Many representatives from almost all political parties—national as well as regional—have, of late, been visiting Veerpal Kaur’s humble home in Punjab’s Ralla village in Mansa district, requesting support in the assembly elections. A farm suicide widow, Veerpal, 43, had unsuccessfully contested the 2019 Lok Sabha elections as an independent candidate from Bathinda, which was retained by Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal.
This election season, she decided to stay away owing to some serious health issues, and, as usual, financial problems—something that first drove her father, and after marriage, her husband and even her father-in-law to suicide. All these deaths happened within a span of 10 years due to Punjab’s biggest burning problem—agrarian distress.
“In a small state like Punjab, over 20,000 farmers and agricultural labourers have taken their lives in the last 21 years because of economic distress,” Ranjit Singh Ghuman, Economics Professor of Eminence at Guru Nanak Dev University in Amritsar, tells Outlook.
In October 2021, farmers unions had rubbished the National Crime Records Bureau’s data that claimed farm suicides were falling in Punjab. NCRB’s data showed that 257 cases were recorded in 2020 as compared to 302 in 2019 and 323 in 2018. Then, in October last year, a study by the Ludhiana-based Punjab Agricultural University revealed that 7,303 labourers had died by suicide during 2000-2018, due to stress fuelled by low earnings and debt.
Addressing election rallies across the state, PM Narendra Modi repeatedly blamed the Congress for Punjab’s agrarian crisis, questioning why the party hadn’t implemented the recommendations of the Swaminathan Commission when in power.
In February 2019, leaders of SAD and BJP, along with around 300 debt-ridden families of farmers who had committed suicide over the past two decades, had marched to the state assembly to protest against the Captain Amarinder Singh-led Congress government for not fulfilling its poll promise to waive all farm loans, as well as provide one government job and Rs 10 lakh as compensation to families of each suicide victim.
Following this, in April 2019, the then CM appealed to farmers not to commit suicide, assuring that his government was working on fulfilling the poll promise. He even repeated his election slogan: “Karza-kurki khatam, fasal di poori rakam (End to indebtedness and auction. Full payment for crops)”. Unfortunately, observers say most of the promises for families of farmers who committed suicide remained only on paper. Meanwhile, Captain Amarinder Singh jumped ship to become a BJP ally.
Prof Ghuman reacted to BJP’s unfulfilled promises to the farming community, asking, “Why has the party ruling at the Centre gone silent on its promise of doubling farmers’ income by 2022?”
Families of farmers suicide victims blame all parties and governments for the plight of Punjab’s farmers and agricultural workers. Veerpal Kaur says, “Everyone is approaching me now, but none of these parties have done anything for the families of the suicide victims. Even AAP doesn’t look very promising on this issue. Neither are they talking about the drug menace that has afflicted distressed farmers, nor do they seem concerned about the future of the widows of suicides.”
She adds that she wants every family of farmer suicide victims to cast at least one vote for Sanyukt Samaj Morcha (SSM), the newly-launched party of a farmers’ union.
In Mansa, which is home to over 6,000 people, Veerpal says there are over 45 widows of indebted farmers and agricultural labourers who committed suicide in the last 20 years. They used to cultivate rented farms and suffered heavy economic losses due to crop failures, she clarified.
Another farm widow in Mansa, Sukhwinder Kaur, lives with her daughter-in-law, Yashpal Kaur, whose husband, Harjinder Singh, disappeared in 2002 when the indebted family was struggling with severe financial distress. Yashpal hasn’t heard of him since. At the time of his disappearance, their only son, Sukhdeep Singh, who is mentally challenged, was just 40 days old. Sukhwinder’s husband, Darshan Singh, died in 2004.
Although the aggrieved family owns a large tract of land, since the area is low-lying, food crops often get damaged after heavy rains. When Darshan threw himself under a speeding train, the family was already knee-deep in debt due to repeated crop failures.
“We’re yet to free ourselves from the debt that has been compounding over 25 years. We borrow from one relative to pay off another,” Sukhwinder says, adding, “Whatever little help we got was from NGOs. Nothing from the government.”
A few years ago, the family lost their buffaloes to an unknown disease. Now the two women in the family of three have just one cow, whose milk they sell, besides making pickle and cow dung cakes for sustenance.
