Goldy M. George

Pursuing PhD in Tata Institute of Social Sciences, TISS Mumbai
Dalit Activist, Chhattisgarh

 

 

 

Prelude to the thematic discussion:
Agriculture is the basis for development in an agrarian economy like India. In a third world country, where the economic growth index is relatively low, coupled with historical disparities of a socio-cultural nature, agriculture is the most appropriate modus to evolve economic profitability, socio-economic equity and environmental health. While discussing the rudimentary principles of development in any agrarian economy, it is crucial to see that the objectives of protection of agro-biodiversity are linked to the sustainability of people in a given region. Therefore, sustainability constitutes the centrality of development, an essential imperative for the socio-economic, cultural and political stabilisation of a nation like India, which is filled with the complexities of caste, religion, region, language and many other aspects.

Sustainability is a process by which a community lives in close contact among human being, between human beings and nature, building up or conserving a melodious relationship. The most important aspect is the values that sustain the mutuality of the community as an organic unit.

Agriculture in India has been under severe threat and undergone structural changes leading to a crisis situation today. The peasantry in India have already witnessed extreme transformation. These shifts were not simply changes, modifications or up-gradation of agriculture, but there had been characteristic changes in the overall nature of agriculture in the last three decades. From the outside, one could easily observe the changes in the cropping patterns, soil utilisation, application of techniques and technologies, replacement of local seed varieties with foreign hybrids, displacement of labour and so on; but it requires further study to understand in the larger context. While in some cases the large farmers were quick to adopt these changes and succeeded in bailing itself out of it, the small and marginal peasantry, as well as the agriculture laboureRs, has had engulfed in the whirlwinds with almost no option left before them than to die. Thus the question of farmers suicide emerges.

In terms of the national question related to the changes in agriculture, the situation in Chhattisgarh state is no different by any means. However, in a comparative analysis, Chhattisgarh is much worse than many other states. It is alarming that the state is moving from a self-reliant state of food surplus to an export oriented food producer, and also that the crisis ridden labourers are either migrating to other states in search of livelihood or otherwise end their life without any hopes for future. This trend is an indicator of the crisis in the agricultural sector in Chhattisgarh.

Generally it is argued that the root cause of problems in agriculture is because it is not a profitable economic activity compared to other enterprises. The income derived from agricultural activities is not sufficient to meet the expenditure of the cultivators. Therefore, unless agriculture turns into a profitable activity, the present crisis cannot be resolved. The related factors responsible for the agricultural crisis include: dependence on rainfall and climate, liberal import of agricultural products, reduction in agricultural subsidies, lack of easy credit to agriculture and dependence on money lenders, decline in government investment in the agricultural sector and conveRsion of agricultural land for non-cultivable uses.

Focusing on Chhattisgarh state, a sizeable number of peasantry migrate every year due to lack of livelihood options. The flagship programme of employment generation in rural areas, NAREGA, has failed to prevent interstate migration of the Chhattisgarh workforce. A considerable number of suicides also take place every year. For long, experts considered Chhattisgarh bereft of farmers’ suicide. Generally it is considered that farmers’ suicide is very less in Chhattisgarh. official records show that there are only a few farmers suicide in Chhattisgarh. For some time, based on certain supposition and intuitions, some journalists, NGOs and political parties voiced the question but without delving deeply. Though focus on the problem increased, the lack of scientific and technical studies limited the scope for suggestion from any quarters.

For the first time some scientifically backed data was brought forth by the national Crimes record Bureau (nCrB). The data with the nCrB and the State police Department’s record tells an altogether different story of hitherto pretensions and assumption. According to the nCrB report of 2006, 1,483 farmers committed suicide in the Chhattisgarh state in that year. That is, four cases of suicide a day. The nCrB puts the number of farmer suicide cases in Chhattisgarh as the fourth highest in the country, only behind Maharashtra (4,453) Andhra Pradesh (2,607) and Karnataka (1,720). even in terms of the armer Suicide rate (FSr), which is calculated in terms of the number of suicide cases for every one lakh farmers, the figures for Chhattisgarh is higher than other states. The FSr put Kerala in the top spot with 142.9 cases for every one lakh farmers. Karnataka was second with 36.4 and Chhattisgarh was third with 33.7.

