Farmers’ Suicides and the Agrarian Crisis in Punjab: Some Sociological Observations

Introduction

The issue of farmers’ suicides in India has been brewing up over the last three decades. There is no consensus on the actual count of the self-inflicted termination of lives by those, either in Punjab or outside, who give life to others. Basu, Das and Misra (2016) suggest 300,000 suicides of cultivators and agricultural labourers between 1995 and 2014 at the all-India level.

The peasantry is believed to be physically strong and sturdy and psychologically unfearful, given the vagaries of nature they deal with in their quotidian life. They witness the cycle of sowing and growing of crops, and the cattle too come and go in their lives, making them understand the ways and norms of nature, of life and death. Guru Granth Sahib also prescribes that whoever takes birth must perish, hence one must not fear the inevitable death but face the world head on. But the Punjabi Sikh farmers are now given to suicide. Their deaths are being counted since the 1990s by different agencies, albeit with huge differences. The Punjab government assigned the census survey of suicides from the year 2000 in the state to the three universities at Amritsar, Patiala and Ludhiana, recording 617, 1674 and 6014 deaths, respectively.

Punjab is not the only state passing through this crisis. It is seemingly a pan-Indian phenomenon, a viewpoint contested by Basu et al. According to them, Kerala and Maharashtra are the frontrunners in this fatal race, while Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh are trailing behind (Basu et al., 2016, p. 65). Punjab and Andhra Pradesh are not a part of this race since their SMRs are 0.74 and 0.50, respectively. ¹ They argue: ‘For a country as a whole, the SMR (suicide mortality ratio), that is, the ratio of farmer SMR and non-farmer SMR, has always been lower than 1. This means that the suicide rate of farmers has been lower than the suicide rate of non-farmers from 1995 to 2011’ (ibid.).

Suicides in Punjab

The latest count by Punjabi University, Patiala (Singh et al., 2017, p. 16) in the districts of their study shows that 93.63 per cent farmers and 87.61 per cent agricultural labourers committed suicide due to debt between 2000 and 2016. The Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, records 95.36 and 89.71 per cent suicides, respectively, between 2000 and 2013, while Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, counts 617 cases during that period. Singh, Bhangoo and Sharma (2016), in their study of the three districts of Bathinda, Mansa and Sangrur, report 88.7 per cent suicides due to economic reasons. Singh and Bhogal (2014) noted 3,507 farmers’ suicides due to debt during 2000–2011. Sidhu, Singh and Bhullar (2011), in their first ever census survey of the worst-affected districts of Sangrur and Bathinda (2000–2008), suggest that 73.3 per cent farmer suicides are due to indebtedness. The total number is 1,757. Gill (2000) report 83.6 per cent suicides, while Iyer and Manick (2000) count 78.75 per cent such deaths due to purely economic reasons. Sidhu and Jaijee (2011) record 1,774 suicides in a single subdivision of Sangrur district from 1988 to 2008. ² They quote Bhartiya Kisan Union (Ekta) survey in 2007 showing 67.78 per cent farmer suicides due to debt in Sangrur and Bathinda districts only. Kumar and Sharma (1998) report 17.89 per cent farmer suicides due to debt. The whole idea of giving the above counts is to show that the range of suicides attributed to debt over the last three decades varies from 18 per cent in 1998 to 91 per cent in 2017. How does one account for these suicides and such differences?

Almost all studies converge at one factor—debt. Farmers and agricultural labourers take loans from an institutional or a non-institutional agency. The latter is more popular with them because it requires fewer formalities and ensures a quicker delivery of the sum required. In Punjab, it is called arhtiya, a commission agent who is not a moneylender (sahukar) of the earlier days but a grain merchant who purchases the farm produce. Gill (2004) calls it interlinking the credit market with output market where surety is not land but the crop. ³ The arhtiya gives loans at an exorbitant rate of interest of 2–3 per cent per month depending upon the repaying capacity of the client.

