "Now the growers will sell it in distress at any (little) price." Kavdi is being procured at Rs.750 a quintal, said a federation official. But the federation will try to brand even the good grade cotton as Kavdi and try to buy all of it at Rs 750. This is the end of the season. Gradation has always been a problem and steeped in corruption. The government-run agency has presumed that the cotton left to be sold is of poor quality. The abysmal prices will ensure farmers won't go to the federation anyway (which is the main reason why the government has taken this decision) and would prefer to sell cotton to private traders at slightly better prices. This is how the government is withdrawing itself from the game - by hook or by crook. Another factor: The losses have been accentuated by failure of Bt seeds, notes an official in the federation's Nagpur office who prefers to remain unnamed. Bureaucrats in the federation do not want to come on record fearing that may create a further controversy. While the crop failed, the cultivation cost multiplied manifold. And drop in prices mean a sure disaster, says Tiwari. But not all the cotton crops that failed were due to the bollworm pest. In fact along with the pest 132

attack, the cause for devastation this time around was a disease called 'Lalya' in local parlance, or "reddening". Farmers say this was unseen before, and that it affected Bt more than the non-Bt cotton crop. Suicides continue, even as the state bureaucracy hold programmes in villages to "revitalise the self-confidence of farmers" or "generate awareness." In Pusad block of Yavatmal, for instance, the sub-divisional officer, Vijay Swami, hosted discourses in villages to prevent farmers from committing suicide. He called it a way to reinvigorate the lost confidence among the crisis-hit peasants of his area. Farmers though want a better price to their yield. "Until we get better prices and institutional credit, the situation won't improve," holds Anil Kale, a progressive farmer in Pandharkawda. The prices have dwindled to Rs.1400 a quintal in private markets, which start the day's procurement with a better price to draw farmers to their mandi. "But by the noon, rates start sliding, and by the evening, we may get only Rs.1400 or further less a quintal," says a farmer. Holds Jawandhia: "These 'jan-jagruti' programmes may go on, but after a slew of important policy measures institutional credit and better prices, of all." Says Tiwari: "We don't need to make aware the farmers any more. We've to make the heartless government aware of the grass-root situation. The need is not of shetkari atmavishwas jagruti abhiyaan, but sarkar jagruti abhiyaan!" So far, the government's approach to tackling such a serious issue has been appalling. In fact, the government's drive against sahukars (rural money lenders) notwithstanding, exploitation is going unchecked. Sanjay Mohod, 35, was beaten by a whip by his lender, when he failed to repay Rs.400 borrowed a month ago in Amravati's Chincholi village. Broken by that, Mohod made a futile bid to take his own life. With two acres of land to farm upon, he also works as a labourer to make his both ends meet.

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23 Suicides come riding on vehicle loans (A two-wheeler loan bonanza is overrunning crop-loan concerns in crisis-torn Vidarbha, where two to three farmers have been committing suicide daily. In a land where farmers find it difficult to get institutional loans for their crops, it seems getting loans for bikes are not.) April 2006 - When Managing Director of the State Bank of India A Rameshkumar handed over keys of a new two-wheeler to the 351st consumer recently, it made a big news in Yavatmal. The bank proudly announced its target: To clear at least a thousand cases by this March end through the 'Baliraja' scheme and "give dignity and improved mobility to farmers." This is the first year that the banks are making easy bike loans accessible to the farmers. It's a new trend. Other banks did not lag behind either. They organized loan-fairs to offer easy vehicle loans to peasants, in the name of giving them "much-needed dignity." Each one also had a target to be attained through such fairs. Only three months ago, Diwakar Ganpat Ashtekar, 63, ended his life in paddyrich Awalgaon village of Chandrapur district. His crop and vehicle loan liability stood at Rs 5 lakh when he consumed pesticide and died. As the risks in agriculture grew, he collapsed. The six-and-a-half-acre farmer had borrowed Rs. 2.5 lakh for a jeep from the SBI's Medki branch seven years ago for "agriculture transport." He still owed Rs.3,66,497 after having repaid Rs.1,60,776 at 18% interest rate to the bank. Also, he had Rs.1,23,771 to be repaid to the village society towards crop loan. As his debts shot up, a small natural trigger was enough for him to give in. "We purchased the jeep for transportation of vegetables from our own farm and the village to a nearby market," says his son Rajesh, 33. "But that objective failed with the failure of crops due to droughts." The family was broke. And the jeep never ran after a few months for want of petrol. The bank has not yet seized the jeep yet. In such cases, bank officials don't dare enter the house immediately.

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And yet, two-wheeler bonanza is overrunning crop loans here in crisis-torn Vidarbha, where two to three farmers are committing suicide daily one in every eight to twelve hours. Yavatmal which alone accounts for over a hundred farm suicides this season is looking at record two-wheeler sales among peasants through easy loan schemes against land. Cross over to western Vidarbha, in Bhadumri village of Yavatmal: Dilip Shende, 31, a six-acre farmer, is done in by his overriding tensions today. For the last one year, he has been enjoying a ride on his bike a Hero Honda Splendor. Now he wonders how he would pay loan installments. This year the crop failed. Had it been good he could've paid the bank loan. "I don't have money for petrol today, where do I bring money for the installments? I wish I had not spent money on petrol," he repents. A month back, Dilip's neighbour Dyaneshwar Bhendare, a 31-year-old marginal farmer, committed suicide, with worries of soaring debts finally catching up. His loan wasn't for a bike, but agriculture. It was a private loan. In the same village, where an average farming household is in debt, five new bikes came in last month. The buyers were landholders between five and ten acres. A few more cases are in the pipeline for Bajaj Pulsars. Says Ankit Naitam, a Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti activist: "More than 150 bikes have come in to four villages in Kelapur in a month." These are the villages where over ten farmers have ended themselves this season. They did not have bike loans, but they were in debt averaging between Rs.35,000 and Rs.1 lakh, all for agriculture purposes, borrowed from institutional and private sources. And none of them had a capacity to repay the loan. "It's a sure way of pushing farmers in to debt trap that would end up in a death trap," adds Vijay Jawandhia, 65, farmers' leader in Wardha. Jawandhia himself does not have a vehicle. Another cotton farmer Pundalik Soyam, 47, says: "These men are heading for a sure death; they can't and won't pay the installments to the banks." Where will the money come from? "When we are unable to repay the crop loan in time and

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feed the families properly, buying a bike is not just foolish, it's a gamble we are bound to lose." Soyam does not own a vehicle either, and he's not entirely wrong. The loaned money for the two-wheelers is directly going to the vehicle showrooms; the manufacturers benefit because their sales are going up. But next year when the same farmers need crop loans, would the banks give them money again, and more so when they are unable to repay the existing loan? That's the question Jawandhia and Soyam are raising. Take Punaji Maraskolhe, 33, in Jhuli village. He bought a new Bajaj CT 100 a year ago by depositing Rs.15,000 towards down payment. He could not pay the annual installment of Rs.10,000. "The bank seized my bike last week," complains Punaji, a 21-acre farmer. "My other debts and liabilities are so much that I could not have paid for the bike." The deals are tempting. You get a bike with a sat-bara (7/12 extract), which is not even considered a proof of land ownership. It is a basic land record, and does not substitute for a registered sale deed and a few other documents. So, if a farmer fakes on this document by bribing a clerk in a land-records office, he can get a document on his name without actually owning the land. And if a bank gives money to him on this basis, there's risk involved if that farmer decides not to repay the loan. Also, any crook may cheat a genuine farmer, who owns land, by claiming a 7/12 document on his name through bribing. This practice is still rampant. Still, in the name of giving dignity to farmers, the easy-finance schemes are being pushed as agriculture loans, meaning a bank approves loan with strings attached. Some of these are interwoven also with crop loans. A State Bank official in Yavatmal says, pleading anonymity: "The loan is treated as agriculture term loan to be repaid in equal installments in a stipulated duration of four years at 9% interest rate." If a farmer fails to repay money, the vehicle is seized, he admits. Eligibility criteria for term loans are that a farmer must have a good track record in crop loan payments and own either four-acre irrigated or eight-acre non-irrigated land.

