n As many as 32 cotton farmers in Andhra Pradesh committed suicide in two months early this year. Crop failure was the reason and Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu was quick to dole out compensations. However, the families of 36 farmers in Sangrur district of Punjab who ended their lives received plenty of media attention, but no compensation. In the Bidhan district of Karnataka, 13 farmers committed suicide this year because of failed crops and accumulated debt. Similar depressing tales came out of Vidharbha.

Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Punjab, Maharashtra... suicides of farmers have hit the headlines this year more frequently than ever before.No longer do they organise rallies to draw attention to their demands and misfortunes. ``Instead, they seem more and more inclined to quietly end their lives,'' says social scientist Ashish Nandy.

A study on the suicide syndrome done by a group of research scholars from the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi suggests that these suicides are a direct fallout of the growing inflation and the liberalisation policies of the '90s. The agriculture sector has been neglected and the urban-poor sidelined, where `survival of the fittest' has become a crude reality, says the study.

Nandy, however, does not view this as a new phenomenon. In fact, in 1974 rural Gujarat saw a similar spate of suicides after three consecutive crop failures. But in the Gujarat case, it was the women and the children who had committed suicides. The menfolk had migrated to the urban areas in search for work.

``It has happened before. But suicide generally happens in an atmosphere of urban ennui which now seems to be spreading tothe rural areas with the industrialisation of agriculture. Now individual peasants are left to fight their own battles, and they behave like industralists who jump off their high-rise apartments to avoid facing financial crisis. The earlier breed of lifestyle farmers have been increasingly replaced by tech-fed farmers, who longer have the traditional system of coping with disaster,'' says Nandy.

The JNU study takes into account the economic factors behind the suicide. In the agricultural sector, it says, the market reforms were introduced blind-fold without linking them to the grassroots or evolving a system of institutional back-up. The farmers are forced sell the produce in a market-driven economy where they have little or no say.

Says former Union minister and developmental economist Y.K. Alagh: ``With the arrival of the cash crop culture the risk factor has become very high. But the investment level is still low and the insurance sector is non-existent. There is no system or institution a farmer canturn to if the lakhs he puts in to raise the crop fails. He is left with no other option not even a co-operative to act as a pressure group on his behalf.''

No consolidated market input is coming into the agriculture sector ether in terms of modern agricultural know-how or financial support. ``So there would be more such suicides in the coming years,'' says Alagh. ``The rural sector needs a fair market which it does not have. The question is of providing appropriate financial back-up not just subsidies and free electricity. But the rationale is lost in the political maneuvers,'' he adds.

In Punjab, for instance, expansion of families have led to fragmentation of land holdings. No institutional loan is available for cash crops, forcing the farmers to stick to foodgrains and thereby erode the soil. ``The euphoria of the green revolution is over. The cost of agricultural production has become so high that in times of crop failure it is impossible for the farmers to manage the huge losses. The change inlifestyle and easy availability of pesticides have compounded the problem,'' says Manmohan Sharma, the head of the Punjab unit of the Voluntary Health Service, which is also preparing a study on farmers' suicides.

The overuse of pesticides is another of the major reasons of crop failure and subsequent suicides. ``Many of the pests and insects have become resistant due to excessive use of lethal pesticides. The State does not provide adequate farmer awareness programmes or comprehensive policies on crops, fertilizers and pesticides. Of the 143 variety of pesticides available in India, 70 per cent are banned in the West and only 50 per cent have their maximum residue label fixed,'' says Sanjay Sengupta, programme officer Voluntary Health Associated of India.