There is a change in the social character of the traditional arhtiya, who belongs to the bania caste. ⁴ He is timid and polite and exploits by deceit the peasant who is temperamentally aggressive and violent. Lately, the rich peasants have become arhtiyas who belong to the same stock as their clients. They have the capacity to intimidate the borrower and recover the loan. The data show that small farmers are parting with their land while the large peasants’ landholding size is rising. Human Development Report Punjab mentions: ‘In 1970-71 marginal and small holdings accounted for 56.54 percent of total holdings but in 1995-96, medium and large holdings accounted for 57.29 percent…’ (Human Development Report Punjab, 2004, p. 41). Gill attests: ‘…in 1970-1 combined share of marginal and small operational holdings in the total operational holdings was 57.54 per cent which declined to 38.62 per cent in 1980-1, …further declined to 29.67 per cent in 2000-1’ (Gill, 2010, p. 233). The trend shows a disappearance of marginal landholdings. Another dimension of informal lending is of recent origin. The administrative and political elite of the state allegedly circulate their capital through them. The corruption graph in Punjab, as in the country, is ascending over the years. ⁵ The Jatt (rich peasant) arhtiya thus has administrative and political backing much needed for intimidating the borrower.

How does one account for the suicides due to debt? One factor common to almost all studies on Punjab and outside is the liberalisation policy of the government of India in the early 1990s. The opening up of the market linked to globalisation deepened its reach and control. The movement of capital and goods across national borders became as easy as never before, including the trained personnel depending on the requirements of the host country. It was a great fillip to the consumer culture that generated a false sense of prosperity and economic development. It induced a culture of taking loans, for conspicuous consumption. Another factor peculiar to Punjab is the termination of a decade-long Sikh militancy seeking self-determination that coincided with liberalisation (Singh, 2002).

A break-up of causes by certain scholars suggests that the share falling in the lap of indebtedness per se is not large. Kumar and Sharma (1998) list debt at number three (17.89 per cent), as the first position goes to family discord (35.79%). Further, 41.50 per cent farmers who committed suicide were indebted, but indebtedness itself is socially induced, they argue. Gill (2005) shows 15.2 per cent ⁶ and Singh et al. (2016, p. 131) report 31.9 per cent suicides due to debt ⁷ . The latter conclude: ‘Agrarian distress has been the expression of multiple causes, but indebtedness and indebtedness-related factors were considered to be the most vital manifestation of rural distress and precursor of farmers’ and agricultural labourers’ suicides’ (Singh et al., 2016, p. 171).

As a matter of fact, suicide due to debt should refer to such cases only where the farmer, not the agricultural labourer, if the latter does not combine the two roles together, had taken a loan and used that money for agricultural purposes strictly and yet could not pay back the same for failure of crop or other calamity, social or natural, and committed suicide. This loan should not have been used even for building or repairing the house or cattle shed, though basic to a farming household. I believe such cases would be quite small in number. On the other hand, loan taken and spent on marriage, house, etc., and even on an under-utilised tractor, leading to suicide should not be classified as suicide due to debt.

A farmer and an agricultural labourer, conceptually, are distinct in almost all ways but for the fact that both engage in physical work on the farm. Agricultural labour is qualitatively different from industrial labour in respect of the mode of salary/wage payment. Agricultural labourers take their ‘salary’ annually and in advance, besides grain, which is usually sufficient for the family for a year. The lump sum advance taken by the labour is often readily exhausted and may become a potential cause of suicide. ⁸ It is an occupational constraint in agriculture itself that may be pushing them to distress. Industrial and urban labourers, on the other hand, get a monthly salary or a daily wage that makes them relatively immune to suicide.

Age and debt also make an important relation in suicide. According to Durkheim the propensity to commit suicide increases with age, but the study by Punjabi University (Singh et al., 2017) shows otherwise. It is directly linked to the productive years in one’s life, and rightly so. More than half the suicides are committed by farmers (excluding labour) in the age group of 26–45 years. The highest concentration is in the age group of 36–45 years. For Sidhu and Jaijee (2011), 66.62 per cent suicides are committed by farmers between 21 and 40 years, and for Iyer and Manick (2000), 71.25 per cent. What seems dubious is suicide by 18.04 per cent farmers in the 16–25 years group for reasons of debt (Singh et al., 2017). So many people in this age group are not going to die on this count but anything else. The authors have themselves mentioned that 42.09 per cent farmers between 26 and 45 years were under debt. Therefore, it seems that such deaths are made to be counted as suicide due to debt for obtaining relief under some loan waiver scheme from the government that the kisan (farmers’) unions have been raising all these years. There are at present more than 40 unions in Punjab. Their leaders keep the farmers ever hopeful of receiving some relief sometimes from the government.