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Explains Kishor Tiwari, convener of the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti: "Every year the bank will increase the term loan amount and deduct the installments for the bikes. The debt burden will mount on a farmer." Some farmers are aware of all this before they sign up, but they feel that banks would give them crop loans for the next season and deduct some amount from that towards the bike loan. The total loan would mount, but at least it guarantees them some money for next season, they feel. Rajeev Niwal, 40, co-partner of Parvati Automobiles in Yavatmal, takes a different view: "This is a good scheme for the emancipation of a farmer." His argument is a bike gives mobility to a farmer, efficiency in supervision of farm work and dignity. "The two-wheelers are in huge demand in the countryside," Niwal claims. He says that this scheme will change the farmers. "It will accelerate the growth of allied businesses. For instance, the dairy business." "Yes, it would indeed change a farmer's life, but for the worse," scoffs Tiwari. "So, when P Chidambaram announces a hike in agriculture loan in budget, it's good news for automobile industry," he says sarcastically.

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24 - This summer: a farm suicide every 8 hrs in Vidarbha

May 2006: As the mercury soars to a new high in Vidarbha this summer, the number of farm suicides is mounting too with every passing day at an alarming rate. Three cotton growers committed suicide in Amravati and Buldana in the last 24 hours taking the toll to 467 that is since June 2, 2005 till date, as per the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti's register of suicides in Pandharkawda, Yavatmal. Close of 150 of them have been reported from Yavatmal district alone, and over 300 of the total have been reported in the last four months, says Kishor Tiwari, the Samiti convenor. While distress unfolds further, an average three farmers are ending themselves every day in Vidarbha, as per the register maintained meticulously by the Samiti. That is one suicide every eight hours. Tragically, the register shows six entries of farmers' suicide on one single day on April 22, from across the region. Tiwari says the government's special package for the six distress ridden districts of Vidarbha has clearly failed to rekindle any hope in farming community, though the Vilasrao Deshmukh-government claimed that the package would surely check the rate of suicides. "It's only getting worse and worse," say the farm leaders. Sadly, the ugly spell of suicides has spread to the eastern districts of the region that cultivate paddy. Over 50 paddy cultivators have ended themselves in the past three months in Gondia, Bhandara and Chandrapur. And the central reason, evidently, remains the same: declining market prices and rising production cost. "The trend is not surprising," says farmers' leader Vijay Jawandhia at Wardha. "Paddy cultivators are not getting the minimum support price, which is why they are unable to recover the high production cost." A little trigger is disastrous then. The losses to the cotton growers are phenomenal this year, admits an official in the Maharashtra State Cooperative Cotton Growers' Marketing Federation.

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Maharashtra government withdrew an advance bonus of Rs 500 a quintal over the guaranteed price before the commencement of the season that alone amounted to a loss of thousand crore rupees to the cotton cultivators, points out Jawandhia. Add to that the abysmal prices in private markets that picked up over a hundred lakh quintals of cotton from growers. The losses have been further accentuated by failure of Bt seeds, notes an official in the federation's Nagpur office. While the BT seeds failed, the cultivation cost multiplied manifold. And drop in prices meant a sure disaster, adds Tiwari.

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25 - Three suicides and a funeral

May 2006, (Pandharkawda, Yavatmal):

It was the toughest test for the villagers of Kolezari. Ghosavi Dhansingh Pawar, a 52-year-old debt-ridden Banjara farmer, lay dead in Yavatmal government hospital's mortuary, even as his niece and nephew were getting ready for their marriages back home in Kolezari. The Pawars were rattled out of their jubilation by this suicide, just when the marriage celebrations had reached a crescendo. The crisis had finally come for a boil. Steep in debt, Ghosavi, a Banjara farmer, took his own life after trying his luck to borrow money for gifts and clothes in Mohada, a few km from his village, on May 8. That was a day before the wedding of his youngest sibling Dalsingh's girl Savita. The next day, on May 10, his other brother Fulsingh's son Pramod was to enter wedlock in Agpuri village. On May 8, when Ghosavi failed to get loan from lenders to purchase gifts and items to be distributed in the marriages, the Bada Pitaji was sad. He bought and consumed pesticide. "An auto driver came with the information around 4-4.30 pm that my father was lying in an unconscious state in a nullah in Mohada, so we rushed to the spot and took him to Yavatmal government hospital, where he was declared dead," says Ghosavi's shell-shocked son, Prakash, 25. Ghosavi had run in to a debt trap private and bank loans of over Rs one lakh borrowed for agriculture purposes. The Banjara farmer had suffered two successive years of crop failure. Prakash says they were also cultivating five-acre land, taken on an annual lease of Rs 25,000. Two years of total crop failure meant phenomenal losses. Add to that this year's failure of the transgenic (Bt) varieties of cotton. As the production cost rose

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sharply, the yield prices declined dramatically. Accentuating the burden of debt were the marriages of his two daughters and a son. Ghosavi's was the 492nd farm suicide since June 2 last year, as per the list maintained by the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti at Pandharkawda. The news of Ghosavi's suicide fell like a lightening on the Pawars, busy in marriage arrangements. Along with Savita, one more marriage was to be solemnized in the same 'mandap' to reduce the expenditure. It was of the daughter of Shivbhajan Rathod, Ghosavi's next-door neighbour. "The 'baraats' had arrived the 8th evening, and it was all in haywires," recounts Deputy Sarpanch Tulsiram Chavan. "We were staring at three marriages and a funeral all to be performed within a span of 24 hours, and the villagers had to join hands for that." So, a few villagers decided to oversee the arrangements for the marriages, the others arranged for Ghosavi's funeral, while some others took care of outstation guests. The women folks looked after cooking. Within hours, the entire village had come together in the crisis to perform one of the most daunting tasks. Informs Mohan Jadhav, the VJAS secretary, "The police were in a hurry. They wanted us to shift the body from mortuary to the village quickly." Jadhav was with the villagers at Yavatmal to look after the post mortem and shifting of Ghosavi's body. Despite police pressure, they managed to delay transporting Ghosavi's body until Savita's marriage was over on the 9
th

afternoon, and 'baraat' had left. Yet, as her marriage procession left the village it met the body, kept at a farm in the bushes, at a junction. Savita, who knew, it was her uncle's last journey, cried inconsolably. The villagers then carried out the funeral of Ghosavi in the evening, before focusing on the next marriage, scheduled for the next day. "I wanted to postpone my marriage," says Pramod. But the village elders encouraged the Pawars to go ahead with the wedding. Had it been put off, the bride's family would have had to face losses and embarrassment.

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Everyone is in the same situation, says Waman Chavan, also a farmer. Informs Kishor Tiwari, VJAS convenor: "This entire village is debt-ridden and defaulter." Its combined debt will run in to over Rs 20 lakh. "And that's the larger crisis debt and distress," Tiwari explains. Even Ghosavi's other siblings are no exception. "I would have to go for a Khandepalat now," says Fulsingh, Pramod's father. Literally, it means Fulsingh will borrow Rs 50,000 from a private lender, and repay his bank debt. He will then get a fresh bank loan of Rs 65,000. From that he will repay private lender's money immediately at 5% interest (Rs 2,000 for a day). Fulsingh will thus be left with Rs 13,000 and an increased bank loan of Rs 65,000. He will have to borrow more to purchase inputs for the kharif. And that will come at 50% interest rate. Khandepalat (or shifting of burden from one shoulder to the other) is the popular practice among Vidarbha's debt ridden farmers. It is vicious. The banks don't release fresh loans until farmers repay the old ones. This then is the way to restructure their own loans, but the way that is killing. Prakash, who is still to come to terms with the shock, says they always feared his father could end himself. "Even I might do it," he declares. Kolezari village meanwhile is the picture of unity in the days of tragedy. It saw the season of marriages arrive amidst the season of suicides. But then in Vidarbha, for long, mayhem and marriages go hand in hand.

