00:00and since we are talking about farmer suicides who better to give us a sense of the issue than
00:12someone who spent a lifetime covering it max essay award winner and senior journalist p
00:17syna joins me appreciate you're joining us assina it almost seems like every year we come once a
00:24year to talk about farm suicides the latest reason being the maharashtra assembly the government of
00:29maharashtra admitting that 767 farmer suicides took place in the first three months of the year
00:36in just the vidarbha region are we simply replaying this story without any solutions because
00:44year after year for more than two decades governments have changed but farm suicides in maharashtra
00:50continue well you know the policies that lead to the suicides the policies that create the crisis
01:02in the first place have not changed they're being practiced on steroids now the nda following the upa so
01:11it it is going to get worse but i'd like to i'd like to clarify one thing here rajdeep i mean
01:18um that is that the farm suicides are the most tragic face of the agrarian crisis however they are not the
01:30crisis suicides are the outcome of the crisis not its origin they are its context not its cause the
01:39policies that have driven them for 30 years now have intensified particularly in the last 10 years
01:48and so you shouldn't be too surprised you should be horrified by what's happening can you can you be a
01:56little bit more specific sainat when you said the ups policies have now been taken forward by the nda on
02:03steroids b can you be more specific because when i look at the numbers clearly in the upa years also
02:09when they ruled maharashtra they ruled india farm suicides were at a very high level so it's not as if
02:15there's been a major increase it's just that it's been sustained over more than 20 years
02:21i covered those rising numbers as you know i'm also saying that making these comparisons and saying
02:34it was a lot like the bjp has apparently attempted to do to say it was a lot worse under the upa
02:41this is something like going home with your report card and saying daddy you must be delighted to know i
02:47wasn't at the bottom of the class i was second you know it it seems a very pointless kind of response
02:57when i say that you had when i say that you had policies taken forward one was the huge credit crisis
03:07caused by the diversion of credit from agriculturist to every business in your home state of maharashtra
03:15rajdeep the the uh the bar plan potential linked credit plan for agriculture and rural
03:2853 percent of it rajdeep goes to mumbai city where are the farmers in mumbai city there are no farmers
03:36or contract numbers there are farmers of contracts that's what mumbai city has so if it's not going to
03:42with the bulk of agricultural credit going to non-farmers you are telling me that 53 percent
03:50of nabard loans meant for agriculture are going to
03:56so-called farmers in and around mumbai am i correct
04:02that's right but it's not nabard loans nabard creates a potential linked credit black plan for
04:09states and all the banks all the banks tend to follow exactly that pattern laid out and not only
04:18are they being 53 percent of over 50 percent being dispersed in mumbai rajdeep they're being dispersed in
04:25urban and metro branches you know metro branch would be malabar hill or i don't know when you last met a
04:32small farmer in malabar hill or cup parade bandra these are metro branches and a huge sums of money
04:41they are going to agri business and the nabard does not deny that there is this uh dispersal in mumbai
04:49they don't disperse they don't contest that they've been defended
04:53it sign up many of the problems have been well identified for the crisis of agriculture disparities
05:01in the way water is distributed some areas are water guzzlers like sugar farms other areas in
05:08vidarbha marathwada for example in maharashtra don't get enough water there is the high costs of seeds of
05:14fertilizers and of course now there is climate change so there's a sense that the problems have
05:20been well documented the solutions seem not to be found is there a silver bullet out there something
05:26that would ensure that the number of farm suicides are gradually reduced over time there are lots of
05:34solutions and they can be practiced if you want to it's a question of whether you support those policies
05:42the entire direction of our agricultural policy has been handing over
05:47farming from family farms to corporate farms to corporate for uh to corporate control and that
05:57is a picture over the world it's not just maharashtra maharashtra is the worst in the suicides however
06:05what you've said is correct on four counts i mean input costs in that region of vidarbha you know you
06:12could cultivate an unirrigated acre of cotton for 2500 rupees 4 000 rupees in 1993 in
06:242001 2013 it was costing unirrigated acre was 15 000 acre rupees today and unirrigated acre is around
06:3520 000 rupees irrigated acre of cotton the input costs are way beyond 45 000 rupees so that also connects up
06:45with seeds the policies of seeds on allowing giant companies to rip off the farmers with seeds that
06:54simply nowhere you know actually aggravated the water problem that they were supposed to solve and yes
07:01climate change is a serious factor but all these are things that you can respond to with policies
07:10aimed at farmers not at corporates that is something you could do you know because
07:15sainat last year while covering the elections in amravati i met farm widows uh whose husbands had
07:21committed suicide because they couldn't pay as little as a lakh and 20 to a bank some of them had attempted
07:27cotton a decade ago it was seen as white gold at the time then moved to soya bean and then found it
07:33was even difficult with soya bean to to make enough money it wasn't remunerative enough so you seem to
07:39be you know they all seem to be caught in a vicious debt trap how do you get out of the debt trap is the
07:45question how are you going to emerge out of a out of a debt trap you've tried uh different crops they
07:50haven't worked in the area i come back to it is there a serious long-term solution should it be just
07:58uh is there a policy solution out there many there are many first i think you ought to return to ag i
08:06mean you ought to return and build agro ecological approaches to farming you know you don't grow paddy in
08:14bar mail do you but we do grow sugar cane in in in drought prone areas it's not a wise thing to do
08:22but there are but there's a lot more than that the fact is first and foremost who are you trying to
08:29benefit rajdi farmers populations are plummeting all over the world you may in your great grandchildren
08:38may live in a world without farmers the u.s percentage is one percent eu had germany had more farmers
08:46than the eu today okay 40 50 years ago we are and now you've got robotics and ai coming into the
08:55picture we are that is i'm saying that right the agrarian crisis is no longer an agrarian crisis
09:03it went from there to being a societal crisis it is now a civilizational crisis with one of the most
09:11important classes in human history let me leave it there peace interestingly today when the bjp hit
09:18back at the congress party they also quoted numbers of peace sainat along with the ncrb so take that as a
09:25compliment and let me let me leave it there but i as always thank you very much for joining me
09:32and sharing your wisdom with such passion peace sainat on india's continuing farm suicide crisis
09:38thank you very much
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