The youth in this age group, especially males, are more conscious of identity and its markers like having a mobile or motorbike. The rising selfie culture and social media have contributed hugely to the projection of self image that is made public on a daily basis. ⁹ The craze for consumer goods and brands over that is no longer alien to the village youth. Films and television, besides the Internet, have influenced this vulnerable section of the population for market promotion. Jatt and chaudar (domination) are virtually synonyms in the Punjabi society. ¹⁰ Popular media, over the last three decades, is replete with songs flaunting this macho image of the peasant that has heightened the youth’s aspirations for machoism, egoism and love for weapons and high-end machines. These songs are replete with violence. A suicide is nothing but turning the violence towards the self when one’s capacity to compete in a resource-stricken, competitive society is waning.

The rise of consumer culture, to my mind, is a relatively more potent cause for suicide than debt in the post-liberalisation phase. Durkheim argues: ‘Ultimately, this liberation of desires has been made worse by the very development of industry and an almost infinite extension of the market’ (Durkheim, 1897/1951, p. 279) ¹¹ . The expansion of consumer market and un-ensured (but for wheat and paddy) and unregulated marketing of the farmer’s produce make up the core of the problem of suicides. In a market society, none would undermine the significance of the economic factor and financial distress, but debt per se becoming a dominant and a determinant factor for suicide seems problematic, if not unlikely, in the majority of cases. Patnaik clarifies:

It is not debt as such, which is the problem – modern high-value agriculture cannot run without loans taken by the producer, any more than any other small business can. Rather, the problem arises when credit becomes un-repayable because misguided neo-liberal policies ensure that input prices rise even as output prices are allowed to fall… (Patnaik, 2010, p. 136)

Identifying a single cause for a complex social phenomenon is itself problematic. It seems simplistic to conclude that majority farmers’ suicides are due to debt. Durkheim cautions:

We should add, to be sure, that they are not always found in actual experience in a state of purity and isolation. They are very often combined with one another, giving rise to composite varieties; characteristics of several types will be united in a single suicide. The reason for this is that different social causes of suicide themselves may simultaneously affect the same individual and impose their combined effects upon him. (Durkheim, 1897/1951, p. 320)

If debt in itself is a cause then Darling would have reported it in his Punjab Peasant in Prosperity and Debt (1925), as for him, ‘the Punjab peasant is born under debt, lives under debt and dies under debt’. However, that is not the case. Interestingly, indebtedness may be a potent cause for suicide but farmers themselves do not perceive it as an important factor in loan repayment. Only 15.50 per cent farmers consider indebtedness a factor, while 48.00 per cent hold low income and 36.50 per cent, crop failure as significant factors (Singh et al., 2016, p. 112).

The debt, however, becomes the determinant cause of suicide for certain other reasons. One, it is a finding of the positivist research methods in identifying a cause–effect relation between variables and confirming a correlation statistically. It is an easy and simple way to research, hence its popularity among researchers. A survey method is good to observe the contours in social reality but is definitely insufficient to provide insight into a phenomenon especially social and, over that, a complex one like suicide.

Two, raising the issue of debt comes handy to the farmers’ unions. Identifying a singular cause of their distress makes a potent political slogan to mobilise them against the government. The academic researchers and farmers’ unions are seemingly working in tandem on the subject. It is apparently an objective demand based on ‘concrete’ facts.

