Heavy Debt and Drought Drive India's Farmers to Desperation By AMY WALDMAN http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/06/international/asia/06INDI.html?pagewanted=1&th Published: June 6, 2004 ANANTAPUR, India ÷ For the 28th time in less than four hours, the telephone in the colonial-era district headquarters trilled. "Hello, help line," Gurram Pramila answered, her pen poised to record yet another tale of financial distress. A 55-year-old farmer who gave his name as Kadirappa was on the line, telling of a dry well on his eight acres and his $890 of debt. If the government did not help, he vowed, he would kill himself. Ms. Pramila, a junior bureaucrat untutored in improving mental health, improvised. "Don't lose heart," she told Kadirappa. "Have faith in yourself." The farmer's threat had the force of ominous context. In the past six years, 2,000 to 3,000 farmers (the state has not compiled an official tally) are believed to have committed suicide in this state, Andhra Pradesh, many of them in this arid district. Fifty to 100 have killed themselves since a new state government took office in mid-May, promising farmers relief. A help line set up by the government on May 22 had already logged more than 800 calls a week later. Close to half were from this district, most of them fielded by Ms. Pramila. The template of the calls ÷ dry land and crushing debt ÷ never varied, nor did their desperate tone. Nine wells failed on 10 acres owned by a farmer named Umapatty, and he owed $4,400 to banks and moneylenders. J. Narayanappa had two dry wells on 20 acres, and owed $5,777. Ms. Pramila took down the details, and promised that an official would follow up. Most of the suicidal farmers have swallowed pesticides, the easiest killer at hand. Burdened by compound interest, they compound tragedy, leaving families their debts, and depriving them of fathers, husbands and breadwinners. "I would have thrown the pills out," said Pullamma, the haggard widow of Jayram Reddy, 52, who killed himself on May 22 by swallowing ammonium phosphate tablets in the village of Regadikothur. He lay down on the family veranda to die, whispering to her that he could not bear the burden of more than $6,000 in debt. Now she will go to other farmers' fields to labor for 45 cents a day. India has seen spates of similar suicides in recent years, in states from Punjab to Kerala. In part, the suicides reflect a rural culture in which excess indebtedness becomes a mark of shame, which private moneylenders and public creditors milk to try to collect. But the dead farmers are also the canaries in the mine for India's agricultural economy ÷ indicators of dire straits. Agriculture, which supports two-thirds of India's more than one billion people, generates only one-quarter of its gross domestic product. In the past five years, while the services sector has grown an average of 8 percent a year, agriculture has grown just 2 percent a year. India's new government rode to power partly on the back of farmers' angst, but salving it will not be easy. In the farmers' plight, all the strands of an economy in transition intersect. This area had four successive years of drought, but the farmers have been buffeted by more than weather. With small landholdings, constrained markets for their products, and an overdependence on subsidies for power and fertilizer, India's farmers were ill equipped to compete when the national government undertook economic reforms in 1991. To a degree, the suicides reflect the farmers' bafflement at the gradual, and erratic, withdrawal of the state. They have felt the cost of reforms ÷ but have yet to see the benefits. Jayram Reddy was the second farmer in his village to kill himself. On Nov. 20, Nagalinga Reddy, no relation, took the same route, using the same method. The buildup to his death, at age 50, suggests the confluence of conditions that have driven farmers to desperation. Nagalinga Reddy grew rice and sunflowers. Only 10 of his acres were irrigated. He sank five bore wells at a minimum cost of $200 apiece ÷ but only two struck water. In Nagalinga Reddy's village, the cost of powering the pumps had risen sevenfold in recent years, with the state government trying to wean farmers off free power. The cost of fertilizers had risen, too, as the government sought to reduce subsides. Nagalinga Reddy had regularly lost crops to drought, dry wells and pests in the past seven years. He had stopped farming cotton because of pests, which drove hundreds of farmers to suicide in Warangal, another of the state's districts. In October, by the time he scraped together the money to spray his crop, the pests had gotten it. He was $9,000 in debt to three banks, one cooperative society and moneylenders. Bank officers regularly came to visit, and one bank took legal action. The moneylenders regularly harassed him. He avoided the ignominy of having the cooperative society post a public notice saying his land would be auctioned only by paying them a small sum. The banks and cooperative societies, under pressure in an era of reform to show more fiscal responsibility, cut him off. As access to formal credit has narrowed, the power of moneylenders ÷ who charge at least 24 percent annual interest ÷ has grown. Like most of his neighbors, Nagalinga Reddy turned to them. But by the time he died, a month after pests ate the rice crop, even the moneylenders considered him a bad risk. Like many of the suicides, Nagalinga Reddy had been a step above the very poor. He owned 15 acres and had built a solid house with ceiling fans. He had rank in an upper caste. All of that seemed to make his fall in status that much harder to bear. "My father was brave, but he could not withstand the pressure of the situation," said Tirumal Reddy, his gentle 21-year-old son. His son is a 10th-grade graduate who had hoped to end the family's dependence on agriculture by becoming educated enough to get a government job. But he is as yoked to the fields as his illiterate father was. Even marriage is unthinkable until he clears the debt. Farmers have also been affected by factors they may be only dimly aware of. Most states spend the bulk of their budgets on debt interest and salaries, which has left almost nothing to invest in irrigation. Ninety percent of this district is unirrigated, and thus depends on rain for water. Agricultural markets remain heavily regulated, and because there are few facilities here to process agricultural products, almost every crop must be exported to another state, something beyond small farmers' capacity. They sell cheap to middlemen, who harvest far greater profit across state lines. The opening of the Indian economy to imports has affected farmers as well. Some farmers in this district planted mulberry trees to produce silk ÷ but demand dropped as raw China silk began flowing in. The main crop here, groundnut, or peanut, is processed into oil, but recently the poor have been forsaking local peanut oil for cheaper palm oil from Southeast Asia. For now, the new state government is focusing on the symptoms of farmer distress, not the causes. Its first act was to declare free power for farmers and clear their arrears. The short-term relief will only add to the state's fiscal deficit, making infrastructure investment and power sector reform much harder. Politicians also held a rally in Hyderabad, the state capital, to beg farmers not to take their lives, and state officials set up the help line. The help line started the day Jayram Reddy died. In his case, the moneylenders had spared no cruelty to collect. One filed a police complaint against him; the police, probably bribed by the lender, hauled him in. Over the past two years moneylenders, regular visitors to his home, had taken his bullock cart, two bullocks and nine buffalo. They wanted to take his house, too. On a recent day, women were whitewashing the walls of Jayram Reddy's house in a posthumous purification ritual. At the same time, three of his lenders were at a local government office to proclaim that they had not pressed him for repayment, and thus could not be held liable for his death. They were also there to collect. As fellow villagers, they felt bad about Jayram Reddy's death, said a lender, N. Nagamunny. As lenders, they felt bad about their money. They wanted a piece of the government aid likely to be provided the family. Their mercenary mission was a necessity, said one, Keshur Reddy. He had four daughters to marry off. To lend to Jayram Reddy, he had borrowed from someone else, and that someone was pressing him hard. "If the money is not repaid to me," he said, "I'll commit suicide."
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