It is clear that the sustainable base of farming has dwindled. In recent times the government of Chhattisgarh had been promoting organic farming in some areas. Further there are many efforts by several NGOs in this area to come up with programmes to help farmers in terms of increasing their output capacity with a simple logic of minimum inputs. yet it hasn’t produced the ambitious outcome to mitigate the roots of problem.

Agricultural sustainability and sovereignty – a Prism view
Agricultural sustainability and development encompasses a fundamental factor of people’s sovereign right over agriculture and production. This concept of sovereignty goes beyond the common concept of food security, which merely seeks to ensure that a sufficient amount of safe food is produced without taking into account the kind of food produced and how, where and on what scale it is produced. It encompasses sustainable development practices.

Hypothetically food sovereignty involves the following:

ˬ  prioritising local agricultural production to feed the population and the access of women and men to land, water, forests, seeds and credit.
ˬ  production is need-based for local consumption not for market.
ˬ  Sustaining the traditional systems of community life in an organic manner with rights over resources. Since land belongs or belonged to the indigenous poor who had worked on it, they have a legitimate right on these resources.
ˬ  The right of the peasant to produce food and the right of the consumer to decide what they want to consume and how and who produces it.
ˬ  essentially involving people’s participation in the definition of agrarian policies, right from land development to crop choice.
ˬ  envisioning and ensuring discrimination (caste, colour, gender) free social relationships in order to enhance appropriate human relationship that is closely associated with production patterns.
ˬ  Acknowledging the right of women peasants who play a key role in agricultural production.
Drawing most of our financial resources for development from within rather than relying on foreign investment and foreign financial markets.
ˬ  The right of all nations to protect themselves from excessive and cheap agricultural and food imports (dumping).
one important aspect of agricultural sustainability is the question of the right to produce. The right to produce is closed related with the socio- cultural attitude of the people in each locality. It is one of the silent features in the overall quest for food sovereignty.

In Chhattisgarh, which was once known as the rice bowl of Central India, people’s cultivation and food pattern coexists with food culture and production pattern. right to produce is not just what one wants to produce for the market, but for local consumption and to meet the primary needs of family in a sustainable manner. It is closely related with the development of a favourable atmosphere, along with the essential backups in terms of realising the rights of the producer.

In Chhattisgarh much of the communities are left without water accessibility for cultivation. This raises questions on the right and space to produce that a farmer enjoys. non-availability of water is at large the denial to cultivate. Denial of cultivation further leads to de-peasantisation. people in the state are faced with such denial to cultivation and this is one of the contributory factoRs that rural masses lost their attributes as a peasant. Thus they are more inclined towards migrating out as they find it the best livelihood alternative. In the same area, people find it much easier to cultivate the hybrid variety of paddy. Some profoundly advocate the Genetically modified organism (GMO) food and have already adopted it. This is in fact the beginning of the systemic de-peasantisation process.

People look for fast, easy and readymade answer to all the problems. Hence the process of facing life bravely is no more the model of life, rather accumulating more and more, without any difficulty, has become the real model. Instead of exploring new alternatives they have attained a ‘receiving’ tendency. These aspects spread fast in rural areas. As far as the rustic masses are concerned, these all are the results of the refutation to the cultivator’s right to produce.

Change in trends: the new Farming miracle
In the last decade, the government of Chhattisgarh has consistently propagated several changes in cultivation and farming. earlier the state promoted alien plantation cultures and crop rotations.

There was massive plantation of saffed (white) musli and jetropha, which was endorsed across the whole state. Saffed musli was said to be for the promotion of a herb culture in the state, while jetropha is meant for extracting fuel. In Bastar alone nearly 1500 hectares of paddy farmland was turned into musli farmland. many other individual landlords adapted to this pattern, as it gives more returns than rice paddy cultivation.

In the case of jetropha, which is upheld under the pretext of an alternate fuel generation, several scientific studies say that jetropha is highly destructive to the surrounding environment as well as for the despoliation of soil. many experts are of the opinion that the seeds of jetropha were fiRst sent to India in late 50s and early 60s, along with wheat from uS and european countries, as part of their aid package to combat the severe famine. Since then the seeds began to breed in every part of the country wherever the aid was provided. Ironically in the uS and most of the european nations it has been banned after reaching a scientific conclusion of its inimical effect on human habitation. The Chief minister of Chhattisgarh even went to the uK and the uS to call upon the NRIs to invest in the state and had promised to provide free farmland for jetropha cultivation.

