Harpal, a farmer in Amroha district, used his countrymade rifle to kill himself in the first week of February.
The 52-year-old farmer’s son Satpal said his father was worried about not being able to return the Rs. 3.27 lakh he had borrowed from local moneylenders two years ago to buy a tractor.
“Sugar mills take sometimes two years to pay the full money for the sugarcane crop. We had to sell the cane to local jaggery units at low prices to recover the money invested in the crop,” said Mr. Satpal of Tasripur village in Amroha district. Similarly, Anil, a farmer from Sunpura village in Amroha, attempted suicide early this week and is currently battling for his life in a Moradabad hospital. He was waiting to receive about Rs. 1 lakh from the local sugar mill.
Burdened by debt, Mr. Anil is one among lakhs of farmers in Uttar Pradesh, who are yet to receive arrears totalling Rs. 8,028 crore for the cane crop sold to the sugar mills this year and the last.
Delay in arrears payment According to Sudhir Tanwar, president of Kisan Jagriti Manch and a member of the U.P. Planning Commission, instances of farmers taking their own lives, pointed to the crisis facing the sugarcane industry. Delayed payment of arrears was just one aspect of that crisis, he said.
Rahul Bhatnagar, Principal Secretary, State Sugarcane Development Department, refused to acknowledge that farmer suicides were due to delayed payments, he conceded that the sugarcane industry was going through a “crisis” for the last two or three years.
Farmer suicides has so far been associated with the poverty-ridden Bundelkhand region. Not profitable
Sugarcane is not a profitable crop anymore, said Mr. Tanwar. With “low” cane prices, they are unable to recover the money invested in the crop. Mill owners say that they are unable to pay the farmers because of falling sugar prices.
Deepak Guptara, general secretary of the U.P. sugar mill association, argued that for the last four years the mills had suffered losses and the cane prices in the State counted among the “highest” in the country.
For the last three years, farmers receive Rs. 280 per quintal of cane, the price fixed by the State government.
