‘We are Like the Living Dead’: Farmer Suicides in Maharashtra, Western India

Mohanty, Biswajit

doi:10.1080/03066150500094485

Cited by 100 publications

(50 citation statements)

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“…One factor often identified in these studies as the primary or proximate cause for farmer suicides is the heavy debt burden among rural households (Assadi, 2000;Dandekar et al, 2005;GoAP, 2004;Harper 2011;Jeromi, 2007;Mishra, 2006aMishra, , 2006bMitra & Shroff, 2007;Mohanty, 2005;Mohanty & Shroff, 2004;Nagaraj, 2008;Rao & Suri, 2006;Sarma, 2004;Sidhu & Jaijee 2011). And, at the individual-level, careful in-depth studies among these show that the farmers who committed suicide had, on average, more debt.…”

Section: What We Knowmentioning

confidence: 96%

Political Economy of Suicide: Financial Reforms, Credit Crunches and Farmer Suicides in India

Sadanandan¹

2014

jda

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Over 250,000 farmers have committed suicide in India since the mid-1990s. Studies -both case studies of states and at the individual-level -attribute these deaths to credit crunches in the agrarian sector and increased debt burden among farmers. Most of the farm suicides have, however, taken place in five of India's 28 states, suggesting that adverse financial circumstances affected farmers only in some states. Why did mounting debt and credit crunches affect farmers only in some states? This paper offers an answer by relating farm suicides to the financial reforms the country undertook since the 1990s. Using an instrumental variables approach, it shows how increased competition in the banking sector diverted lending away from agriculture to create dire economic conditions that facilitated farm suicides in some Indian states. JEL Classifications: O110; O130; O160

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Section: What We Knowmentioning

confidence: 96%

Political Economy of Suicide: Financial Reforms, Credit Crunches and Farmer Suicides in India

Sadanandan¹

2014

jda

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“…The Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF) movement is partially a response to the acute indebtedness in which many India peasants find themselves. The debt is of course from the high production costs of conventional Green Revolution-style farming, as translated into budgets for bank credit, and is the underlying cause of the well-known epidemic of farmer suicides in that country (Mohanty 2005). The idea of ZBNF is to use agroecological practices based totally on resources found on the farm, such as mulching, organic amendments, and diversification, to break the stranglehold of debt on farming households by purchasing zero off-farm inputs.…”

Section: Agroecology In La Vía Campesinamentioning

confidence: 99%

Rural Social Movements and Agroecology: Context, Theory, and Process

Rosset¹,

Martínez‐Torres²

2012

E&S

287

108

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ABSTRACT. Rural social movements have in recent years adopted agroecology and diversified farming systems as part of their discourse and practice. Here, we situate this phenomenon in the evolving context of rural spaces that are increasingly disputed between agribusiness, together with other corporate land-grabbers, and peasants and their organizations and movements. We use the theoretical frameworks of disputed material and immaterial territories and of re-peasantization to explain the increased emphasis on agroecology by movements in this context. We provide examples from the farmer-to-farmer movement to show the advantages that social movements bring to the table in taking agroecology to scale and discuss the growing agroecology networking process in the transnational peasant and family farmer movement La Vía Campesina.

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“…Existing work has found that agricultural yields in India rely heavily on growing season temperature and precipitation (11,12), but it is unclear to what extent, if any, this sensitivity to climate influences suicide rates. Previous studies of income variability affecting suicide in India are anecdotal (5) or qualitative (13)(14)(15)(16)(17), and none attempt to identify and synthesize quantitative relationships between climate, crops, and suicides. To fill this knowledge gap, I use a data set from India's National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), which contains the universe of reported suicides in the country from 1967 to 2013.…”

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confidence: 99%

Crop-damaging temperatures increase suicide rates in India

Carleton

2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

316

144

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More than three quarters of the world's suicides occur in developing countries, yet little is known about the drivers of suicidal behavior in poor populations. I study India, where one fifth of global suicides occur and suicide rates have doubled since 1980. Using nationally comprehensive panel data over 47 y, I demonstrate that fluctuations in climate, particularly temperature, significantly influence suicide rates. For temperatures above 20 • C, a 1 • C increase in a single day's temperature causes ∼70 suicides, on average. This effect occurs only during India's agricultural growing season, when heat also lowers crop yields. I find no evidence that acclimatization, rising incomes, or other unobserved drivers of adaptation are occurring. I estimate that warming over the last 30 y is responsible for 59,300 suicides in India, accounting for 6.8% of the total upward trend. These results deliver large-scale quantitative evidence linking climate and agricultural income to selfharm in a developing country.climate | suicide | agriculture | weather impacts | India E ach year, over 130,000 lives are lost to self-harm in India (1). The causes of these deaths are poorly understood; drivers of suicidal behavior remain disputed across scientific disciplines, and nearly all evidence comes from developed country contexts (2-4). Despite lack of substantiation, public debate in India has centered around one possible cause of rapidly rising suicide rates: increasing variability of agricultural income (5, 6). Drought and heat feature prominently in these claims; climate events are argued to damage crop yields, deepening farmers' debt burdens and inducing some to commit suicide in response. With more than half of India's working population employed in agriculture, one third lying below the international poverty line, and nearly all experiencing rising temperatures due to anthropogenic climate change, these arguments appear plausible. However, the relationship between economic shocks and suicide is controversial (3,4,(7)(8)(9), and, in India, the effect of income-damaging climate variation on suicide rates is unknown. Although the national government has recently announced a $1.3 billion climate-based crop insurance scheme motivated as suicide prevention policy (10), evidence to support such an intervention is lacking. Existing work has found that agricultural yields in India rely heavily on growing season temperature and precipitation (11, 12), but it is unclear to what extent, if any, this sensitivity to climate influences suicide rates. Previous studies of income variability affecting suicide in India are anecdotal (5) or qualitative (13-17), and none attempt to identify and synthesize quantitative relationships between climate, crops, and suicides. To fill this knowledge gap, I use a data set from India's National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), which contains the universe of reported suicides in the country from 1967 to 2013. I pair these data with information on agricultural crop yields and high-resolution climate data to identi...

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‘We are Like the Living Dead’: Farmer Suicides in Maharashtra, Western India

Cited by 100 publications

References 7 publications

Political Economy of Suicide: Financial Reforms, Credit Crunches and Farmer Suicides in India

Political Economy of Suicide: Financial Reforms, Credit Crunches and Farmer Suicides in India

Rural Social Movements and Agroecology: Context, Theory, and Process

Crop-damaging temperatures increase suicide rates in India

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