Different crop rotations became a common parlance among agriculture experts. The first government of Chhattisgarh promoted sugarcane production instead of rice. It was advocated through the entire government machinery that rice cultivation is less productivity and of low market value and sugarcane is high yielding with high market value. The prime intention was to introduce sugar industries and sugar lobby in the state.

Contract Farming is also being established. In fact many dalals (middleman) are already moving across the rural areas to buy land in order to promote corporate contract farming. Strings of such processes were already on the rise during the previous decade. Land mafias have become very active in the last one and half decade, buying and selling large chunks of land. most of the land had been appropriated for this purpose of establishing private farmhouses. This sprouted a monoculture cultivation pattern, stubbing all existing sustainable production practices. monoculture, along the line of profit generating economics, has been colourfully presented as the role model to the marginal farmer or even the landless labourer Rs, who bank on sharecropping and other similar systems. Hence a transformation of agriculture into agri-business, even among the landless labourer, is happening.
water wars!

Water is one of the established common proper- ties across the world, but in Chhattisgarh the situation is different. As per quick estimates, the state would require a hefty investment of about Rs 9,651 crores to fully develop the estimated 43 lakh ha of its irrigation potential as against the existing irrigation potential of 13.37 lakh ha. A similar situation exists in the urban water sector also. For example the municipal Corporation of Raipur has proposed an urban water scheme costing Rs 397.42 crores to meet the water requirements of the city till the year 2031. All these indicate a massive expenditure on the part of State government. to effectively meet future requirements some alternative measures would need to be explored.

Clearly, the intention of the State Government is to establish market principles in the operation of the water sector, depoliticising the sector by creating an independent tariff regulatory body. The country needs to urgently recognise that so long as we peRsist in spreading a Green revolution-type agricultural development to all regions, there will be no relief from the growing water crisis.

Chhattisgarh is the fiRst state in India where the eRstwhile madhya pradesh government had leased out, in 1998, a 23.6-km stretches of the Sheonath river near Durg town, to Kailash Soni, a businessman, on a 22-year renewable contract. Soni prohib- ited local people and fishermen in the area from using that stretch of the river in order to supply water to his big clients – the water-intensive industries in the region. Given the manner in which the contract was formulated, Soni could get away by saying that he had not privatised the river but was providing a service to the people. However The former government, headed by Ajit Jogi, decided in April 2003 to cancel the contract with Soni’s radius Water Company, following protests. However radius Water threatened to file a suit against the government in the international court, after which the decision was taken back.

While the Water policy has redefined de facto water rights and undermines the community rights of people, this has never been debated in parliament, which is the only body, which can legislate on resource rights. The Water policy is therefore a subveRsion of the Constitution and a hijack of the peoples’ natural rights to water as a vital resources needed for sustenance. This is a surreptitious attempt to establish the principle of eminent Domain on water, which was always peoples’ resources, in place of the public trust Doctrine that define the role of the state with respect to natural resources. Creation of an el Dorado orbits around the industries in Chhattisgarh.

Death at your doorstep
This section consideRs the socio-political context under which agriculture, as a modus of development vis-à-vis agriculture, is a threshold to death and demands investigation. What has happened over the yeaRs is extremely startling. A new set of technocrats have time and again proved that agriculture as a system of traditional knowledge and wisdom is of no value and out of place in the given modern context. This is what the ordinary peasantry in Chhattisgarh have not been able to combat or resist. today, cultivation is considered to be an untouchable activity. even the ones who are engaged in it would fly off given a chance.

A slow process of distressing illness, family tension, loosing mental balance or other reasons encrypted with uneconomical cultivation, emergence of new diseases in crops, increased use of chemical and synthetic inputs in agriculture, inability to meet market requirements, increased cost of cultivation, regular loans and borrowing of money has become part of this systemic onslaught. Debt is quite inevitable in such circumstances. A source of borrowing money in Chhattisgarh is found to be from the local money lendeRs (SahukaRs). There is a whole network of these money lendeRs in rural areas. The rate of interest varies from 2% per month (which means 24% annually) to 10% (which means 120% annually).

