Zero farm suicide in 11 states/ UTs throw NCRB data into question

Despite poor crop yields and looming farm debts, NCRB's 2018 report on farmer suicides claimed that zero people involved in farmer or agricultural labourer suicides. Though, the Union minister Kishan Reddy clarified the reason in Rajya Sabha but, the question must be raised if West Bengal- third-highest suicidal state figures out 13,255 but lacks figures of farmer suicide says, Senior journalist Sanjib Baruah.

Hyderabad: Amid poor crop yields and a looming farm debt crisis, as many as 11 states and Union territories, there was zero reporting of farmer or agricultural labourer suicides in 2018, data released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) on Thursday, raising questions about the reliability of the overall suicide figures.

The 11 states and UTs in question are West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha, Uttarakhand, Meghalaya, Goa, Chandigarh, Daman & Diu, Delhi UT, Lakshadweep and Puducherry.

To cite an instance, West Bengal reported 13,255 suicides in 2018—the third-highest suicide number among the states, but not a single one was reported as a farm suicide.

For the rest of the country, 10,349 farmers and farmhands took their own lives in 2018 working out to about 28 daily deaths in the farmlands. While 5,763 were farmers/cultivators, 4,586 were agricultural labourers. Most of the agricultural farmers and hands were men.

In 2016, 11,379 farmers and farm labourers committed suicide while no figures were available for 2017. No causes were cited for the farm suicides.

In November, Junior Home Minister G Kishan Reddy stated in the floor of the Rajya Sabha that the causes could not be listed by the NCRB as the information provided by the many state governments were “untenable” as many reported “nil” data on suicides even as suicides in other professions were reported.

With agriculture being a state subject, the issue of farmer suicide is a politically sensitive subject as high death rates may be indicative of the failure of state government schemes to enable the farming community to lead an economically secure livelihood.

With more than half of India’s farmlands not being covered by irrigation, water availability is a perennial problem which has been compounded by erratic weather phenomena often attributed to global warming. A bad monsoon year results in immense hardships to the farming community.

Moreover, with most of the landholdings being small in size, the marginal farmer is most vulnerable. Farm suicides accounted for 7.7 per cent of the total 1,34,516 suicides for 2018. The number of total suicides slid up 3.6 per cent from 1,29,887 in 2017.

The most suicides in 2018 were reported from Maharashtra (17,972), followed by Tamil Nadu (13,896), West Bengal (13,255), Madhya Pradesh (11,775) and Karnataka (11,561).