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26 - A Black Monday

May 2006:

It was a 'Black Monday' for one farming family in rural Amravati. Pushpa Tetu, 21, had weaved dreams for her wedding. She was engaged to a tea stall vendor in the nearby Malkhed village just about a month-and-a-half ago. But the hard-working daughter of Prabhakar Tetu, a farm labourer, took her own life on Monday afternoon, unable to see her father and an elder brother struggle to raise money for her wedding. Hers would not go down as a farm-suicide though. Pushpa was after all a landless farmer's daughter, never mind that she too worked on farms as an agriculture labourer, having dropped out of school after eighth class. "The government doesn't acknowledge this as a suicide related to farm crisis," says Kishor Tiwari of Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti in Yavatmal. While Pushpa lay hung from her roof, chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh was reviewing farm situation in Amravati, barely 13 km from their village Anjangaonbari. Her body lay hung for seven hours till the police, busy all day in CM's bandobast, arrived in the evening to conduct panchanama. "The CM's caravan went to Amravati by the same road on which this village falls," informs Amravati-based journalist Rathunath Pande. "It was really tragic," says Pande. "She was about to be married off." Ironically, Deshmukh announced one more door-to-door study in the six districts to "find out exact reasons fuelling farmers' suicides." Pushpa's marriage was being pushed, because of the financial crunch. The family was landless and the earnings from working others' farms were not enough to meet the ends. The wedding expenses would have run in to a few thousand rupees, besides dowry, the villagers inform.

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"When entire village is in crisis, resulting from an agrarian distress, the farmers labourers are among the worst hit," explains Tiwari. Pushpa's suicide mocks at the state government's much-trumpeted Rs 1078-crore package, which has Rs one crore for each of the six districts covered by it only for mass weddings. Tiwari says the government's steps and measures are not instilling any confidence in shattered farmers. The Tetus were left with no cash after Pushpa's engagement ceremony. Prabhakar was perhaps banking on private lenders for a loan, but with no asset to stand guarantee against it, that was out of question. For days both, the father and the son, tried, and tried hard but to no avail. Pushpa stood witness to their daily struggle. She felt she was at the root of the problem, and ended herself when no family member was at home. This was second such incident in Vidarbha this agriculture year, which is about to end. In the first incident, a 19-year-old girl Neeta Pundalikrao Bhopat had committed suicide saying she was ending herself, because her indebted father would end himself under tension of her wedding.

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27 - A village awaits its tryst with PM

June 2006, (Kolezari, Yavatmal):

Anantabai Battenwar is going to be busy over the next two days. For, much of this village is to be cleaned and decked up by Friday. That's the government order. So, with a broomstick in hand, she sets out for work early. Other women folks join her in cleaning the village. "After all", chuckles this sexagenarian, " New Delhi is coming down to our village". Kolezari is in the news. Two days from now, on July 1, Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh will descend here, in a helicopter on a temporary helipad being built on the outskirts, to say hello and understand their problems, this during his two-day visit to Vidarbha, starting June 30. And already, officials, police, and the media are discovering the non-descript tiny village of 70-odd families, mostly Banjaras, some 50 km from Yavatmal town, tucked in the heart of cotton belt. That's the ground zero of suicides. In May, the village saw three weddings and a funeral taking place in 48 hours. Ghosavi Pawar, a farmer who had run into huge debts, killed himself when he failed to get loan to buy gifts for the weddings of his niece and nephew. Nobody not even the tehsildar cared to visit the mourning family and the villagers then (DNA, May 21). Things have changed though. Today, it's the most sought-after village, with national and international media persons and officials visiting it. Local public representatives, who don't usually find time, are coming in as well, surprisingly, all this after the PM's visit became certain. First to come was Vasant Purke, the district guardian minister, four days ago. He delivered a cheque of Rs 30,000, part of the Rs one lakh aid, to Ghosavi's family. Next to come was the SP, Himmatrao Deshbhratar, followed by Divisional

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Commissioner, Sudhir Goyal, and district collector Harshdeep Kamble. Tens of other officials and babus are still coming. "Every day a new officer comes and offers us something. Only today, the assistant agriculture officer came and told us to form a society so that he could expedite the proposal of diary project. But we haven't even applied for it!" says Raju Rathod, a local youth. "Seems timing is the essence". "It's becoming like a Pandharpur fair," quips Anantabai. "None of us has seen so many vehicles come to our village," she says. "My son, who lives in Nagpur doesn't believe that the PM could come to our village." Chuckles Fulsingh Pawar, Ghosavi's younger brother: "I think the love for us will end with the PM's visit. From 2
nd

June, everything will be normal; nobody will

come to this village". Fulsingh informs, the officials offered to paint their huts. "We rejected it; let the PM see how we live!" Yet, for odd reasons, farmers of Kolezari say rains and Anna (a private moneylender from Andhra Pradesh) are even more important than PM. Across the region, suicide toll is rising with every passing day June so far has seen 54 farmers take their own lives. Yavatmal is the worst hit. "The PM's visit is undoubtedly significant for us, but if rains are delayed further, we are doomed," says Waman Rathod, one of the farmers in the village. Rains have been scarce for sowing operations. So beyond obvious excitement about the high profile visit, there's tension among villagers. "Anna is more important today than the PM," holds Ravi Todase, who is awaiting the Andhra moneylender. "He did come earlier, but after last year's crackdown on moneylenders, he refused to give us credit fearing police action," he says. "It's been a great loss to us. Now that the banks are also refusing loans, how do we buy inputs?" Todase hasn't sowed yet. Two days ago, the collector reportedly ordered the revenue officials to complete all the schemes in the village and assured that money won't be a problem. Yet,

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over 50 per cent of the villagers have no source of credit, even as the sowing operations come to end this weekend. Waman Rathod says 50 per cent farmers have sown seeds; rests simply can't buy inputs without credit. Kolezari's 350 residents will be raising all such problems with the PM, when he arrives. The point will not be only about the suicide of Ghosavi, but the tough way others are surviving all around Vidarbha. Kolezari has decided to speak, not only for itself but for all the neighbouring villages, when it keeps its date with the PM, only if it gets an opportunity to speak. And a strong police posse to be dotting the village landscape will stand witness to it.