Three, it suits the liberal state as well to let such issues keep brewing in the name of democracy. The political parties launch their election tirade on this issue and promise complete loan waivers, if voted to power. Once the party assumes power, the delay tactics follow. Some sops in instalments are released sometimes when there is no option left with the government. The latest case is of the Maharashtra farmers who marched to Mumbai in March 2018. ¹² Often, partial and fragmentary relief to the distressed community is trumpeted in the achievements of the government ‘having met the promises made to people’ following the Goebels’ principle of making a truth out of something.

Understanding Suicide

No doubt, suicide as a social phenomenon is universal, cutting across races and civilisations, societies and religions, gender and age. Durkheim (1897/1951) was the first one to suggest its social roots/character. He defines: ‘the term suicide is applied to all cases of death resulting directly or indirectly from a positive or negative act of the victim himself, which he knows will produce this result’ (Durkheim, 1897/1951, p. 22). He explains suicide sociologically. Earlier, it was considered a psychological phenomenon and an individual’s problem of depression or a biomedical abnormality. Durkheim identifies four types of suicides, out of which two are significant for the present discussion and both are a consequence of a person’s integration with fellow beings, the society/community. When social integration is high, a person is prone to commit suicide, called altruistic, and when it is low, one may end up committing egoistic suicide, such as the farmers. Another significant type is anomic suicide in which the moral regulation of society is weak. When it becomes strong, then too one commits suicide, called fatalistic. The anomic type is more common, and is useful in understanding farmers’ suicides. Durkheim suggests two types of anomie—domestic and economic. In the changing Punjabi society, the social and economic regulations are equally disturbed and skewed, which may push a person to terminate one’s life consciously. Durkheim clarifies:

Two factors of suicide, especially, have a peculiar affinity for one another: namely, egoism and anomy. We know that they are usually merely two different aspects of one social state; thus it is not surprising that they should be found in the same individual. It is, indeed, almost inevitable that the egoist should have some tendency to nonregulation; for, since he is detached from society, it has not sufficient hold upon him to regulate him. (ibid., p. 321)

This pair explains the problem of suicide in an agrarian society. Mohanty (2013), studying farmers’ suicides in India, considers that egoism is a structural characteristic of modern agrarian economy and society, and a prerequisite for anomie.

The findings of all studies on Punjab allude to poverty as a cause for debt, and suicide, subsequently. To Durkheim, ‘poverty is not one of the factors on which the social suicide-rate depends’ (Durkheim, 1897/1951, p. 202). Rather, ‘Poverty protects against suicide because it is a restraint in itself’. He questions, ‘Is it because they (crises) increase poverty by causing public wealth to fluctuate? Is life more readily renounced as it becomes more difficult? The explanation is seductively simple; and it agrees with the popular idea of suicide. But it is contradicted by facts’ (ibid., p. 270) (emphases added). ‘Actually, if voluntary deaths increased because life was becoming more difficult, they should diminish perceptibly as comfort increases’ (ibid.).

Durkheim argues:

If therefore industrial or financial crises increase suicides, this is not because they cause poverty, since crises of prosperity have the same result; it is because they are crises, that is, disturbances of the collective order. Every disturbance of equilibrium, even though it achieves greater comfort and a heightening of general vitality, is an impulse to voluntary death. (ibid., p. 273) (emphasis added)

He continues:

What proves still more conclusively that economic distress does not have the aggravating influence often attributed to it, is that it tends rather to produce the opposite effect. There is very little suicide in Ireland, where the peasantry leads so wretched a life. Poverty stricken Calabria has almost no suicides; … Poverty may even be considered a protection.’ (ibid., p. 272)

It is pertinent to mention that there is none more poor than the Denotified Tribes in Punjab, but there is no incidence of suicide amongst them (Singh, 2010/2018).

The Punjabi society is a victim of misregulated transition from tradition to modernity. The political elite are unto themselves, and the state and its apparatus are indifferent to people. The first two decades after independence (1947) are an exception, when euphoria for nation-building was strong. However, peoples’ unrest in the country, as also in the north-west region, had begun from the beginning of the second decade. Each one of these unrests, like Punjabi suba (state) (Sarhadi, 1992) in the early 1960s, Naxalism (Marxism–Leninism) and the students’ movement during the late 1960s (Judge, 1992) and subsequently the Sikh militancy from the late 1970s to the early 1990s (Singh, 2002) kept the cauldron of turbulence simmering in Punjab.