Kiranjit Kaur Jhunir, the convener of Committee for Farmers and Families of Agrarian Suicide Victims, lost her father Gurnam Singh to farm distress in 2016, after the cotton crop failed in Mansa. Her father, she says, hanged himself from a tree as he was finding it difficult to deal with the growing distress.
“A human being gets scared of even a needle prick. One can imagine the kind of trauma a farmer undergoes before he decides to end his life,” she says, adding that male farmers committing suicide are also victims of patriarchy. “In Punjabi society, men feel they are the sole providers for their families. They see crop failures as their personal failures, and find it beneath their dignity to share the trauma with women in the families. This mindset also needs to change.”
When her father committed suicide, she says, “I was too young to understand the issue of farm distress. After a few years, I gradually started to realise that there are thousands of families in Punjab who share my grief. Then I started politically educating farm widows, besides putting in place a strong solidarity network.”
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With her efforts, many farm widows have become articulate. “In the past few years, we have held several conferences wherein we invited all big politicians of Punjab and made them listen to the widows and their woes,” she says, adding that the 2020-21 farmers’ agitation has revived her hopes that farmers can get their demands met.
Discussing the political discourse in the recent elections, agriculture economist Devinder Sharma tells Outlook, “Issues of farmers were largely missing from media and political speeches. But interestingly, manifestos of all parties took these up, touching upon every factor contributing to farm distress.”
But he points out a dichotomy in the BJP’s manifesto, as well as this year’s Union budget, “The party says one thing at the Centre and another thing in Punjab. Here they gave the poll slogan, “Mehnat ka poora daam (Full payment for labour).” Citing the example of Minimum Support Price (MSP), he continued, “At the state, they are also promising MSP on pulses, vegetables and oilseeds. This is what farmers had been demanding, as wheat and rice already have MSP. They are talking about crop diversification, organic and sustainable farming, besides promising to write-off bank loans of all farmers who have less than five acres of land. What else could the farmers ask for? But the central budget is silent on it.”
“All these issues are linked to farm suicides,” he says. “Since farmers are not getting the right kind of price for their crops, the agrarian distress is bound to grow.” Referring to the BJP’s Uttarakhand manifesto, he says it promises that the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme will be doubled to Rs 12,000 per annum for farmers, besides promising financial assistance for agricultural labourers.
“This is what we had been demanding in the central budget, besides asking for Rs 6,000 per annum to landless farm labourers,” he says. “They say one thing in one state and another thing in another state.”
As he draws comparison between the Union budget and the ruling party’s poll promises, he says, “The Union budget is meant for corporates, while election manifestos are brought in just to entertain the masses.”
“Election Commission of India should legalise poll manifestos and fix responsibilities to political parties,” he demands. “That way, the manifestos would become the people’s budget.”
Professor Ghuman, meanwhile, suggests a slew of measures, saying the new government in Punjab must implement them to assuage the agrarian distress. “There is a strong need for crop diversification to save groundwater, so that agriculture doesn’t become unviable in the near future. The government must focus on surplus workforce in the farming sector—which includes both farmers and landless labourers—and ensure that they become employable and find employment. Jobs should be created for them in rural non-farm sectors,” he says, emphasising crop processing units and cooperative use of farm machinery. He adds that the rural employment scheme MNREGA has proven to be ineffective in checking farm distress in Punjab.
Claiming that agriculture is not going to remain sustainable in Punjab—which emerged as a model state in the 1980s after the Green Revolution—under the business-as-usual mode, Professor Ghuman tells Outlook, “Today, 80 per cent of farmers in Punjab don’t want their sons to continue with farming. They are selling their farms and sending their children abroad to make sure they have a secure future.”
“If farm discontent is not redressed, I’m afraid Punjab will witness a situation worse than what it saw during the insurgency,”
he remarks.
Veerpal—who is an aanganwadi worker—also doesn’t want her children to take up farming. Her daughter is pursuing law, while her son is in college and works part time as an accountant to support the family. The family doesn’t even have a proper house of their own. “No one seems genuinely concerned about farming, farmers or their problems,” she says. “Although NGOs like Sahayata Club have ensured education of the children of farm widows, the new Punjab government must provide them employment.”
(This appeared in the print edition as "Harvest Of Farm Suicides")