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28 - A package of disappointment

July 2006 (Nagpur): For Kolezari villagers, the much-publicised visit by the PM did not happen Saturday. Officially, rains had played the spoil-sport. Apparently, the local political dynamics played a part in putting off Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh's journey into Banjara hinterland. He did visit Yavatmal, but he met only a few "handpicked and tutored" families at the airport. But his interactions with debt-ridden farmers, he said, "left a deep impression" on his mind. Back in Nagpur, after spending an hour in Yavatmal, the PM announced an eagerly awaited relief package, learnt to have been reworked till last minute by Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar for the six worst-hit western districts of Vidarbha - Yavatmal, Amravati, Akola, Wardha, Washim and Buldana. "My office," the PM said, "will monitor implementation of the package of relief measures," since its success depends sorely on how it is implemented. While this package, he hoped, will provide a healing touch to the distress-ridden farmers, the PM assured, "If some policies come in between, we will modify them." The farmers, who form the backbone of this region's economy, are in acute crisis need to be bailed out, he said. Rolled out in a new wrapper, the Rs 3750-crore worth of measures wipe out, in one stroke, Rs 712 crore of overdue interest (till June 30, 2006) on farmers in the targeted districts with an immediate effect, and mops up an additional credit flow of Rs 1275 crore for 2006-07, saying "these two were immediate priorities for farmers to resume normal agriculture activities." The burden of Rs 712 crore is to be shared by the state and Centre. And as the Chief Minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh, vindicated later, the state's share of Rs 356

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crore includes of the already released Rs 261 crore under the Rs 1075 crore package announced by his government. "All farmers will have no past burden as on today," the PM announced, keeping his word. He sought to reschedule Rs 1296 crore of overdue loans with 3-5 years of moratorium on the recovery. Also, a sum of Rs 50 lakh will be placed at the disposal of the collectors of each of the six districts "to be used judiciously for alleviating the distress of such families." Non-commital on the key demands of raising cotton prices or import duty, Dr Singh said the Centre will take the onus of supporting major, minor and medium irrigation projects in those districts with an allocation of Rs 2177 crore over three years. Other features of the relief includes, a seed replacement programme costing Rs 180 crore, Rs 135 crore for a new programme for improving cattle and fisheries activities, Rs 240 crore for watershed development and water harvesting activities and bringing the six districts under the cover of National Horticulture Mission by proving Rs 225 crore assistance. He said his government will work to strengthen the state government and weed out regional backlog. Quick to add later, Pawar said a similar package would be given to the 25 identified suicide-affected districts of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala.

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29 - It was just a band-aid for deep wound:

July 2006: Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh's Rs 3750-crore panacea to the region's farmers on the concluding day of his two-day tour of Vidarbha will silence the political critics for some time, but in the long run it may bring in more succour to the Congress than farmers of this region where the party has lost considerable ground among agrarian masses in the past few years. The relief package for the six districts sounds good, politically, but equally bad economically. It fails to address some of the crucial factors that are accelerating the crisis, experts react. For instance, the issue of prices and procurement of cotton, Vidarbha's mainstay crop, remain unaddressed. The region's farmers have been demanding resurrection of the Monopoly Cotton Procurement Scheme, which is in loss. The government-run scheme, implemented by the Maharashtra State Cooperative Cotton Growers' Marketing Federation, was liberalised in 2003 for private borrowings when it ran into debts to the tune of Rs 6000 crore. It was the same reason - unregulated private procurement - that had prompted this state way back in the seventies to formulate the monopolcy scheme so that cotton farmers get a guarantee of procurement and protective prices. The PM's package and relief could have brought cheers on the faces of farmers had it tackled this problem, experts say. As Vijay Jawandhia, farmers' leader in Wardha, puts it: "Packages can't go hand in hand with wrong policies." For instance, the issue of availability of quality seeds to farmers can't be tackled without larger regulatory mechanisms in place and a well-laid-out vigilance system. To that end, this package - crafted by Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar turns a blind eye to some of the important recommendations made by Prof M S Swaminathan-led National Commission on Farmers (NCF) in one of its reports.

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The NCF had, among many other things, recommended that the government should set up a price fluctuation fund, which would give some umbrage to the farmers from international price fluctuations. Even the Rs 712 crore interest waiver, without ensuring good income to farmers, means the cooperative banks, dominated mostly by the Congress and NCP leaders, would be happy. This money would help reduce their NPAs, was how Nitin Gadkari, BJP state president, reacted. Yet, the Prime Minister's visit to this region is no less a significant step. In that it now puts pressure on the state government to act, and act urgently, and honestly. On the one hand, it ridicules and exposes the state government's Rs 1075-crore package for the same six districts, going by the sheer urgency that the PM showed in air-dashing to the region. On the other, it snubs Pawar, who did not care to visit even one distress family. The question that the region begs Pawar to answer is what took it so long for his ministry to address the issue, even when he acknowledges the crisis has been there for much long time. And his admission that rural indebtedness has to be treated as a national crisis brings about a shift in the official stand, that legitimises the acceptance to take an urgent look at the sector, this - when his own cabinet colleague Sharad Pawar said some time back that the suicide rate among farmers was just about "normal"; only to term it as "a concern" after much criticism.30 - But rural indebtedness comes on national radar But rural indebtedness comes on national radar: India will take a complete re-look at the growing indebtedness among the rural masses, with Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh Saturday admitting that this was a nation-wide crisis. "We need to treat this (rural indebtedness) as a national problem," the PM felt. "I have discussed this matter with the finance minister and the agriculture minister. The government will be setting up an expert group in the next few days to look into the problem of agriculture indebtedness in its totality and suggest

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measures for providing relief to farmers of the country," Dr Singh announced here before winding up his two-day tour of Vidarbha. A situation assessment survey of farmers done by the National Sample Survey Organisation in 2003 and released in 2005 as part of its 59th round showed over 50% of rural households in crippling debts. In Maharashtra that figure was pegged at 55% by the same survey, while the farm experts believe Vidarbha's rural indebtedness would turn out to even more grievous. The PM said: "I recognise that there is a problem of debt overhand, which we need to address if we have to revive our farming community." The expert group, to be constituted in a few days, will be expected to give recommendations in the next three months after consulting the state governments. Based on it, his government will take effective measures to ensure that the farming community is provided substantial relief from its debt problem, he informed.

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30 - Where were the MPs and MLAs by the way?

July 2006:

The Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh's entourage was highly surprised by and peeved at the indifference of Vidarbha's elected public representatives to the farmers' plight, highly placed sources told DNA on Monday. "During the two days that he was in the region, absolute apathy of public representatives was quite glaringly evident," sources disclosed. "Not only that, poor presentations and preparation by the government machinery also came in for criticism from the Central officials," sources said. The PM had expected better information on the issue from them. Not a single public representative had any idea or suggestion specific to his or her own constituency to mitigate the agrarian crisis, which has compelled hundreds of farmers to take extreme steps, these sources said. The PM and his entourage were highly disappointed by the "generalised" presentations made by various state officials on second day during the meetings. He wanted district-specific information highlighting reasons and factors fuelling the farm crisis in Vidarbha; but he could not get it. At one point, the PM affronted a senior state government officer who was explaining the different between "genuine and non-genuine suicides by farmers" in his presentation. We are talking about human distress, and not statistics," was how Dr Singh reacted, cutting short his presentation. In one of his meetings, the PM specifically instructed the collectors to take initiative in registering farmers' suicides properly and utilizing funds judiciously. "Don't rely on the GRs and papers while disbursing funds for such a to human crisis," the PM was quoted by the sources as saying. Even the Planning Commission members, who had descended on the city a day before PM's tour

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began, were unhappy with the way government machinery had braced itself for the PM's visit to see distress first hand.

(Postscript: The suicides by farmers still continue, in fact theyve picked up pace. From the day PM left Vidarbha, 65 farmers have committed suicide in just 21 days an average three to five suicides a day or one suicide every six to eight hours. Thats an alarming rate, by all means. Credit situation remains dismal. The sowing operation has taken a beating. The story has lost its steam in media. But every day on those killing fields somewhere a farmer digs his own grave.)

