Seven farmers
have recently sought the governments’ permission to end their lives.
They have drafted applications and submitted them – as per protocol in
any “normal” application – to the Office of the Tehsildar (local revenue
officer) in Wardha District, Maharashtra.
What’s more, the seven have even
received official acknowledgment of their “suicide permission letters”.
And, the acknowledgments have not come courtesy stray oversight from a
sloppy officer. They received it first from the Tehsildar and
subsequently from the District Collectors’ Office, which represents the
bureaucratic route a “normal” application would take.
Despite the Union government’s
declared intent in December 2014, to decriminalise the attempt to commit
suicide, by deleting section 309 of the Indian Penal Code, trying to
kill oneself in India still remains a penal offence, as no such bill has
been passed by Parliament.
Therefore, the acknowledgments
to the “suicide applications” by the authorities are telling. The
acknowledgements betray how routine farmers’ suicides have become for
the government. On one level it is absurd for government authorities to
“acknowledge” applications by citizens seeking permission to commit a
crime under their watch. However, on another level, a dying farmer is
the new normal in an Indian countryside hit by the farm crisis, with
Vidarbha in Maharashtra as epicentre. It has ensnared more than 300,000
lives over the last two decades, with Vidarbha recording more than 4,000
farmers committing suicide every year for 10 years in a row. Though
trailing Vidarbha in such deaths, other regions like Chhattisgarh,
Andhra Pradesh, and Bundelkhand have witnessed more than a thousand
suicides annually over the same period. And, these regions have been met
with the same administrative apathy as is still on display in Vidarbha.
Take the 2009 case of farmers of
Chhattarpur Block, Palamu District, Jharkhand, who launched a signature
campaign seeking permission to commit mass suicide after consecutive
years of poor rainfall and no help from the government. Their logic was
as simple as can be. They wrote to then President Pratibha Patil, since
they “cannot lead a respectable life”, they “should be able to die in a
respectable way”.
Look to the causes that pushed
the Palamu farmers to desperation and they are the same as the ones
cornering the Wardha farmers. The farmers in Palamu had not received any
government support for crop failures, for years. The farmers in Wardha
did not get any either. The crops of the Wardha farmers have been
destroyed by massive hailstorms and untimely rain last winter and they
are entitled to aid of around 4,000 rupees per head. The government has
released the funds, but has failed to disburse the same for over six
months now, and thus the funds remain locked in bank accounts rather
than reach the farmers who desperately need it. The current dry spell in
the region has heightened the desperation by damaging over 70 percent
of their current crops.
How can a country that claims to
be the largest democracy in the world do this to its farmers? The farm
crisis has not come out of nowhere. It has been there for decades. The
incumbent government repeatedly cried foul over the last government’s
lackadaisical response to farmers’ suicides when it was in opposition.
Its response to the suicides, however, remains the same, with just one
change: the ones in opposition now are crying foul over the handling of
the crisis.
Why is it that to date all the
help earmarked for farmers fails to reach them when they need it most?
Why does the assistance reach families only after the farmers end their
lives? What do those who keep the money frozen in bank accounts get by
doing so? It certainly seems to boost private moneylenders, who the
farmers are forced to approach despite the ruinous interest rates. Could
it be that this keeps the corrupt and criminal nexus between
moneylender, bureaucracy, and politicians alive: a process of enrichment
at the cost of dying farmers?
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