The much-hyped green revolution to fight the food shortage and to strengthen India’s food security continued overfilling the country’s godowns, despite all the political unrests mentioned above. It generated income for the farmers in its early phase (Bhalla & Chadha, 1982) but more serious ecological and environmental problems later. Shiva (1992) calls the green revolution ‘an experiment that failed’. There is no land left in Punjab for agricultural expansion, as more than 83 per cent of the total land is under cultivation; production levels have already hit the plateau without an ascent in sight; and 103 blocks out of 137 are overexploited for water (State of Environment Punjab, 2007). ¹³ Singh (2007) examines the roots of Sikh militancy in the agrarian crisis reflected in the militants’ pamphlets, press releases and declarations. The Sikh militants expressed concern over the plight of peasantry too.

The above-mentioned unrests/movements had a focussed other against whom the peoples’ aggression was directed, and it was invariably the Indian state called Dilli sarkar or simply ‘centre’, colloquially. The peasantry and youth preponderantly were mobilised in huge numbers. These movements reflected the political aspirations of the Punjabi (Sikh) peasantry for a federal state ¹⁴ or an autonomous (Khalistan) state to safeguard the interests of Punjab and Punjabis. The failure of these movements disillusioned the Sikh peasantry. The legitimacy of liberal state had already been corroded following scams and corruption from the early 1960s. The farmers, thus, saw no hope in the amelioration of their grievances. The aggression of Punjabi peasantry hitherto directed against the ‘other’ was inverted for self-annihilation during the 1990s.

The Punjabi society is inherently violent to some extent due to geo-political factors. ¹⁵ Punjab was en route to the warring expeditions that pre-dated Alexander’s invasion. These expeditions made a Punjabi person prone to conspicuous consumption and enjoying comforts of material life, given the ideology of living in the present and not saving, since there loomed high uncertainty on the future. There is a saying to this effect: ‘khada peeta lahe da baqi Ahmad Shahe da’—whatever one consumes is one’s, and the rest will be taken away by Ahmad Shah (Abdali)—whose raids were frequent in the mid-eighteenth century. ‘By January 1748, Abdali and his army arrived outside Lahore,…. This was the first of (his) ten Indian invasions’ (Gandhi, 2013, p. 86).

Misregulated Modernisation

The social, moral and administrative regulations, including the political ones, were affected in myriad ways due to the misregulated modernisation of economy—agriculture/green revolution—and society. The breaking down of joint family and of mechanical solidarity (Durkheim) in the village/community left individuals rudderless. The religious institutions as agents of moral regulation have become commercial, and religion is being misused by the political elite for narrow ends.

I call the change from tradition to modernity misregulated, because it could never become the concern of the political elite. The state to them was and still is a holy cow to milk for self-aggrandisement. The institutional authority and national resources are used for self-promotion than for peoples’ education for their skill development, employment and self-dependence. ¹⁶ The political institutions and bureaucracy were deliberately distanced from the people so that corruption could go unchecked. ¹⁷ The traditional value of ascription, bhai-bhateejavaad (grooming kin), was promoted and strengthened through electoral politics rather than modern values of universalism and achievement being inculcated. If modernisation was unregulated, it would have been better still, since the institutional inertia of the modernising institutions set by the colonial authority could keep them going, as it was during the first two decades after India’s independence. The modernity that has come to stay with us is ‘mistaken modernity’ (Gupta, 2000).