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31 - When death comes faster than the package

August 2006 - Vegaon (Yavatmal): Durgabai and Nalini lost their husbands in a little over one year. Now the two women sit consoling each other, mourning the loss of a father and a son. Vegaon has, meanwhile, moved on with its third suicide a day ago. "He'd run out of patience," says Nalini of her husband Sanjay Kalaskar, 25, who hanged himself to death in his house on July 12, barely eleven days after the announcement of the PM's special package for Vidarbha's six most-affected districts. The common reason: debt and lack of credit. In April last, it was Babanrao who was staring at the crisis. This time around, it was his son. Sanjay had after all inherited loans with land. But a sense of anger now compounds shock and helplessness of the two widows. "Sanjay could have lived on, had the bank officials not waited for the notification of the PM's special package to formally come," cries Vijay, his younger brother. The Kalaskars were informed of the benefits to them two days ago (August 1), when the notification came from New Delhi. "This time they came home to deliver the loan," says Vijay. "What do I do of it, having lost both my father and brother?" he wonders. The bank did not ease any burden on Sanjay after his father took his own life. Sanjay's total loan liability with the Central Bank of Maregaon rose to Rs.1.1 lakh, besides outstanding bills of local inputs dealer and electricity dues. "We could not repay a single pie last year after my father's death," says Vijay. Babanrao had suffered huge losses in 2005 on its 17-acre land, half of which is covered by irrigation. "When the bank refused fresh credit, we borrowed from acquaintances (read moneylenders)," says Vijay. Sanjay thought he would repay the money once he gets credit from the bank. His hopes crashed when the officials declined his persistent pleas saying they had not received any government notification. "We were not in a position to buy fertilizers or pesticides that were crucial in this period." 155

Not far away, in Mendholi village of adjoining Wardha district, Shankar Thool, 45, and his son Sandeep, 21, ended themselves on 30 July. Across Vidarbha, as banks and babus wait for formal orders, farmers are killing themselves at a sickening pace ending days of desperation. In Mohi village of Wardha district, two farmers - Rambhau Thakre, 45, and Vasant Mohite, 40 committed suicide on the same day: July 27. Sadly, the same day, Union Cabinet approved the PM's package for Vidarbha. "We are confused, whom should we believe in? The finance minister says action will be taken within 48 hours against officials who do not release the credit, and the babus say they have no notification," wonders sixty-year-old Tatyaji Panghate at Ghonsa in Zari Jamni block of Yavatmal. At the time of writing, many farmers are still craving for credit. And in the meantime, floods have wrecked havoc in Yavatmal, Chandrapur and Buldana, swallowing the standing crop and plunging the farmers into fresh crises. Many of them won't be able to resow, because that season has gone, leaving them bewildered. "This is my 15th trip to the bank, but he says I am not eligible for loan. He isn't telling me why? I've documents ready and no past dues," says Natthu Dave, a five-acre farmer from Borda village, waiting outside the Indian Bank branch in Ghonsa. Tens of farmers queue up for loans in this bank and the branch of district central cooperative bank next door. Says Suresh Bolenwar, a farm activist: "Banks are still not giving credit to farmers and if they do, the sanctioned amount is insufficient." That is another problem. "We have to still borrow from private sources to bridge the gap, which reduces our returns due to huge interest component." For instance, in Jhamkola village, Santosh Kohare should easily get Rs 1 lakh in credit going by his huge land size - 25-acres. "But no bank here is dealing with fresh cases," he says. He won't get more than Rs.15,000 if at all his case is approved for loan owing to pressure, says Bolenwar.

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Adds Santosh: "I've borrowed from private sources at 60 per cent interest rate." His loss at the end of the year on his returns would be a lakh rupees. Admits Suresh Ninawe, Indian Bank branch manager at Ghonsa: "We've to follow the credit limits as per the orders from higher ups." Ninawe says his branch has disbursed over Rs 1 crore in credit to farmers this year, up from Rs 70 lakh last year. "The demand is much more," he admits. Ninawe says he's going to restart disbursement after eight days. "I am too tired now." As he stops the disbursement, farmers die in misery. Rain-fed cotton farmers can get credit up to Rs.10,500 per Ha, but they seldom get that much here. "Because cotton farming is not viable," says K G Nagpure, manager of central cooperative bank at Ghonsa. Compare that with western Maharashtra: a farmer with 25 acres of land will easily get a minimum Rs three lakh loan, he says. "Because it is viable." A number of factors have hit the viability factor here though. Crashing cotton prices, rising imports, falling on-and-off farm incomes and much more. The fact remains that the PM's special package is not working. "Over a hundred farmers have committed suicide in Vidarbha after the PM's visit," says Kishor Tiwari of the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti. The last month saw over 90 farmers commit suicide, a record in the past decade. "This was expected," adds Tiwari, "Because the PM's package on paper fails to capture the point farmers are making on the ground. Now we hear the CM has no idea of dealing with the crisis. What else do the farmers do?" Tragically, death came faster than the package in all those over 90 households that saw a suicide in the post-PM-tour period.

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32 - The kiss of Chikungunya September 2006 - Yavatmal & Amravati, Maharashtra: "Chikun Gunya Prasanna"! (With the blessings of Chikungunya) That is what the sticker on the new Indica car of a rural doctor, who's a diploma in homoeopathy, reads, at a food joint on our way to Wadki, a town off the highway in Yavatmal's Maregaon block some 140 km from Nagpur city. Nothing unusual about it, explains Vilas Raut, ex-Sarpanch of Wadki. All of them are making huge money. "Many of them don't need to work for the rest of their lives," he says, "they've won a jackpot this season." Only, the jackpot of doctors is a near death for thousands of farmers here. People in village after village in Vidarbha are down with Chikungunya, a type of viral fever caused by the bite of mosquitoes carrying the parasite. It's simply not weaning away. And there are no signs that it will fade away quickly. "Farmers who are not committing suicide are dying this way," says Raut. Or will die after some time. "Scores of them are selling land, mortgaging the ornaments to lenders, selling cattle in distress, all for paying medical bills," he informs. The bills are running into several hundred rupees for treating a routine viral fever. "Because the first thing a rural doctor does when a patient comes in is put him on intravenous injections through saline." Adds a stringer of a language daily: "I've lent money to some 50 farmers against gold." The stringer who pleads anonymity says he could not have turned down the farmers, because they needed cash for treatment. "I had no option, but to keep their ornaments as a security, and I know many of them won't be able to repay me the money I lent them without interest." "It's happening in my village Jogalkhed in Akola district as well. Several families have had to sell portions of their land to raise money from health care; Chikungunya is crushing farmers," says Mohan Dhandge, a small time waiter working at a joint of the Haldirams in Nagpur. Dhandge left his village to eke out

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a living. His parents continue to do farming in his village. "This time when I visited my family, the village looked really bad." With no signs of government health machinery around, rural patients are turning to private doctors, from allopaths to a host of others, for cure. But tens of thousands of them, already beaten by a distressing agrarian crisis, can't simply afford private health care costs. Some of them are dying. It's not that the fever is fatally spreading like plague. It's simply that the distressridden peasantry can't afford health care in Vidarbha. "People are helpless, they've no money," says Gautam Patil, an auto-driver from Khadki village. "That's because farming is not paying, almost everybody is in huge debt," he explains. "We are doing at least 20 trips every day of Wadki and two of Sevagram, for transporting patients of Chikungunya." Guatam says he can't recall a time when he or any other auto-driver made so many rounds a day. An exhausted Gautam saw two sisters die from the want of medical attention in a village in the vicinity. Seven more children died in the past month. He says he tried best to save Karishma Pandhari Uikey, 12 and her elder sister Laxmi, but both of them died in Sevagram in a month. Their father, a landless labourer, could not spend money on their cure. Chikungunya never assumed such epidemic proportions in Vidarbha. And it never hit the beleaguered patients so fatally. "People's immunity has gone down due to less food intake," explains Dr Milind Mane, a pediatrician and family doctor in Nagpur. Mane says the outbreak of disease and its proportion is unprecedented this time and has a link with the declining food intake of the farming families. Officially, close to 200 people have died of Chikungunya, but the actual count could be much larger. Those deaths, as Kishor Tiwari of Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti puts it, were due to lack of medical aid. Tiwari says: "Tens of farmers

