(This story originally appeared in on Apr 10, 2017)

A priority?

The reasons

THE ECONOMICS

Did you know that in Karnataka , 2-4 farmers kill themselves every day? And this is only a conservative figure coming from the government. If one goes by the figures provided by farmers’ associations , the number would swell to 6-7 suicides per day. The record heat and drought of 2017 could spell disaster for the farming community in the state, which has already seen 848 suicides in 2016-17, until February.Karnataka witnessed a record 1,478 suicides in 2015-16 due to severe shortage of rainfall, which put farmers in distress. They were unable to get desired prices for their produce and were neck-deep in debt with nationalised banks and private moneylenders. Regardless of what political parties may have said, the disturbing trend has proved beyond doubt that agriculture is no more a profitable venture.Getting back to governance after a fortnight full of bypoll politics, the Siddaramaiah government has a daunting task at hand of maintaining stability in the face of a severe drought. Even though the state government is trying to make agriculture profitable, estimates by the Karnataka State Agriculture Prices Commission indicate that it’s far from so.The North Karnataka districts witnessed the highest suicides last year. This year, the cloud has moved over to the Malnad areas as several reservoirs here are dry since the monsoon failed and the groundwater plummeted.While Haveri district has topped the list with 86 suicides, Dharwad district witnessed 73. The coffee-growing district of Chikka­magaluru saw 70 suicides, followed by Mysuru and Mandya with 50 and 51 suicides, respectively. Both Mysuru and Mandya depend on Cauvery River for agriculture.Four consecutive years of drought are already weighing down on Karnataka’s farmers. And now, reckless use of groundwater to compensate for the poor monsoon has only made things worse for them. The state budget, which made no mention of a loan-waiver, came as a huge disappointment for them.Kuruburu Shanthakumar, president of the sugarcane growers association, said: “The government should have planned to prevent suicides. It failed to learn from last year’s mistakes and the result is that even this year, there have been suicides. In less than one-and-a -half-years, as per our estimate, close to 3,000 farmers have committed suicide across Karnataka. Our only demand is that the government must stop loan recovery and waive off the loan. Shivanna (52) of Mandya district committed suicide when bank authorities slapped notices on him for the repayment of a loan of Rs 5 lakh. His entire paddy crop had perished as there was no water in the Cauvery basin this year.”While Siddaramaiah has made it clear that the Centre should waive the loan, farmers have a different understanding of the logic. “If he (the CM) can give others, why can’t he give to us? The CM claims that he cannot waive off the loan, but he has money to appoint a pay commission to revise the salaries of state government employees, which runs into several crores. If the exchequer is short of money, what was the reason for the government to procure new vehicles for presidents of zilla panchayat and taluk panchayat? What was binding on the government to increase the salary of MLAs, MLCs and ministers? Farmers and agriculture are not a priority for this government and it has been proved time and again,” said Shanthakumar.Besides estimating that growing several crops would actually leave a farmer in loss, the Karnataka Agriculture Price Commission has attributed the continuing trend of farmer suicides to demonetisation and unscientific cropping pattern.TN Prakash Kammaradi, chairman of the com­mi­ssion, said: “Demo­ne­tisation has literally taken money out of markets. Because of this, there is no purchase of produce in the market. When there is no purchase in market, how can you ensure profit for farmers?”“The centre should have been more proactive in this regard rather than leaving things entirely to the states. Instead, it is going in for zero duty import of pulses and sugar, which will be detrimental to our farmers.“Rather than importing, the same money should have been diverted and given to farmers as a minimum support price (MSP). Centre’s policies are driven by inflation and consumer interests rather than to benefit farmers,” he said.Prakash also opined that the unscientific cropping pattern and season-bound production of crops has also resulted in severe losses.“In some regions, farmers take to the cultivation of just one crop, resulting in excess production and fall in prices. Under favourable conditions, all farmers in Kalaburagi go after tur dal or farmers in Kolar flood the market with tonnes of tomatoes. We need to have a proper cropping plan and farmers have to stick to such rules to get effective prices for their produce,” he said.Considering the market fluctuation until December 2016, the Karnataka Agriculture Price Commission has estimated loss and profit per acre for cultivation of each crop across Karnataka. As per the report, cultivating several staple crops would actually result in losses for farmers.Even though a few crops bring in profits, it would be insignificant. Cultivating several crops such as paddy, ragi (finger millet), foxtail millet, urad dal, sunflower, and coconut has only caused losses.