In the early decades, the spirit of nation-building was a booster dose to the modernisation of education and health services, besides others, which is why government hospitals, schools and colleges were doing well until the 1970s in Punjab. Their deterioration started subsequently when the state started withdrawing their funding and diverted funds to strengthen the state apparatus and self-aggrandisement. ¹⁸ The government schools and hospitals, since then, have deteriorated to such an extent that these are not trusted by even the poor people. Was not that by design? The public institutions were starved to death callously. It paved way for the privatisation of health and education sectors that burdened the majority peasantry with increased expenses. ¹⁹

The farmers felt doubly cheated due to the enhanced expenses on family basics and rising prices of agricultural inputs. The farmer buys every input, including seeds (not so earlier), from the market over which he has no control. Paradoxically, the price of his produce is fixed by the metropolitan merchants. Such circumstances coerced the farmers to send their children abroad for education, an opportunity opened due to globalisation. The farmers sold land and other assets to send their sons for education and daughters in marriage abroad. Young daughters were married to old(er) men so that they could become a conduit for their siblings’ immigration. ²⁰ The problem of failed marriages of NRIs (non-resident Indians) is well known (Kaur, 2011). ²¹ Tatla writes:

This emigration process was also spreading to regions which were quite immune to it in the early era. Thus, districts of Patiala and Ropar in the east joined others. Perhaps the only anomaly was the Majha region which had earlier been well connected abroad, but was now left behind. …In terms of classes and segments of Sikh rural society, the emigration fervour has embraced them all. Even prosperous farmers appear as eager to send their off-springs abroad as are the middle and small land-holders. One hears desperate stories of emigration from all the classes. …many peasant families have sold their land, in some cases the entire family land, to finance a son’s or a daughter’s settlement abroad. (Tatla, 2010, p. 299)

Farms have already reached the plateau level in agricultural production and productivity of wheat and rice. There is no scope for expansion either. All expenses for agricultural inputs and domestic purposes have risen exponentially, and there is no hope of increasing their income but for demanding a rise in the minimum support price (MSP), which is why the farmers’ unions are thriving. The economically distressed farmers are burdened more with the ‘new’ expenses and that too without certainty. If the son could not acquire permanent residency abroad or the daughter’s marriage failed, where would the farmer go? Such situations pushed them towards self-termination of life. These deaths should not be linked to debt even if the economic factor is dominant.

Family quarrels due to economic distress directly involving money matters do not lead to death. The cause is estrangement or conflict with one or more family members. For instance, a son neither studies nor works on the farm and, over that, demands a motorbike or a mobile. The father denies and resists, but the mother forces him to ‘manage somehow’, lest their son takes a ‘wrong step’ (kujh ghalat na kar baithe). Mothers are invariably on the side of their sons as much out of fear of losing them as to ‘settle scores’ with their husbands against whom they have ‘eternal’ grouses in a patriarchal society. The grown-up sons are their support and defence. It is this breakdown of social solidarity in family and community that alienates a person (farmer) from life, not debt per se. Moreover, he knows that his death will not write off the debt.

Such family discords are due to the rise in consumer culture. The Punjabi farmer had reaped the rich harvest of green revolution (Bhalla & Chadha, 1982) and generated surplus for conspicuous consumption to raise the standard of living. Shergill (2016) argues that Punjabi farmers top the list of standard of living among rural households across the country. The Punjabis’ craze for imported items got boosted with the liberalisation policy that opened the floodgates of consumer goods. One may find a positive correlation between consumer culture and the rise in the number of suicides. Durkheim mentions:

With increased prosperity desires increase. At the very moment when traditional rules have lost their authority, the richer prize offered these appetites stimulates them and makes them more exigent and impatient of control. The state of de-regulation or anomy is thus further heightened by passions being less disciplined, precisely when they need more disciplining. (Durkheim, 1897/1951, p. 278)

Punjabi children no longer listen to granny’s (nani/dadi) moralising stories but watch titillating and tantalising soaps on television depicting new trends of morality. The peer group too connects them to the popular media. The village schools are in doldrums, teachers are absent (Chaudhury et al., 2005), and drugs are present everywhere (Verma, 2017). ²²

The developments in information and communication technology have also added to the farmers’ woes in giving them a sense of heightened relative deprivation. Television is used less for the regulated transition from tradition to modernity, or for educating the farmer agriculturally, ecologically and environmentally (hence misregulation), and more for soaps and advertisements. The farmers’ dependence on the market frustrates them, and they often grumble: ‘baniye de kehde hal chalde ne, kothhian pai baithe ne; Jutt mitti naal mitti hoyi jand’ai’. Literally, the business people have big mansions without ploughing fields but the farmers keep toiling in soil day and night.

