Despite having the highest rate of farmer suicides per 100,000 population, the Chhattisgarh government is in denial. No one talks about farmer suicides in the state. As a result, the problem goes totally ignored, unlike other states like Maharashtra and Kerala. Shubhranshu Choudhary writes.

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Santosh Nishad owned three acres of land in Ghoradi village in Chhattisgarh’s Mahasamund district. His village sits on the banks of the Mahanadi river.

The land was enough to take care of his family of three children, wife Hembai, old father and younger brother Santram. They were poor but they had enough to keep body and soul together.

Then, a couple of years ago, his father Bahur Singh fell ill and Santosh sold his first acre of land to meet the treatment costs.

Bahur Singh did not recover, and by the end of last year, Santosh was forced to sell off his last acre of land.

This summer, Santosh decided to take some land on lease on the riverbed to grow watermelon. There was some money left over from his last land sale, so Santosh used it to buy seeds.

One day the authorities decided to release the water from a nearby dam without notice; the entire crop on the riverbed was washed away in a flash flood.

Santosh decided to borrow some money from a neighbour to plant a second crop. But he could not raise the entire amount locally, so he borrowed from a trader in Raipur. The deal was that he would hand over his entire crop to the trader, and then settle accounts.

After a few days, water was again released from the dam, badly damaging Santosh’s crop. He was able to get only Rs 2,200 from the proceeds of his entire crop. This was not enough even to cover the loan.

His friend Chetan Nishad recounts meeting Santosh in the market after the sale. “Santosh cried like a baby and asked me to loan him a little money to go to the liquor shop.”

The following afternoon, Hembai discovered Santosh’s body on the riverbed. He was declared dead on arrival on April 15 at Mahasamund general hospital, 10 km from the village.

The next morning, the local newspapers carried a report of suicide by consumption of poison.

Two local reporters decided to investigate the story further and wrote a detailed account of why Santosh committed suicide.

They quoted his weeping wife Hembai as saying: “The crop took his life. Had he not insisted on being a farmer, and had he taken up labour work he would still be alive.” His brother Santram said: “We were a happy family; my brother was a hardworking man but he was worried about the loans.”

Local farmer Rambisun Nirmal told me: “Santosh borrowed Rs 7,000 from me and he took Rs 3,000 from the samiti. I do not know how much he took from the traders. Here, every farmer is in debt. I myself have a loan of Rs 15,000, and my crop is also gone.”

Seventy-five-year-old Latelram Satnami said: “I have a loan of Rs 90,000 and don’t know how I will repay it. My entire family is working as labourers these days, and we still lead a hand-to-mouth existence.”

Reports of the suicide have put the district administration on the back foot. Investigative officer Rina Minj says: “Santosh’s family told us they do not have any loan against them. The press is spreading a false story about loans.” But according to local activist Gajendra: “The family was threatened by a local goon Ramashray Yadav, who runs illegal mines in the area, on behalf of local officers. Since then the family has stopped talking to the press. They are frightened.”

***

Ramsahni Patel was a small farmer in Govinda village in nearby Janjgir-Champa district. His family has two-and-a-half acres of land amongst them. There is a canal in Govinda village that links the village to Hasdeo Bango dam, one of the biggest dams in Chhattisgarh. The farmers depend on the release of water from this dam for their crops.

Ramsahni (25) got married last year and his wife soon became pregnant. He was very happy. But recently she suddenly started complaining of some pain.

Ramsahni took her to the nearest doctor who referred the case to the district hospital in Champa, 25 km from the village, for further tests. For this, Ramsahni would need money.

That winter the authorities decided not to release any water into the canal, leading to the failure of Ramsahni’s rabi crop.

Ramsahni went to look for work under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). But, despite working for over two weeks, he was not paid.

In the meantime, his wife’s condition worsened.

Ramsahni went to Sarpanch Mungeshwari Devi to ask for his money. Devi’s husband Ramsahay Sonwani says: “Ramsahni came to us many times to enquire about the payment, but there was no money from the district office. He requested us for a loan. But we were not in a position to help him.”

He then went to the village moneylender who reminded him that his family still had to return an earlier loan of Rs 50,000 that they had taken from him. Ramsahni went back home.

One day the pain became unbearable and Ramsahni’s wife died.

Ramsahni consumed pesticide a few days later.

District Collector S Chand told me: “He was a bit mentally disturbed after the death of his wife. That is the reason for his suicide. There was no land in the name of Ramsahni, so officially he was not a farmer and it is not a case of farmer suicide.”

The family land was still in the name of Ramsahni’s father, Shyamlal Patel, so the district collector indeed had the rules down pat.

***

Kumar Chandra was a comparatively well-to-do farmer in nearby Bhothia village in Janjgir-Champa district. He had three-and-a-half acres of land in his name and was trying to install a borewell and pump in his field.

The company doing the installation told Kumar that he could apply for a loan with the nearby bank and they would wait for payment.

Subsequently, they brought in their big machines and started drilling. They met with no success.

They tried in three different places, but there simply was no water. The entire operation had been a failure.