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simply can't afford it." This is the hidden face of the crisis, he explains. Farmers' suicide is simply the visible one. Chikungunya is a bad news for the agriculture sector, this after floods and heavy rains caused large-scale devastation of crops in some parts. For one, the paucity of labourers would affect farm activities the hard way. And two, it would also transfer the money from farmers to private hospitals. Which means a shift of money from rural to urban parts. With the state and central government budget on rural development already dwindling, the viral fever is actually stripping the peasantry off whatever little it owns. In Wadki, for instance, six doctors have no time for lunch. "We can have it after some time," says Dr Surendra Thamke, a lone doctor and director of Sanjeevani Rural Hospital, a ten-bed ramshackle building of four rooms, where about eight patients, all farmers, lie in racking pain. Five other doctors in town are BHMS or DHMS, none of them an Allopath. Dr Thamke says for the last three months, he's had an average 300 to 500 patients of Chikungunya come to his OPD (out patient department). "That's true of other doctors too," he informs. Given his fee of Rs.20, it means an average daily collection of Rs 6,000-10,000. The hospital made huge earnings, apart from charging for nursing, bed fee and other bills. "If properly treated, the fever won't last more than three days, though the symptoms may remain for a month," explains Dr Thamke. Last month, at its peak, the Sanjeevani rural hospital held three camps on its own; 10,500 patients turned up in those three days. The only pharmacy shop too got renovated from a cramped hut to a plush shop. The despair Chikungunya has caused in the Vidarbha countryside, already hit by the spiraling agrarian crisis, is appalling. Regional news reports, health department data and estimates of private doctors all seem to indicate that around a million people, the majority of them farmers, may be down with the fever. This, at a time when the spraying season is about to start, or has just begun in some parts. 160

33 - Sermons for the distressed souls

October 2006 - "The problem with sermons is they don't feed the hungry and bail out the indebted," scoffs off Vishnu Kale, 30. "We've had enough of them. I wish the governments were not so insane." All that Vishnu wanted earlier this year was a loan of Rs.70,000, a minimum he needs to cultivate 15 acres of land. He got the loan, but only half his need. Like tens of thousands of other farmers did. "What we got though - and are still getting - in abundance from the government is sermons on importance of life and living," he chuckles satirically. "And improving self-dignity and self-confidence." Lots of it in fact! Akola's Kumbhari village, where Vishnu lives, saw the government officials turning up with 'Atmasamman Dindi' (self-dignity rally) in June-July. Indore's godman Bhaiyyuji Maharaj led the march ostensibly sponsored by the state. "They told us be confident and don't think of suicide, turn to organic farming! They spoke to us about how to do farming. About de-addiction. They told us about various schemes meant for us. And then they showed us a clip of a sermon by the Maharaj that suicide is not the way out, all this in one hour," he says. Vishnu's problems have multiplied since then. Floods wrecked the crop first. Now, Bt cotton is failing. "And I can't help but worry how do I repay my loans," he says, low in confidence. In Chandur, some 20 kms from Kumbhari, Vinod Ramdas Mahalle is also discovering why his father committed suicide last year. "I used to fight with him after he sold three acres for my sister's marriage. He had also taken to drinking in the last six months before his death, but I now realise why! You can't run your family on a two-acre farm without any other work. He tried to manage his finances despite crisis, without letting us know his tensions." Ramdas had a loan of about a lakh rupees - enough for him to run into a state of utter hopelessness.

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Vinod says no amount of counselling will bring back his father. And any number of rallies and marches won't rid him of his financial mess. "It's not that we are not trying. We are, but nothing's working for us." 'Atmasamman Dindi', aimed at lifting the sagging morale of farmers, traveled through over 200 villages of Vidarbha in June-July. But the only tangible thing to happen in the rally, as Zilla Parishad member from Kumbhari Chandrashekhar Pande remarks, was that the government babus visited the village. Tehsildars, BDOs, Agriculture Officers, all of them came here to promote and propagate the special government packages for the farmers. Farmers though did not show much interest in the programme because they believed it was superficial, feels Arvind Kadale, a social worker and counsellor in Akola, who took part in the rally. "A mass wave of depression is sweeping the farmers in cotton region," warns Dr Sujay Patil, a well-known psychiatrist in Akola. "And it's linked to economic factors," he says. "Farmers' depression is an outcome of an agrarian crisis that is multi-factorial and deep-rooted." The problem is gigantic. The results of a door-to-door study done by the 'Vasantrao Naik Shetkari Swawalamban Mission', a nodal agency to oversee implementation of the CM's and PM's special packages are there to see. Close to three-and-a-half lakh farm families are in 'acute distress' in six crisis-ridden districts of Vidarbha, about 12 lakh farmers are staring at crop loss this year, and nearly a lakh families are suffering from serious health problems but are unable to see a doctor - they are only a step away from suicide. Patil warns about the cascading effect that suicides can have: "If a village sees a farmer ending himself in distress, it's more vulnerable. We call it a role modelling effect." He is voluntarily counseling village community on their call in Akola district. It's been over a year that he is treating chronically depressed farmers free of cost at his hospital. Last year, he dispatched pamphlets as awareness campaign to all the

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village heads in the district. But as he puts it: "Counseling works to some extent, but doesn't root out the economic crisis." Tackling morale, not the economics Yet, there were tens of political rallies, which mostly did glib-talking. Shiv Sena MLC Diwakar Raote is leading one such currently. He calls it a 'Santvana Yatra' (rally to console farmers). It'll trudge some 600 km with the blessings of the Sena Supremo Bal Thackeray and visit some 200 households where suicides occurred. And the list of official attempts to tackle the huge crisis appears more bizarre. Last year, officials of the state government held bhajan-kirtan programmes in Yavatmal as part of the 'Atma Vishwas Jagruti Abhiyan' (a confidence building programme). The aim was to boost the sagging morale of a farming community wrecked by the continuing suicides. The same year, the government also invited Satpal Maharaj to hold such a programme. A year before last, Kharabe Maharaj had delivered sermons in scores of villages, apart from tens of local godmen. It has now asked, as the chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh reveals, the Art of Living to hold counseling camps for farmers. They did two for the rural youths earlier this month. "It's ridiculous," remarks Vijay Jawandhia, a farmers' leader in Wardha, "the government is diverting the attention of farmers from its failures. When you can't give them good prices, hold counselling sessions. It's a ploy to evade responsibilities. The government should address policy issues than singing bhajans to the farmers." Adds Dr Vidyadhar Pande, a former Shetkari Sanghatna activist in Kumbhari: "Government's credibility is at its lowest today, and the godmen are its only medium to hook the farmers by cashing in on their spiritual and religious quotient." Suicides won't stop, he warns. "Give us good remunerative prices, a level-playing field to face imports and timely credit," he says. Admits Sudhir Kumar Goyal, Divisional Commissioner, Amravati, "We are encouraging group activities and reaching out to the people through schemes and

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counseling programmes. This won't solve their problems, we know, but we hope this would at least taper off suicides." "Chawdi discussions in the village are long over. If you make people sit together even once a week, it'll be useful," Goyal strongly believes. Last year, while announcing its package, the state government directed the authorities to set up a 'helpline' for farmers at Amravati. That was done, but today the helpline itself needs help for resurrection. The idea was to keep open doors of counseling and government help for distress-ridden farmers. Also, agricultural counseling long collapsed. There's no way a farmer can get the technical know-how about the newer technologies and seeds that storm the markets every year. Patil says social support systems in villages have folded and people's collective spiritual conscience has eroded. Many problems are interwoven into each other. So, to some extent, such programmes work, but a slew of other measures has also to go in tandem. "The region has a long tradition of spiritual movements linked to social reform, like Gadge baba, Tukdoji Maharaj," reminds Madhu Jadhav, a veteran journalist in Akola. So while it might be good to hold such programmes, the question is should the government be organising such events when it does nothing about the problems driving farmers to suicide. Meanwhile, even as the state government takes shelter with the godmen, the figure of farm suicides surges with every passing day. There have been over 375 farmers' suicides in Vidarbha since the Prime Minister announced his package for the region, and over 950 since June 2005. August saw 111 suicides and September 125, which were record of sorts, according to the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS), a farmers' movement in Yavatmal. The awareness programmes and spiritual counselling programmes aim to make farmers in this depression region 'positive' and aware of existing schemes they can benefit from. It's a different matter if those schemes actually get delivered.

