Rains fail, prices fall

THIS monsoon's dry spell has been excruciatingly long. While the failure of rains has affected entire rural communities in parts of Karnataka, excess rains have caused havoc in some other parts. Drought is a recurring feature in the northern dry regions of the State comprising seven districts and this year it has reached the proportion of a calamity. Just when the State government was gearing up to meet the challenges of drought (however inadequate), heavy rains have destroyed homes and agricultural lands. Out of the eighty odd reported suicides of farmers this season, the majority belong to these northern dry districts.

Suicides of farmers have also been reported from the areca and coconut growing areas considered to be the more prosperous plantation districts of the State. These farmers have been affected by falling prices for their produce for over a year. This, combined with increasing instances of pest attacks and mounting debts, have contributed to a serious loss of faith in farming and disillusionment. The crisis among farmers have been generally attributed to flooding of agricultural imports from neighbouring countries such as that of pepper and coffee from Vietnam, areca and coconut from the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand. The concession made to Malaysia by our Prime Minister by agreeing to cut down the high import duty earlier levied on palm oil imports from that country, give rise to doubts of a nexus between politicians and traders at both national and international levels. The announcement came as a jolt to coconut farmers, especially after the Prime Minister's declared intent and seeming solidarity to help them out of the crisis. Officials in agricultural export promotional boards glibly talk of the need for growers to diversify and take to crops that have export potential such as vanilla, instead of coffee, gherkins in place of cucumbers or floriculture instead of traditional grains or fruit crops. Diversification may seem the easiest solution to recommend by officers whose salaries and perks are assured but not for farmers who have to make the additional investment to switch to other crops. It means taking risks with the ``new crops'', the future of which is dependent entirely on international markets. Diversification can only be a long-term solution to the problem and it can be undertaken only if there is institutional support and backing.

Coffee prices have also dropped and are approaching their lowest in decades. Banks have been instructed by the government in the coffee growing districts not to press growers for repayment of loans and that perhaps explains the reasons for the coffee growers at least for now not taking recourse to suicides to get out of their problems. Suicides of small growers indebted to banks cannot be ruled out when banks start pressing for repayment of loans next year. It is a fact that there is very little public sympathy for the coffee planter because of the flashy and wasteful lifestyles of the planters when the price of coffee was good. Flush with new money, parts of the coffee country, especially in places like Coorg, saw the mushrooming of clubs that became centres where male planters gathered for club games while indulging in communal talk. Their bored wives found solace in either becoming members of expensive cultist religious groups or took revenge on their husbands by becoming compulsive shoppers, renovated their kitchens, laid and re-laid the gardens several times a year.

Traditional occupations of previous generations of women which made farming sustainable and supplemented incomes, such as growing of vegetables, raising poultry and dairy farming, were abandoned while supermarkets from big cities were quick to seize the opportunity by opening up branches catering to every need of the planter's wife. A great deal of money was also spent by the planter community in a crass exhibition of patriotism post- Kargil. A section of them went to the capital demanding independence from the State but support for such movements declined along with the coffee prices. Now patriotic fervour also is at a low ebb corresponding to lower coffee prices.

A disturbing piece of news however, is of the difficulties faced by the small coffee and pepper growers employing their workers only for half a day, as they can no longer afford to pay them full wages. Rural unemployment and migration of labour into crowded cities has already started and is likely to get worse. Labour migration not only places a burden on the resources of cities but is a serious loss from the point of view of Indian agriculture.

A common refrain is that agricultural labour does not constitute skilled labour, a myth that textbooks in Indian economics have helped perpetuate over the years. It does require a great deal of skill for a farmer or agricultural labourer to plough the fields, climb tall coconut trees or plant rice seedlings in knee deep water, skills improved and perfected over decades of work.

Increased mechanisation of agriculture, lower agricultural wages and spread of rural literacy has contributed to the migration of agricultural workers into cities. In parts of Karnataka, already tree climbers are brought from Tamil Nadu and Kerala to harvest coconut and pepper. Unless the prices of agricultural commodities become stable wages, agricultural work will continue to be low. Disparities in wages that exist even when prices are high for agricultural produce can only be corrected by implementing strict labour legislation.

Policy makers lack determination to address problems confronting producers, in evolving a stable price structure by taking into account the rising cost of agricultural inputs. The price of agricultural commodities has been deliberately kept low for decades so that industrial wages could be kept low by making cheap grain available in the cities so that the rate of profit for industry can be higher. Much of the planning since Independence, that went to make India a major industrial power, was done by the politician with the complicity of the policy maker and industrialist at the cost of farmers and rural areas. That system continues irrespective of liberalisation or globalisation.

Studies by scholars have repeatedly focussed on the cause of distress among agricultural communities leading to suicide of farmers but policy makers have paid little or no heed to such studies. One such study conducted in Bidar district in 1999 by Dr. A. R. Vasavi details the ecological, economic and social factors that have led farmers to commit suicide. According to the study, some of the reasons for the farmers' indebtedness the promotion of commercial agriculture; the State's interventions through development programmes that were originally designed for wet regions and implemented without considering their practicality in dry regions, the lack of credit facilities to marginal farmers, the sale of spurious fertilizers and pesticides by unlicensed agents and the fall in prices of agricultural produce. It is relevant to quote her concluding suggestions to the government to evolve a policy that takes into consideration all factors responsible for distress in rural areas rather than provide nominal monetary compensation to families of suicide victims. She says, ''It would be fair to recognise that the victims of agrarian distress in the district are not only those who have committed suicide and their family members but also those who continue to live there, believing, as do most cultivators, that they have an obligation to the land, to the community, to the State, and to the nation to continue to cultivate the land''.

PUSHPA SURENDRA

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