When Rahul, a sugarcane farmer in Badaut area of Baghpat district in western U.P., shot himself on the night of September 13, he had a debt of Rs. 12 lakh.
Rahul shot himself with his brother's licensed rifle in his house in Dhikana village. Anil Kumar, the Station House Officer of Badaut told The Hindu on phone that the debt-ridden 35-year-old farmer was disturbed over not being paid for the sugarcane he had sold to sugar mills.
Rahul’s death is not isolated. At least five cases have been reported in recent times from western U.P. and in all of them debts due to non-payment of sugarcane arrears is stated to be the key trigger.
State police officials told The Hindu that in the last few months two cases of suicide have been reported from Baghpat, two from Bijnore and one from Shahjahanpur.
In another reported case from Baghpat, Rambeer Rathi, a 40-year-old sugarcane farmer from Tikri village, shot himself in the head with a countrymade revolver.
He had not been paid his dues of over Rs. 1.5 lakh by the sugar mills and was struggling to pay for his ailing father’s treatment and his children’s school fees.
The official confirmation of the economic crisis facing farmers in the region came on Tuesday when the U.P. government declared 44 districts of the State, including most of them from western U.P., which received less than average 50 per cent rainfall as “drought hit”.
Sudhir Panwar, president of Kisan Jagriti Manch and a professor at Lucknow university says farmers’ suicides has so far been typically associated with the Bundelkhand region which is known for its poverty. Western U.P. or Harit Pradesh, as the region is popularly called, is known for financial prosperity of farmers.
The crisis facing sugarcane farmers and mill owners — which according to Mr Panwar, is new for both – is the main trigger for the suicides.
The sugarcane arrears worth Rs. 5000 crore which the mill owners are yet to give to the farmers, and the subsequent high level of indebtedness of the farmers and the monsoon deficit are driving the smaller farmers to suicide, points out Panwar.
“Sugar mill owners claim that last year they suffered losses and are unable to pay the farmers for the last year sugarcane. And not all farmers have large landholdings,” says Panwar.
According to the U.P. Suga rmill Association, the industry has been suffering losses for over four years because of the “discrepancy” in the cost of production of sugar and the cane prices to be paid to farmers. Deepak Guptara, general secretary of the Association, told The Hindu : “The cane prices in U.P. is among the highest in the country, even though we have to sell sugar for about Rs. 6 lower than the cost of production. This leaves us without any scope for meeting our obligations.”
Talking about the “larger picture” behind what he terms as “impending crisis”, he adds, increasing consumerism, privatization of most of the services like education and health and crumbling of the support system provided by the government and social institutions in the western U.P. are at the roots of the crisis.
“A farmer decides to commit suicide after the needs like that of health and education which used to be fulfilled once by the government services through its hospitals and schools, have now been collapsed. Today everything requires money. So the pressure and tension of not having money gets to the small farmer,” he added.
The situation is likely to worsen because the mill owners have decided, until their demand of linking cane prices to sugar prices is met, to close the mills and from next month not crush the sugarcane, a process which is key to the survival of the sugarcane farmers.