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New motivation programmes The Art of Living instructor and in-charge of youth leadership training programme, Vijay Hake says, "Our aim was to motivate the youths and we've been able to do that." Close to 70 boys and girls took part in the 10-day camp at Salbuldi village. The participants say they are high in confidence after attending the camp and they learnt many a new useful thing. Says Manoj Raut, a young farmer from Shirkhed in Amravati district: "We were taught about organic farming at the Art of Living camp and to plant trees in our farms according to the principle of Panchwati." "We also learned sudarshan kriya, rainwater harvesting, and how to reduce our cultivation cost," says Sarang Jomade, 23, son of a marginal farmer from Hiwarkhed village. Just a week ago, the Art of Living volunteers also held a basic camp for youths of Nimbi village, near Morshi. "That's helped change the youngsters," says former Sarpanch Sudhakar Akhare. "Next year, we'll move on to organic farming." Among other things, Art of Living volunteers are propagating organic farming, de-addiction, meditation and village cleanliness. "Many boys have reformed after that camp," claims Jyoti Kale, one of the young and enthusiastic village girls to coordinate the camp activities. About a hundred boys and girls participated in the programme and learn breathing techniques. "We have organised one more camp next month in the neighbouring tehsil." But her father Bhagtwat Kale says: "Government should also do a lot more." He feels instead of packages, a one-time loan waiver and remunerative prices are important for the resurrection of rural Vidarbha'a economy. Back in Akola, Dr Patil warns momentary counselling won't work in long term, if the economic factors aren't tackled. "Farmers are driven to suicide through a process of hopelessness, helplessness and worthlessness," he explains. "If we diagnose depression, we can stop a farmer from taking his own life, but suicidal tendencies don't die immediately despite counseling and medicines."

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Twenty-nine-year-old Kisan Sukhdeo Mankar, a very emotional and naivelooking farmer of five acres, rarely smiles these days. Kisan, who wanted to become a teacher but could not continue his education after BSc first year, is a classic case of chronic depression - something that may drive him to suicide any moment. Resting on a bed in Dr Patil's hospital, with his tense-looking mother Narmada aside, Kisan is trying to re-discover a meaning for his life. This is the fourth occasion that he has needed hospitalisation for in one year. Now, he says wryly: "It would be better if I remain in hospital all my life." Socially withdrawn, Kisan epitomises the state of Vidarbha farmers - in chronic mental and economical depression. One thing though is certain: it is the latter that causes the former.

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34 - The theatre of hope November 2006 - Gondia & Bhandara: It's pitch dark, and the dilapidated road leading into Maregaon, a non-descript village in the forests of Bhandara, bears no sign of any human activity, until you finally enter the slender alley that opens up into the village's common ground. At 10 pm, Maregaon is not just awake; it's having a party. And nearly a dozen other neighbouring villages have gathered for what appears like a grand fair. For cantankerous vendors at food and tea stalls, it's business time in the dark hour. The noise is deafening. Loud speakers are tucked into the branches of a couple of huge banyan trees, against the backdrop of the central tent-turned-auditorium. The accentuated sound reverberates in the air, mixing with the fair's petulant noise. The huge tent, which has a seating capacity for 10,000 people, is illuminated with a series of halogen bulbs. On the stage, a couple of volunteers check curtains and test mikes. "Phu phu, halo halo." Backstage, artistes colour their faces in the light of the only bulb that hangs from a bamboo of the shamiyana. Musician and sound-recorder, sitting opposite the stage, briskly check the connections. In one corner, the tentwahlas, unperturbed by the noise, are fast asleep. By 11 pm, it's all choc-a-block with men and women of all ages. Whistling begins. A film-like poster pasted on a wall displays the ad. Maregaon is holding the show of a Jhadipatti drama tonight. And people from far-off villages are here for it. (Jhadipatti in Vidarbha's Marathi dialect means forest culture.) Forget any Shakespearean magnum opus or a 'Waiting for the Godot' at the Prithvi theatre in Juhu, Mumbai. This one is Vidarbha's best kept cultural secret: Jhadipatti Rangbhoomi. And if you thought what's in it, think again mainstream artistes turn down offers in Mumbai and Pune to take part in this indigenous informal festival, and walk away with pockets-full at the end of the five-month season in April.

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Remarks Devendra Dodke, a theatre and TV artist: "Jhadipatti is like a rough road. If you drive here, you can drive on any road. If you can impress audience here, there are little chances that you would fail on any other stage in the world." Far from the limelight, artistes like Devendra travel in villages of eastern Vidarbha hinterland to make money, at times turning down offers from the mainstream. Says Shekhar Patel, director and lead actor of several plays here: "We hold no rehearsals. Scripts are given to the artistes an hour before the play, and in two to three shows, we set the drama. So much of our performances are extempore." The role of the prompters is therefore crucial, explains Shekhar, who grew up in this theatre-culture and is now one of the most acclaimed artists of this world. He says there is no parallel to the Jhadipatti stage in the world. Jhadipatti theatre culture is more than a century and a half old, and it's now cemented in the living traditions of the people. Nearly 3000 villages in the four districts Gadchiroli, Chandrapur, Gondia and Bhandara have drama mandals which rope in hundreds of village families in this season for social exchanges. If the government thought Vidarbha's social bonds are crumbling due to the agrarian crisis, this festivity suggests that not all is wrong with the region. As Maregaon's elders say: This is not just the occasion for entertainment, but also social exchange. "We get to come together after slogging in the fields. For the prospective brides and grooms, their search for partners ends in this season." Maregaon itself has not reported any suicides till date, but figures for the Vidarbha region crossed 500 since the Prime Minister visited on 1 July. Its economics and scale are mind-boggling. Roughly 3000 shows of nearly 150 plays are staged in five months, starting November every year. For one show, the company gets a minimum booking amount of Rs.30,000 from the local village mandal. The mandal in turn earns almost double the booking sum from the sale of tickets priced between Rs.10 and Rs.40. The total business of all the companies put together for a season runs up to Rs.10 crore, without any aid from government or private sector. The rural people pool in their money.

