Seeds of ruin
indian farmers are neck-deep in debt. Of the 89.35 million farmer households in the country, 43.42 million (48.6 per cent) are reeling under the yoke, says a recent survey report of the National Sample Survey Organisation (nsso), under the Union ministry of statistics and programme implementation. The report was released on May 3, 2005 and discussed in p arliament the next day. The situation is paradoxical, as the Indian economy has recorded a growth rate of over six per cent during the post-1991 liberalisation era.
The pro-liberalisation lobby considers this phenomenon insignificant as agriculture's contribution to the gross domestic product (gdp) has fallen drastically in recent years and stands at a mere 24 per cent today. So, the economy is largely immune to upheavals in this sector. But what cannot be ignored is the fact that 60 per cent of the country's population thrives on agriculture.
Loans feed suicides The report implies a link between the debt-trap and farmers' suicides. It says Andhra Pradesh (ap) has the highest percentage of indebted farm households (82 per cent or 4.9 million households) in the country. By December 2003, when the survey was concluded, at least 3,000 ap farmers had committed suicide (see Down To Earth,