Right to Life of Farmers
His speech is of mortgaged bedding,
On his kine he borrows yet,
At his heart is his daughter’s wedding,
In his eye foreknowledged of debt.
He eats and hath indigestion,
He toils and he may not stop;
His life is a long-drawn question
Between a crop and a crop.
-Rudyard Kipling, The Masque of Plenty
India is a agricultural country where the economy contributes 14% to the GDP. The Indian farmers are poor. Being considered as the backbone of the economy, it is an irony that the farmers don’t have enough food to feed their families. It is a tragedy in modern times that they often end their lives. Most of the land is lost to industrialization and urbanization. The irrigation facilities are not developed well by the government. NITI Aayog reported that the agricultural sector is 28 years behind its time. The farmers take the loan at an exorbitant interest to invest in buying fertilizers or seeds which proves failure of providing economy to the farmers. Due to erratic weather, the monsoons are unpredictable with improper irrigation facilities.The farmers suicide is increasing at an alarming rate. It is estimated that in every 30 minutes one farmer in our country puts an end to his life. Between 1995 and 2015, a period of 21 years, a total of 3,18,528 farmers have committed suicide. According to the NCRB reports, the farmers who commit suicide have less than 2 hectares of land The states with largest number of suicides are Maharashtra, Kerala, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, etc. The price they get after selling the harvest is less than what they had invested. In 2014, 12,360 persons in the farming sector – 5,650 farmers-cultivators and 6,710 agricultural labourers -committed suicide, accounting for 9.4% of the total number of suicides (131,666) in the country, the Centre said.[1] Debt is considered as the primary reason for suicide of the famers to which the P Sainath said, “In all the farm households I’ve visited where people have killed themselves, the single largest component of family debt was health costs”
The Supreme Court in several cases has widened the scope of the Art.21 for the farmers. In Uppliyanthittu Kamarajar Nagar vs The District Collector it was held that, “This right of these poor and downtrodden people, who are involved in agricultural sector, is also a part of right to life guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution of India, which needs to be preserved. It is needless to say that every endeavour should, therefore, be taken by the Government to ensure that the irrigation sources are in no manner disturbed or reduced by any agency or individual.”
The farmers suicide is a crisis which if not taken care of we have to pay the socio economic costs. The advancement in agricultural techniques needs heavy investment. The government should secure more investment than in the IT sectors, etc. There must be a minimum support price for the agriculture. The Public Distribution System is to checked. The lacuna is the improper implementation of the government policies. The government has to offer path breaking welfare schemes for the farmers only then suicides can be prevented.
By- Snigdha Panigrahi, INBA Reporter