Suicides in Punjab

Sir, - The series of news reports (Aug. 7, 8, 9) on suicides in rural Punjab by Mr. Sarabjit Pandher was, to be quite frank, overdue. The reports reflect the writer's knowledge of the situation and empathy with the desperate farmers of the State. However, the problems of the Punjab farmer are not beyond solution.

Even as the Centre goes about opening up the country to the incursions of foreign produce as required under the WTO, it is still wrong to count the Punjab farmer as a lost cause. The people of rural Punjab have time and again demonstrated that they have the will to work. All they ask for is some small assurance that their backbreaking toil will leave them with a reasonable margin of profit and not deeper in debt.

The implementation of existing laws against usurious loans, setting up of a debt conciliation board, and other measures such as abolition of land-ceiling laws and half-yearly revision of input-pricing in line with expected grain prices would help in restructuring agriculture in the State.

Earlier, a farmer who couldn't make a profit out of his land would sell it, use the money to buy a truck and hope to support his family as a transporter. In recent years, unionisation and the economics of trucking have closed even this alternative. The only way out for him is suicide.

Although village social cohesion is greater than what one sees in cities and the will to help the survivors is there, the villages do not have resources to keep the bereft dependents going. Sans schooling, adequate health care and opportunities to work, the future is grim for the young sons and daughters of the farmer.

The State and the Centre fought an all-out war in Punjab for 15 years from the mid-80s. By neglecting this burgeoning crisis of rising suicides, the State is paving the way for another, perhaps a worse, upsurge.

Choudhary Waryam Singh,

Ambala

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