SUICIDE BY FARMERS

According to media reports 3.21 lakks farmers commited suicide during the period from 1995 to 2015 in India. 22,807 of them belong to the state of Kerala where the number of people engaged in agriculture is comparatively low from other states. If we get deep into the matter we can find that these cannot be called as suicide. They were just killed. In order to understand these are killings we must find those factors that led to their deaths.

These farmers were neither engaged in a contract nor were deployed for a given return. They were just engaged in feeding the whole Indians, using there own available resources like land, fertilizer, seeds, implements, water, electricity etc. It is not at all a business of high returns. They cannot determine the the price and the market of their products. They were also unable to store their products for long anticipating a better price. Every time they were constrained to sell out their products at a predetermined price whereas most other goods were sold as per the demand and supply fluctuations. This was almost made mandatory by the state and central governments for the sake of the entire people. Hence it should also be made the responsibility of the the entire population to bear the loss incurred by the farmers in arranging food for all of us.

The easiest way to provide them subsistence assistance is to earmark some part of the huge sum collected by both state and central governments in the form of GST every month. This amount should be retained as Farmers Subsidy Fund and distributed appropriately as per norms created by an expert committee for this purpose.

We all, including the media, should ensure that henceforth a single farmer commits suicide in our country.

KV George

kvgeorgein@gmail.com