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Tens of playwrights from this soil pen the family dramas, taking themes from the current social problems and trends, to deliver a message in the end. Take, for instance, the Marathi play titled Election mhanje songat song, jikde tikde bomba, bomb (Election's a farce). The play brings to fore the village politics and comments on private money-lenders' menace in the villages a subject central to the current crisis. The play, staged by a group in Dhanla village of Nagpur district, is penned by Raju Tirpude and directed by Jaidev Patre, both seasoned Jhadipatti performers. The central theme revolves around two families of a village one of a moneylender and the other of the village's respected personality. While the theme portrays the struggle between the two for the village panchayat's control, it revolves around the latter's son who is a social worker, disinterested in village politics but forced to contest election by his ambitious father. His rival is the son of moneylender, a goon who's hated by one and all in the village, especially the women. The social worker's fiancee gives that melodramatic element to the drama that punctuates the Jhadipatti theatre culture. The goon's desperation for both the chair and the girl ends with his defeat. The police arrest him for hatching a conspiracy to kill the social worker through a henchman. The protagonist social worker clears the debt of his would-be-father-in-law by paying Rs.20,000 to the moneylender and calls the village to adopt a farming model that is cost-effective, one that does not require the nave villagers to borrow from the unscrupulous lenders. The play, which is doing the rounds in Jhadipatti this year, is an instant hit, since it brings to the audience, mostly the peasants, a subject of importance in relevant times. It shows the decadence in both, the agrarian economy and village politics. Local performers are enacting the characters. The play has seven actors and runs into three acts. The play lasts around four hours including the two intervals. Says Durvas Kapgate, proprietor of 'Jhadipatti Marathi Rangbhoomi' at Wadsa (Desaiganj) in Gadchiroli district: "There is no guarantee that good theatre artists will survive on this stage. The dynamics of this theatre is quite different." Durvas

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camps in Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur and other major cities for months to search for new talents, fresh faces for the ensuing seasons. "Our company bears the cost of their travel, stay and other contingencies, besides their per-show honorarium. From a minimum of Rs.500, it can go up to Rs. 5,000 a show." Villagers like to see simple Marathi family dramas that don't burden the mind. Human relations, tragedy, humour, each of these plays portrays all the moods. There's no room for any obscenity, but double-meaning dialogues are in-thing. Each play runs into about five hours, and ends up usually in the wee hours. That is when the caravan moves to the next stop, while the labourers unwind tents. Two to three teams of contractors work in tandem with each drama company. Jhadipatti theatre gives work to tens of youths: from playwrights to artists to musicians and even tea-stall vendors. "Each company hires labourers for erecting pandals and making arrangements, sets up printing press for advertisement campaigns, so there's a lot of income generation activity in these months," says Durvas. Jhadipatti has withstood the onslaught of external influence. Contrarily, it has evolved stronger, with the advent of sound and light technology. "You may not be great at stagecraft, but you'd still make waves if you are know a bit of all acting, dancing and singing," says Prakash Lanje, a lecturer at a junior college in a Bhandara village. He doubles up as a manager of a drama group. Purushottam Durugkar, a 36-year-old farmer who is the president of Maregaon drama society, says 40 members of the mandal chose the play from a list of 12. "We've been holding our own shows at village-level. This is our first time with the professionals." "Thankfully", he quips, "we've recovered our money."

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35 - The princely cow and the crisis Wardha & Yavatmal, November: Kamlabai Gudhe has finally made up her mind to sell the cow a Jersey cow. Not yet, she says, when its pregnant; itll fetch me a better price then. When her husband Palasram, a four-acre farmer, committed suicide last May, Kamlabai did not expect the government to add to her burden of debt. This cow, she says, is a huge liability for us. Its eating into our food also. The dalit family is a beneficiary of the CMs Rs 1075-crore special package for the six suicide-prone districts of Vidarbha. She also got Rs 1 lakh in aid. But as Kamlabai admits candidly: We had no knowledge of milking a cow. It would have been better had they given us roof. Her hut bears no roof at all. It would have been much better had we got money to fence our farm, says Bhaskar, her son. The wild boars and Neelguy have been causing damage to their crop. We are already tired of that menace, he says, and now, this cow. The officials insisted its a gift from the government; the cow would add to our income, says an angry Bhaskar. He says he paid Rs 5500 to bring the cow home. The government paid the remaining 75% amount as subsidy. They said it will give us more than 10 litres of milk every day, it doesnt give even four, Bhaskar says. The government gave them cow feed worth Rs 2500, but he complains its of substandard quality, a fact, officials also acknowledge. Lonsawali village, 25 km from Wardha town, is abuzz with the cow stories. A frail Kamlabai looks bewildered at this new family member on her farm. After the demise of her husband Palasram in May 2006, Kamlabai took ill with chikun gunya. All of us were down with fever for a month, and we could not feed the cow, so I gave it to my sister to look after it, she says. Weve to spend minimum Rs 80 to feed it daily. Ive to tend to it for the whole day, so I lose my labour wages. Wheres the money? How do we feed it when we are going hungry every day? he wonders.

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Its been two months now that the Gudhes are maintaining the cow. Bhaskar says, if we are unable to sell the cow, I will leave it in the collectors house. Cut in to Wanjri village of Yavatmal: Six out of 16 cows that came in to this village under the same package have been sold by the beneficiaries. Its impossible for us to maintain a buffalo, complains Ashok Manchalwar, a marginal farmer. I sold it to recover my money, he says reluctantly. Actually, Ashok passed on his headache to another farmer, chuckles Dada Rode, a dairy expert and milk collection agent in Pandharkawda. Giving a cow for dairy to a crisis-ridden family is disastrous; you are driving the family to a certain suicide, warns Rode, who has 25 years of experience in milk collection in Yavatmal district. He says the collection of the entire district is a little over 7,000 litres pathetic, to say the least. People in this region have no skill in dairy; climatic conditions are unfavourable and the people get no cooperation from the animal husbandry department, he says. The governments door-to-door survey of the 17.64 lakh distress-ridden rural households in the six crisis districts found that nearly 4.5 lakh households are in acute distress, while another 9.15 lakh households are in moderate crisis. In such a situation, giving cows is like giving a suicide pill to farmers, feels Rode. He points out the two previous experiences of promoting dairy failed miserably in Vidarbha. One reason for that is lack of feed. With cotton cash crop eating into the area of food crops like Jowar, we lost the cattle feed. Compare the statistics with western Maharashtra. The total milk collection in all 11 districts of Vidarbha does not exceed 50,000 litres a day. Thats nothing, say the dairy officials in Nagpur. The 14 districts of western and northern Maharashtra collect between 60 lakh and 1 crore litres of milk every day throughout the year. The estimated economy of milk and milk products in those districts is pegged at close to Rs 10,000 crore annually.

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Says Sudhir Kumar Goyal: We have given three options to the beneficiaries. Hybrid cows, buffaloes and desi cows. We are looking at it through groups, mostly the self-help-groups, says the divisional commissioner. But Goyal admits to the failure of the programme, a reason why the scheme is on the hold for now. So far, about 3000 milch cows have been distributed from the CMs package. Weve to distribute 10,000 in the current fiscal, he quips. Add to that the PM package provision for a thousand cows in each of the six districts a year, and for the next three years. Thats 18,000 cows. Dairy wont work in this region, wed said it when the packages were announced, points out Vijay Jawandhia, a farmers leader. Give a cow and a buffalo to those benefiting from the sixth pay commission, theyll understand our problem, demands Ravindra Gaurkar sarcastically. In Wanjri, hes another harangued beneficiary about to sell the princely prize. Post script: (Vidarbha remains a grim statistic: One farm suicide in every eight hours. More than half of those who committed suicide till date were between 20 and 45. The toll is rising; over 2000 farmers have committed suicide in two years. Violent protests have begun all over, and the crisis is entering the next phase. One farmer was killed at a cotton procurement centre in Wani, Yavatmal, when police opened fire on the hundreds of farmers, who protested the delay in procurement in a spontaneous outburst on December 8, Friday, right when the winter session of the Maharashtra Legislature was on in Nagpur. Four others were injured in what was the first such vitriolic protest by the farmers on their own. Wanis tension is now spreading to a hundred other procurement centres, even as the disheartened peasants continue to take their own lives daily. The government continues to remain unmoved and unheeding, while the saffron alliance is clueless.)

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