For decades the imposition of high yielding seeds created a mirage among farmers that ways to prosperity would be much fast and short cut. perhaps the farmers are victims to the same.

In most of the cases the victims starts drinking due to deepened pressure. Suicides are preordained in such cases.

A few cases of suicide, described below, highlight some of the issues faced by farmers over the last decade.

Case study-I
Ramhkilawan Sahu – a Victim to Debts
Ramkhilawan Sahu alias lala (44 yeaRs) was a resident of Satbhawa village near Neora. The village comes within Tilda police Station. He committed suicide on 22nd march 2009 by hanging himself inside the house. According to police and relatives there wasn’t any suicide note. He had two sons and a daughter, and all of them were married.

According to his father Bharat Sahu, “on the day of incident, the religious function Ramayan was going on in the village. In the afternoon, all except Ramkhilawan and his wife, went to listen to the Ramayan. Later I came back home to feed the cattle and found him hang- ing inside.” According to relatives and neighbouRs, he had lunch and after that he locked himself into his room and committed suicide.
Bharat Sahu, in his statement to the police, mentioned recurrent quarrels and arguments between his wife and daughter-in-law. Initially everyone from his family and village stated that he didn’t have any debts. The Sarpanch also denied any loan incurred by Ramkhilawan. ramji Sahu, his brother-in-law, categorically denied any loan he incurred. Followed by some more questioning and answering, two different loans came into light.

Bharat Sahu said, “recently my son mentioned about a debt of Rs 16000/- incurred from some village committee against land mortgage. He told me that the committee might take over the land if the loan is not repaid in four months time. The money was borrowed for the marriage of his daughter. Then I sold (paddy) grain and paid off the loan and interest”.

Devnath, present at the spot, confessed that Ramkhilawan took a loan of Rs 5500/- from him and was supposed to return it on 23rd march. one day before the due date Ramkhilawan ended his life. He added that it was the third date after his brother failed to return the money on the previous two occasions.

Going into the detailed background, it was revealed that he was cultivating 4 1⁄2 acres of land along with his father. Due to regular arguments between Ramkhilawan’s wife and mother, chulas (cooking arrangements) were separate for some yeaRs. However there wasn’t any division of property or produce. everything was still controlled by Bharat. of late, Ramkhilawan had started drinking and in recent yeaRs it became a regular habit. He also worked as a mason and this amplified his drinking habit. Quarrels with family membeRs and other vil- lageRs also went in parallel.

Agriculture of late had become quite uneconomi- cal due to many reasons. emergence of new diseases, increased use of synthetic inputs in agriculture to meet market requirements,increased the cost of cultivation, leading to regular loans and borrowing of money. Questions of not getting his share also bothered him and this augmented the possibility of taking loans and falling in a debt trap. However there are several examples of joint family in Chhattisgarh supporting each other during a crisis situation. Both the deceased and his father had taken loans on dif- ferent occasions in the past for agricultural as well as non-agricultural purposes. He might have inherited a state of depression for some time.

Narrating several cases of suicide, ASI Ghritlahare mentions, “there are several cases of farmer’s sui- cide in which they fall in debt trap by choice or by chance. Unable to pay back the loans they end-up their lives”.

Case study-II
Kartikram Verma – conveRsion of a farmer into a worker
Kartikaram’s home has turned into one of mystery for many reasons. A series of deaths, including that of Kartikram, followed by economic distress has made his home a haunted house. Punaram verma, Kartik’s son, narrates the entire story. He lives in a village just 3 kms from Century Cement factory near tilda of Raipur district.

Punaram works in Century Cement as a caretaker in the guesthouse. He works as a contract supply worker. He has worked in the company for the past 5 yeaRs and he earns Rs 110/- per day. He got the job in place of his elder brother, after an accidental death inside the factory premises. In the beginning he worked as a mali in the garden, but now he works as a caretaker in the guest house. He is also a member of a trade union – Chhattisgarh Khadan union Sangh. He gets his remuneration through the Century Cement Cooperative Society.

