Individualization of Distress: Farmers' Suicide in India

Abstract

Farmers’ suicide is a pivotal issue in the discussion of agrarian distress in India. The data released by the National Crime Record Bureau in 2014 (which is also the first of its kind) shows that as of 2014, there are 5,650 deaths that have been accounted for as suicides committed by farmers. On 18 September 2020, Mr. Narendra Singh Tomar, Union minister of agriculture and farmers’ welfare, stated in the Rajya Sabha that in 2019, there were 10,281 suicides committed by farmers, accounting for 7.4 percent of the total death by suicide in the country (DownToEarth staff report, 2020). In 2015, while Maharashtra topped the list with a staggering number of 3,030, other states like Telangana (1,358), Karnataka (1,197), Madhya Pradesh (581), Andhra Pradesh (516), and Chhattisgarh (854) have followed the same fate. Reasons that have been mentioned in the Nation al Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) report (2014) are bankruptcy and indebtedness, family issues, crop failure, and alcohol abuse, of which bankruptcy and indebtedness (20.6 percent) along with family problems (20.1 percent) are the major causes of suicide followed by crop failure (16.8 percent) and illness (13.2 percent). There is an attempt to cluster the literature based on whether the economy should be held as the chief reason or such fatal incidents should be regarded as socio-psychological exceptionalism (Roy, 2021), but it seems that poverty dovetailed with other social factors such as humiliation, alienation, and individualization amid inequality have functioned together leading to suicide.