The Punjabi society has class divisions, besides other forms of social divisions and hierarchy. Social domination vis-à-vis one’s paternal kin (sharik) is common, hence the problem of sharikebazi—kin rivalry. It is an integral component of Punjabi culture, given the compactness of rural society. This explains why the number of tractors is so large—517,743 in March 2015. There are 76 tractors per 1,000 hectares that are used for one-third of their capacity only. ²³ A small farmer too owns a big tractor, taken on loan from a bank, that gathers dust for most of the year. It is more a symbol of status and social domination than an instrument of gainful production. Unfortunately, there is no policy of the government on ground to check a marginal farmer from obtaining such a loan (hence misregulation). If there is a policy, then the banks violate that to meet the business targets.

The culture of individualism as an integral component of modernity has confounded the above problem. Each son parting from the joint family likes to possess his own implements, including a tractor, rather share them with his brothers, let alone with his neighbours. Where has the value of ‘loving thy neighbour’ gone? In the pre-modern society, sons/brothers were an asset to the family in agriculture, but they have now become a liability and turned into foes. This has led to gross underutilisation of tractors and blocking of money. Besides this non-productive investment, loan money is often diverted to acquire consumer items and spent on marriages, etc. Kumar and Sharma (1998) note that 68.20 per cent loan money is spent on unproductive purposes, while Jodhka (2010) shows the corresponding percentage to be 59, out of which nearly half is spent on marriages and other social functions.

Marriage is a big event in the Punjabi family, and dowry a huge menace in the Malwa region, as is the problem of suicides. The male head of the household bearing loan stands torn between the lender and the family. Kumar and Sharma (1998, p. 38) show that dowry deaths and dowry harassment are common to all strata, though concentrated in the middle upper and middle lower strata, with 82.28 and 81.56 per cent, respectively, in rural Punjab for 1994 only.

Suicides due to non-economic reasons are also reported but underplayed by these studies. Durkheim also calls this type a case of domestic anomie. Suicide due to debt is a case of economic anomie. The line between the two is thin, but it does exist and should be maintained for academic purposes.

If the government of India/Punjab were monitoring the project of green revolution and modernisation of agriculture judiciously, it could establish public tractor pools or co-operatives rather give incentives and subsidies to the individual farmers for the purchase of big machines; but it did not, hence misregulation. Was the state inclined to promote the tractor industry? Instead, it should have inculcated the spirit of co-operation in the farmers, a feature of pre-modern agriculture. This would have saved the farmers from competitive sharikebazi. Similarly, water too could be shared and the problem of individual ownership of tube wells could be averted to save water and expenses both. ²⁴ The Punjab government’s tunnel vision has proved disastrous to economy and ecology. If water-thirsty hybrid seeds were introduced, then water harvesting should have been made mandatory, but that has not been done till date. Over that, the government provides free electricity for tube wells, for populist politics. Paradoxically, that does not help the small and marginal farmers. Hence, gross misregulation.

Agrarian Crisis

The primary purpose of this discussion is to suggest that most arguments and suggestions made for the resolution of farmers’ suicides are flawed. The peasants and their unions demanding loan waivers is no solution to their distress. This problem will keep recurring until the structural crisis of neo-liberal economy is addressed. Kalamkar and Shroff’s (2011) study of Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra’s deceased farmers’ families shows that huge relief has not helped them. ²⁵

The agrarian crisis is built into the theory of modern society and economy. According to the classical evolutionary theory, a civilised society is an urban, industrial and scientific one whose inhabitants need not soil their hands. Agriculture is toiling with the soil (mitti naal mitti hona), as believed by the Punjabi peasant. The criterion of classification begins from the agrarian society and ends with the industrial society for thinkers like Spencer, Comte, Morgan and even Marx.

