National Post (National Edition)
SUICIDE IN THE FIELDS OF INDIA
FARMERS PLEAD FOR NEW PRICE LAWS TO BE REPEALED
Like thousands of other farmers in India's Punjab, Gurpreet Singh was never likely to become a rich man. He had one acre of wheat to his name — barely enough to scrape together a living for his family in Sukhanwala village, where agriculture has been a way of life for centuries.
Last year, though, unseasonal rain floods destroyed his entire crop.
Already in debt, the prospect of having to borrow yet more money was more than he could bear. Instead, he rang his wife from the fields one day and told her he was about to kill himself by drinking pesticide.
“He told her to talk to him now, to say goodbye, and to look after their two daughters,” said Gurpreet's father, Makhan Singh, 70, tears streaming down his face. “We reached the farm and tried to rush him to hospital, but he died on the way.”
Tragic as it is, Singh's story is far from unusual in the Punjab state — especially in his home district of Malwa, where most farmers have only a few acres of land, and life is always lived close to the margins.
In the past 20 years, some 3,300 destitute farmers have committed suicide in Malwa — so many, that in some local villages, nearly everyone has a tale of a relative who has died.
What was always a hard life, though, has become ever harder since 2016, when the cost of land rentals and farm supplies began to rise far faster than crop prices. Roughly half of all the farm suicides in Malwa have taken place in the last four years.
Some farmers' leaders link the rises in farm supply prices to government measures to liberalize the farm economy. They warn the suicide figures are likely to rise even higher thanks to newly proposed agricultural laws, which will scrap fixed price guarantees for crops in government markets.
Critics claim the laws — known as the Farm Bills — will allow large private corporates to dictate the price of produce, squeezing farmers' meagre profits even further.
“The new laws are totally anti-farmer and instead will benefit the private sector, who will start buying up land from impoverished farmers,” said Balvinder Singh, the chief agricultural officer in Punjab.
“The condition for farmers is only going to get worse and again, we will see a big rise in suicides.”
Singh says there are 400 houses in Sukhanwala alone, 90 per cent of which owe at least $3,400 to microfinance companies and moneylenders. Local officials are seldom sympathetic to their plight, he claimed.
Similar price-liberalization laws have already been implemented in the state of Bihar. Farmers there say that the sale price of 100kg of rice has fallen from 1,900 rupees to 1,100 rupees.
Late last month, hundreds of thousands of farmers from Punjab and other neighbouring states marched on India's capital, New Delhi.
With roughly two-thirds of Indians working in agriculture, the protests attracted nationwide sympathy. On Nov. 26, some 250 million people took part in a nationwide strike in support of farmers, the largest demonstration in world history.
Around 500,000 farmers are now planning a longer-term protest in New Delhi, travelling there in their tractors and packing enough wheat, vegetables and clothes to sustain themselves for months.
“The government is not listening to our demands, these are laws that we do not want at all,” said Rana Rajvir Singh, a farmer's trade union member, at the main protest site at Singhu on Delhi's outskirts.
“We are all ready to get shot by the Delhi Police, rather than return home without the laws being repealed. We have already told our families we might die here.”
Back in the Malwa region, Sunita Garg, a general secretary of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is unrepentant.
“We are ready to make amendments to the Farm Bills but we absolutely won't roll them back, we'll continue with the table talks,” she said.
Garg, who owns several factories in Delhi, spoke from the lounge of her lavish home, where the sofas have Louis Vuitton cushions.
Outside, meanwhile, six elderly farmers were bedding down on the street for their 79th successive night in protest.
Only 10 per cent of protesting farmers had genuine grievances, she insisted — claiming that the remainder were being funded by China, the U.K. and unspecified terrorist groups.
On Thursday, the Indian Supreme Court refused a plea from the Indian government to ban the demonstrations and recognized the farmers' right to protest.
Meanwhile, back in the village of Sukhanwala, Singh fears for his family's survival.
Despite promises from the Indian government to waive his grieving family's debt, no payment has been made to the microfinance companies he is indebted to.
“Our only concern is running our livelihoods, we don't want to become rich or become politicians,” he said. “We don't expect luxury, just roll back the laws.”
THE CONDITION FOR FARMERS IS ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE.