It is heart-warming to know that the figures for farmers’ suicide in the cotton belt of Vidarbha have finally started registering a dip (IE, August 26). This may just be a temporary phenomenon since the current productivity increase and corresponding profits are a result of a good monsoon and good market prices that may not hold for the next year. Ironically, the bumper cotton harvest this year is widely attributed to Bt cotton seeds, which were hitherto regarded as being the ‘seeds of death’. Many who wanted to do good for the farmers claimed that the root cause for all farmers’ distress was the use and misuse of the Bt cotton seed. Today it occurs that under favourable circumstances the genetically modified seed is capable of increasing profits by as much as 75 per cent. Without going gaga over the demon seed that turned out to be an angel in disguise we need to note that the state of agrarian distress could take a turn for the worse any time unless much more is done.

No doubt easy credit availability has been of great assistance to the farmer. But so long as the assistance is given in the form of a loan, eventually every rupee would have to be paid back. That means even a single bad monsoon or downturn in commodity prices would again push the farmer over the brink. What this really means is that there is no escape from providing farmers with real time support in the long run.

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