The hierarchy of societies has now transcended the industrial level as well. Bell talks of the post-industrial and Dahrendorf of the post-capitalist society. The current phase of information society may get a new form and a new name following the fourth industrial revolution. Likewise, there is a hierarchical classification of occupations from the traditional to the modern, from handicraft to industrial and from primary agricultural to secondary manufacturing and tertiary services. The latter themselves have now become hierarchical. Those working with information technology are superior-most. The developed countries have outsourced manufacturing and manual work to the developing countries.

In the economic theory of development, agricultural surplus is to be invested in industry. The economists suggest that the agrarian crisis in Punjab is due to its ‘over-stay in agriculture’ (Gill, 1988; Johl, 1988; Singh et al., 2016; Singh, 2017). ²⁶ Therefore, surplus labour force from agriculture must be diverted to industry or other sectors, and farmers too must start agri-business and agro-industry. Singh (2017) suggests, following Waldron, that agro-industrialisation must be bottom-up, not top-down, and it must combine with crop diversification. This is yet another example of misregulation on the part of Punjab’s political and administrative elite that could not facilitate the transition from agriculture to industry, hence leading to the agrarian crisis and suicides, subsequently.

The small and marginal farmers are perishing. Punjab is experiencing depeasantisation. Singh and Bhogal inform: ‘14.40% of the farmers…had left farming since 1991…. Of this, the proportion of marginal farmers was 26.50% and small farmers 18.26%’ (Singh & Bhogal, 2014, p. 99). Singh et al. show that 10 per cent deceased farmers’ households have sold their land for the repayment of debt, while others mortgaged and leased out land and left agriculture. (Singh et al., 2016, pp. 139–140.) The existing system of agricultural production is paving way for the surplus labour’s contract employment, if not wage labour, in the corporate farms, to be managed either by Monsanto and Cargill or their franchises. ²⁷ In the age of finance capital and multinational corporations, the survival of small and marginal peasants is highly precarious. Even if they form cooperatives (Singh, 2010), they would barely be managing their households. Singh himself cautions: ‘The problem is not that small farms are inherently unviable in today’s marketplace, but that they face an increasingly skewed playing field…’ (Singh, 2012, p. 96).

In a market society, those practising agriculture shall ever remain behind industry relatively in maximising their profits, given the natural limits of agricultural production. The research and development in agriculture is trying to turn it into an industry by controlling conditions of crop production and by genetically modifying natural seeds. It seems that agriculture will survive which has the potential of being made into an industry. Thus, it may be inferred that in the liberal theory of economy, the natural agriculture that majority farmers practise across the world will not survive. Farmers must adopt other forms of agriculture and/or services for survival.

If this is the trajectory of modern economy and society, then why do governments talk of rural development? Simply put, it is a sop to the rural people so that they may remain there and not march towards the city, a seat of learning, culture and civilisation. Their city-ward movement will clog the urban centres and create slums like Dharavi. Who should move out of the villages then? Only those with high achievement and intelligence quotients.

For Ambedkar, a village is a ‘sink of localism and den of ignorance, narrow-mindedness, and communalism’ (Kapoor, 1970, p. 481), and for Nehru: ‘A village, normally speaking, is backward intellectually and culturally and no progress can be made from a backward environment. Narrow-minded people are much more likely to be untruthful and violent’ (Chandra, 1987). Please note the attitude of two mentors of modern India who were contesting Gandhi’s pro-village manifesto in Hind Swaraj, an alternative framework for development (Singh, 2005). The agrarian crisis will remain irresolvable in the neo-liberal regime and the city-centric model of development. Its resolution is a political decision and not a case of economic adjustments and sops in the existing framework.

Let me caution that these observations must not be interpreted as an argument against the farmers and their suicides—the suicide of a single distressed farmer is cause enough for public concern, though we kept waiting for large numbers to make it an issue. Instead, I am focussing on the agrarian crisis and suggesting that until that crisis is resolved, no loan waiver will help the farmers. In the neo-liberal regime when the state is withdrawing from vital sectors of education, health, etc., the farmers’ worries will not subside, and their debts will keep mounting. Our demand, therefore, should be to resolve the agrarian crisis. The kisan unions must not indulge in economism.