Still, the company would have to be paid. Kumar began visiting the local bank to follow up on the loan application he had made.

The bank manager kept promising him that he would get the loan soon. In the meantime, pressure from the drilling company mounted; payment was over six months overdue.

The day Kumar consumed pesticide he had gone to the bank like he did almost every day of that month.

The local newspapers quoted the authorities as saying that although Kumar was a farmer he had no loans against his name. So, he did not commit suicide because of non-payment of loans!

***

Are all these stories isolated cases of individual distress and suicide? Is there no pattern here?

No one talks about farmer suicides in Chhattisgarh. Even the local press denies its existence. The Opposition Congress says they do not see evidence of it on the ground, and the state government sees a conspiracy in the story!

Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Dr Raman Singh recently said in an interview to a local newspaper, Deshbandhu: “I have checked with all the collectors and there is no farmer suicide in the state due to debts. It is not the farmer suicide issue which needs to be investigated but the people who are writing about it.”

He added: “The majority of MLAs in Chhattisgarh are farmers. If so many farmers were indeed committing suicide, don’t you think the matter would have been discussed in the Vidhan Sabha?”

P Sainath, a journalist with The Hindu, who was the main force behind bringing the issue of farmer suicides to the national conscience, says: “I faced similar resistance in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra when I first started writing about them (farmer suicides). This is not unusual.”

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, Chhattisgarh holds the top spot in the number of farmer suicides per 100,000 population every year.

In 2006, the state witnessed 6.49 farmer suicides per 100,000 population; Maharashtra followed with 4.28. The usual suspects lag behind with figures of 3.35 (Kerala), 3.24 (Andhra Pradesh) and 2.57 (Karnataka).

However, the farmer suicide rate (FSR) is different. FSR is obtained by a simple mathematical calculation of dividing the number of farmers who have committed suicide by the number of farmers in the state, and multiplying the figure by 100,000. Therefore, FSR is not a percentage but a figure per 100,000 farmers, not  per 100,000 general population.

Considered in terms of FSR, Kerala had the highest FSR (142.9 per 100,000 farmers) in 2006. Chhattisgarh is third with 33.7 per 100,000 farmers, right behind Karnataka which is second with a figure of 36.4.

States with large numbers of farmer suicides, like Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, rank behind Chhattisgarh in this list, with figures of 29.9 and 19.2 respectively.

On another criterion, Professor Srijit Mishra of the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, calculates the figure for male farmers committing suicide per 100,000 farmers; he calls this suicide mortality rate (SMR). Kerala ranks highest in SMR as well, between 2001 and 2005, with an aggregate of 194.7 male farmers per 100,000 farmers. Here, Maharashtra is second with 50.6 farmers, and Chhattisgarh, with 44.8, comes a close third.

Other states in the reckoning -- Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh -- follow Chhattisgarh with lower figures of 40.8 and 33.2 respectively.

Mishra has raised the issue of Chhattisgarh in his writings. He says: “The four states of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala have got media attention and subsequent packages from the government. But it is puzzling how no one talks about Chhattisgarh.”

Likewise, Professor K Nagaraj of the Madras Institute of Development Studies has been studying the subject for over a decade. He was part of the official team assessing farmer suicides in Andhra Pradesh. He says: “All the states have different reasons for farmer suicides. If you say that the farmer in Chhattisgarh grows rice, not cotton, and that is the reason he does not commit suicide, then I will give you the example of Thanjavur district in Tamil Nadu. Thanjavur grows rice and, unlike the rest of Tamil Nadu, the rate of farmer suicides here is quite high. The figures for Chhattisgarh are worrying, and they need to be studied.”

The figure for farmer suicides in Chhattisgarh in 2007 has risen from the pervious year’s 1,483, to 1,593.

The problem seems to be concentrated in the rice bowl. Chhattisgarh can be divided into three regions. There are the hilly forested areas of the north and south where the tribals live, and the plains in the middle that are largely inhabited by non-tribal Chhattisgarhia rice-growers.

A look at the district-wise figures for farmer suicides in the state tells a surprising story. One might expect the figures to be loaded against Naxal-affected areas where conditions for the poor are difficult. One might also be tempted to let the imagination run a bit and wonder if some killings have not been inadvertently recorded as suicides.

But the figures show that farmer suicides in Chhattisgarh are concentrated in the central region, also called the ‘rice bowl’.

Every year, the plains of Chhattisgarh witness 51 farmer suicides per 100,000 farmers. In comparison, the figure for the northern tribal region is 21 and for the southern Bastar region 19: less than half that of the plains.

Raipur district tops the charts with 72 farmer suicides per 100,000 farmers. The two competing districts are nearby Dhamtari (71) and Mahasamund (83).

“I can tell you one thing for sure: next year in Chhattisgarh the figures for farmer suicides will come down,” says P Sainath. “They will just stop recording them.”

(Shubhranshu Choudhary is a founder-member of the Citizens Journalism initiative in Chhattisgarh,CGnet ( www.cgnet.in))