Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is currently visiting Vidarbha district in Maharashtra. The countrywide interest in the relief package he is expected to unveil to address farmer distress in the area highlights the importance the problem of farmer suicides has acquired in recent times. Maharashtra has seen a four-fold increase in farmer suicides in less than ten years. The number has risen from 1,083 in 1995 to 4,147 in 2004. Even though all-India data does not indicate the intensity of the problem, more detailed data reveals that in some districts in the country there has been a sharp increase in farmer suicides.

A two-pronged approach needs to be followed to address the problem. First, there must be measures that address the specific problems faced by the region. Second, there must be a change in agriculture policies at a broader level. While the government may find it easy to dish out relief packages, the really difficult job is to address wider policy issues and to divert Central government spending on agriculture from food subsidy to public investment in irrigation and rural infrastructure. Having addressed the proximate causes, it is to this that the prime minister must now turn if he wants to prevent more farmers from killing themselves.

Some people like to brush the problem of farmer suicides aside as media hype. At first blush it may appear that they are right. For every 100 urban Indian men who kill themselves, there are merely 103 rural Indian men who commit suicide. This figure relates to data for 2001 from Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India, an annual publication of the ministry of home affairs, where the data on suicides is available. Anyone looking at this number would not find a significant change in recent years as suicides among both urban and rural males have increased. While in 1975, 9.7 men in every one lakh Indian men committed suicide, by 2001 this number had risen to 14.

... contd.