Punjab: Farmers’ suicides: Most of them were ‘drug addicts’

March 9, 2010

Farmers' suicides: Most of them were `drug addicts'

Jangveer Singh, Tribune News Service, Chandigarh, March 8

Even as Punjab is still unclear about the number of farmer suicides, following

indebtedness, agricultural scientists today claimed most of the deceased were

drug addicts, who had not taken loans for agricultural purposes.

Ironically, the issue came up after the screening of a documentary film " Harvest

of Grief " sponsored by social activist Inderjit Singh Jaijee. The film while

claiming that around 40,000 farmers had committed suicide in Punjab in the last

two decades, also surmised that the agrarian crisis was a product of the green

revolution and that the high agricultural inputs had led to suicides in the

state.

Punjab State Farmers Commission chairman GS Kalkat said as much as 86 per cent

of the farmers, who had committed suicide in the state, had been drug addicts.

He said 71 per cent of these farmers did not go to school and most of them had

smallholdings only.

Kalkat said the study was done into 106 cases of suicide, which found that cost

of agricultural inputs had never been a factor in suicides. " Input cost for

various high-yielding varieties is never more than Rs 1,000 per acre, " he said,

adding that the farmers had ended their lives after taking on loans for

unproductive expenditure.

Farmers ordinarily took loans from cooperatives and returned them in time,

adding in the case of suicide victims, however, loans had been taken from

non-institutional sources.

" The makers of this film should make part two in this series and explain why the

farmers, who had committed suicide had taken loans and for what, " Kalkat said.

Meanwhile, Farmers Commission Consultant PS Rangi said it was not right to claim

as had been done in the documentary that the green revolution was responsible

for the agrarian crisis in Punjab. He said farm business income in the 1960s was

Rs 960 per acre, while right now it was Rs 40,000 per acre. He said even in real

terms farm income had increased to Rs 2,500 per acre from Rs 960 before the

green revolution.

Rangi said wheat and paddy would continue to remain the staple crops for the

Punjabi farmers, as other alternatives were not popular enough. He said the

farmers, however, must set aside some space for farming of vegetables, besides

going in for dairy farming.

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