The trend of farmers in financial distress resorting to suicide in the State since May this year has been a distressing phenomenon. What has happened to the families left behind by small and marginal farmers is even more upsetting.
They are struggling to make ends meet, and many families of small and marginal farmers have quit farming at present. They believe that the extent of their land holding is too meagre to support their financial needs. Also, family members, especially women, are finding it difficult to focus on farming in the absence of a support mechanism.
A revisit by The Hindu to some of the families in the districts of Ramanagaram, Mandya, and Hassan showed that the worst-hit were the kin of the small and marginal farmers, who were below the age of 50, as they were the sole breadwinners for their families.
It is ironical that most of them who ended their lives, due to mounting debts, were innovative and enterprising persons who tried to improve the financial condition of their families by dreaming big.
A majority of them did not even have a hectare of land. But, they had taken land on lease to earn an extra income. However, luck was not on their side as they failed either in getting a good yield or remunerative prices for their crops. It was the lack of financial security to withstand the distress that resulted in them taking the extreme step, as they could not wait for the better days.
‘No money for my son’s dialysis’Bharati’s new house at Sabbanakuppe village in Srirangapatna taluk is among the very few with vitrified tiles. But, she is not in a position to enjoy the ambience of her new home. Bharati was forced to work as a farm labourer, for a meagre daily wage of Rs. 100, after her husband Kumar ended his life in June this year following crop losses.
Within seven months of her husband’s death, she took up work to support her teenage son, who is suffering from kidney failure, and her 21-year-old daughter. Her husband had only half-and-acre of farm land. He had taken another two-and-a-half acre on lease. However, crop loss ruined his financial condition, pushing him to take the extreme step.
Bharati’s biggest concern is arranging for money for her son’s dialysis treatment. “I do not get work every day. I am clueless on how to meet the expenses towards his dialysis,” she says, adding that the compensation she got from the government was used to pay off a part of the loan taken by her husband.
No takers for her farm landSahadeva (53) of Kaggere village in Channarayapatna taluk was passionate about farming. He dug a borewell on his two-acre farm to try his hand at horticulture farming. But two such experiments failed, leading to loan pile-up and driving him to suicide.
His widow, Geeta (38), has to now single-handedly support her two young sons. Her relief is that her eldest has secured a seat in Morarji Residential School that offers free education, and Adichunchanagiri Mutt has given her youngest son a free seat in its residential school.
Geeta has shunned farming and is thinking of giving her land on lease. “It is hard to find somebody who will lease your land in our village because it is predominantly a dry zone where no profitable farm venture can be taken up,” she says.
He has no interest in farming and lifeFifty-year-old Shivaraju is an unlettered farm labourer from Singarajapura of Channapatna taluk. He does not own a house or farm land but, his hardworking wife and enterprising son had taken half-an-acre of land on lease to take up sericulture farming.
But their experiments with sericulture kept on failing. Though they managed to get good yield some time ago, the prices of cocoon crashed. This resulted in a debt of Rs. 10 lakh. Unable to cope, the mother and son ended their lives in June.
Shivaraju and his other son now work as farm labourers. Shivaraju is a depressed man. “I work only if I feel like doing so. I do not have any interest left in life,” he says.
Widow demands special pension for spousesRajendra (60) could have easily found a white-collar job when he got a degree in Commerce in 1969. But he chose to be a farmer in Chinnenahalli of Mandya district as agriculture was his first love.
As he had only 1.3 acres of land, he took another four acres on lease to cultivate vegetables. Things worked well initially. But he ran out of luck in the last eight years, when his crops failed and prices crashed. This resulted in Rajendra ending up with a debt of over Rs. 12 lakh, which drove him to end his life in June.
His widow, Sunandamma, has used the compensation given by the government to repay a portion of the loan. She has shunned farming since. Her son has now been given a water valve operator’s job on a temporary basis, earning Rs. 7,000 a month. But the family is unsure about how to repay the loan.
Sunandamma suggests that the government should give pension to the widows of the farmers, who committed suicide.
