JOIN USAs India's agrarian crisis deepens, the rural poor are sinking under the debt burden and farmers' suicides continue unabated even as politicians and political parties talk indifferently about the issue and governments, whether at the Centre or in the states, seem able to do no more than undertake half-hearted measures, meant only to make headlines, not a difference to the farmers. And when the pressure to acknowledge facts and act becomes too high, political parties simply take recourse to blame games, rather than making sincere efforts to find solutions. So, it came as no surprise when Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh told parliament recently that farmers' suicides had risen by 32% in Karnataka from 2015 to 2016 while claiming that the national trend in suicides had declined by 10% during the same period. In absolute numbers, farmers' suicides have risen from 1,569 to 2,079 - farmers/cultivators accounting for 1,212 and agricultural labourers, 867 - according to data collected by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). In pinpointing Karnataka's failure, the BJP government at the Centre may have been playing politics in view of the upcoming assembly elections in the state. Nonetheless, the Karnataka government certainly has reason to worry, and must take urgent measures to address the issue.
Farmers' suicides is a serious national issue, and what even the Union minister could not gloss over is that Maharashtra, under a BJP government, had the highest number of farmers' suicides - 3,661 - during 2016. In fact, over the last two decades, Maharashtra has faced the worst agrarian crisis, and only recently, thousands of farmers demonstrated their frustration with government policies by marching nearly 200 km on foot to Mumbai and drawing national attention. Farmers across the country have been demanding remunerative prices for their produce, better storage and marketing facilities, alternative sources of livelihood to augment their income, affordable institutional finance and so on. Though these demands are being met in dribbles from time to time, the quantum is so inadequate that nearly 70% of the country's agricultural households are in perpetual debt. Nearly half of the suicides
are attributed to mounting debt and the rising cost of healthcare.
The Narendra Modi government has promised to double farmers' incomes by 2022 and announced a slew of measures in the Union budget to boost the rural economy with an investment of Rs 14.34 lakh crore. How
much of it will really go into alleviating farm distress remains to be seen. The Karnataka government will
also do well to, apart from implementing a partial loan waiver, take up measures to help small and marginal farmers, who constitute 85% of farm holdings. Half-hearted measures will not stop farmers' suicides.