Punaram says, “our original village is Sakri and all my father’s brotheRs live there. This is my mother’s home village. my father had come here because of the cement factory as he thought that he would get some kind of employment. He hoped for a better life here. We have been here for the past 25 yeaRs”.

Kartikram sold off his share of land in his old village. With that money he bought a house and 1 1⁄2 acre of land for cultivation. The family lived happily by cultivating the land and during the off season Kartikram worked as a mason too. As time went on, financial needs increased. His daughter was sick and it needed much money for her treatment. This reduced his income and increased the family expenditure. Further it restricted his work both as a farmer and as a mason. Borrowing money for different purposes also occurred at the same time.

According to Punaram, “once my mother said that our father had a debt of Rs. 12000/-, taken for agriculture purpose, to pay off the debt he sold the house without informing or consulting anyone.” This means that Kartikram sold his house to bear the family’s increased needs and agricultural expenditures. Part of the land he sold to build a new house, where the family lives at present. The remaining land was sold when his father was in financial trouble.

Gradually his interest in farming declined, and in fact he was falling into a state of depression. The reason perhaps was there was no means of income. Drinking became a daily habit. In between, Kartikram lost three membeRs of his family. His wife died in a road accident in 2001, his daughter passed away due to her sickness and his elder son died in an accident inside the factory. All the incidences at home put him in state of shock, says Punaram’s friend and neighbour.

In hopeless depression he became a heavy drunkard. It was maybe one way for him to remove his depression. He had almost no interest in work as he felt everything was finished. He stopped going to work. There was no land there for agriculture either. Arguments between Kartikram and Punaram on his drinking habit grew from bad to woRse. Kartikram started staying away from home on many nights.

Due to the woRsening situation, Kartik’s elder son worked in an oil extraction unit before he got work in Century Cement. Punaram says that he hasn’t ever cultivated and hence he doesn’t know much about farming. now this young man of 27 is left with a lot of burden. He is taking care of his sister-in-law, their four children (all girls), his own wife, and two children.

Kartikram used to be disturbed during those days. According to Punaram, on the day before the death of his father, his father went out in the evening and didn’t come home. As it was quite usual he wasn’t bothered much. The next morning he went to work. During those days Punaram was on general shift, as he was working in the garden. While at work he got the information that his father has passed away. His father had hung himself on a tree, planted by the company, across the canal in the same village. When asked if he enquired about his father’s whereabouts the previous night, he responded that he enquired in the night, but he didn’t find him. He said that his father had gone like that before and used to come back home the next morning. So Punaram thought that this time too his father would come home as usual the next morning. It was also embarrassing for him to go around and search his father.

Punaram continues, “there were regular conflicts between us on his alcoholism. He didn’t go to work only because of the fact that he was just alcoholic.” Accused and abused, even after death, Kartikram appeaRs like he was a living dead. Kartikram’s life was a crucial combination of tensions, losses, deaths, embarrassment, poverty, debt, conflicts, and quarrels. He lost his identity as a farmer due to an inabil- ity to cope with the situation in agriculture- indebtedness, bad crop, etc. Besides, he couldn’t make a new identity for himself. It’s a case of conveRsion of a farmer into a worker, and further into a state where one doesn’t have any identity.

Case study-III
Babulal Sahu – from owner to landless
Babulal Sahu of Gullu village under Arang police Station of Raipur district was 45 yeaRs when he died in 2005. He died in the year 2005 after he consumed Sulfas, a deadly chemical used as pesticide by farmers. He had two sons and a daughter. The daughter had been married off. His elder son Parashar Sahu, 20, manages the agricultural activities, and younger son Chandrika prasad studies in class X.

According to Chandrika, “We have 1 1⁄2 acres of land and we also take 4 acres of land on an annual contract basis. For 2 acres, which is irrigated land, we pay back 12 sacks per acre and the remaining 2 acres, which is non-irrigated, 8 sacks as per the contract agreement. I do not cultivate, but it is my brother who cultivates this land. All the farming expenses are borne by us. This year we got nearly 30 sacks from the four acres, after paying back to the landlord.”

Chaiteybai, wife of the deceased informed, “I go to the field to work. These days it is not profit- able and this year we had a loss of nearly 7-8 sacks from the previous year. Hence we had to add from whatever we got. Whether we earn something good or not we have to pay them as per the agreement.”

Parashur intervened to explain that “the expense of farming is too high. The cost of fertilizeRs and pesticides have doubled over the past 3-4 yeaRs. Although we take it on credit from the society and medical store, we pay off it once the harvest is over.”

Talking about the factor behind his father’s suicide he said, “my father had taken loans from a number of sources. I had to pay back nearly 55 thousand rupees. But still we take loans for farming even now. Among the major loan my father incurred was Rs 28 thousand from the society, Rs 13 thousand from Lalji patel in the same village and Rs 9 thousand from his sister Budda Sahu. She lives in another village.”

He continues, “In fact he had more debts. out of the 3 acres of cultivable land, he sold 1 1⁄2 acres for Rs 65 thousand and also 40 cents of badi (land used as a kitchen garden). usually we used to cultivate vegetables for both for domestic as well as commercial sale. I don’t know for how much he sold the badi. But he spent all this money to pay his debts back.”

Amitab Agrawal, son of the Gautia in the village told us, “Babulal committed suicide due to debt bur- den. He had taken a lot of loans. He used to work on our land on an annual contract basis. They have one or two acres of their own land. Currently his children also take land on contract basis for farming.”

Parashur said, “my father’s death came at the wrong time. That year we had a huge loss in cultivation. The crop was very bad. We repaid all the debts that he had incurred. But now we had taken another loan from the society for compost manure. I have taken some 5-6 thousand rupees on 24% annual interest. Also we buy pesticides and other chemicals from the medical shop. They provide credit and we pay them off once the harvest is over and we sell our grain.”

Finally before we left the place Chaitey said, “We haven’t got any compensation for his death.” Asked whether she tried to get it she replied, “I tried my level best but the Sarpanch blocked it.”

Case study-IV
Dileshwar Sahu – unbearable debt took his life
Dileshwar Sahu from Akolikala village under Arang police Station of Raipur district was 38 when he hung himself on the 25th April last year. He is survived by his wife, a son and 2 daughteRs. He had 6 acres of paddy field – half of it is irrigated through an irrigation canal. They take only one crop and get 20 sacks per acre.

“On 25th morning, I found him hanging from the room in the cattle shed. I was the fiRst to see him hanging and shouted for help. I couldn’t believe it; I don’t know why he did it. He didn’t have any burden. ” said Anusuiya his wife.

Devnath Sahu his nephew said, “last year he had taken a loan of Rs 35000/- from the cooperative society. It was for agricultural purposes and he used the money for the same. He repaid the loan by selling off his grain after the harvest. Recently there was a marriage at the home of both his niece and nephew. He took another loan of Rs 25000/- this year which he spent for the marriage. In the cooperative there is a provision for things as well as cash.”

Devnath continues, “I am not sure if he had committed suicide because of the loan. But he had developed a drinking habit over the last couple of yeaRs, which was nudging his brains.” He continues, “The crop was not good last year. Although he the same harvest in terms of quantity as previously, the cost of cultivation was really high. There are all sorts of new diseases these days and new pesticides are needed to prevent the crop from that.” relatives and friend are still at their home to console the family membeRs. Devnath informed that the loan was taken at 36 percent annual interest.

Case study-V
Suresh kumar YaDaV – a victim of being neglected by officials
Suresh Kumar yadav was 30 yeaRs when he died on the 14th march last year. He is survived by his wife and two children. His widowed mother was also dependent on him. His children are too small – the elder one is a 6 year old girl and the younger one is only 3 yeaRs old. He had studied till 10th class and, according to his mother, he was a very brilliant student and an intellectual peRson.

Pyaribai, his mother, broke into teaRs while sharing the details of her son’s woes with us. She said, “We were landless until a few yeaRs back. It was with great difficulty that 2 acres of land was bought. It was bought from one Thanwarinbai at Rs 41 thousand per acre in 1998. It was from here the problem began. Both my sons had been cultivating it. Out of the 2 acres of land, 1⁄2 acre was in the name of the eldest son and 1⁄2 acres in the name of Suresh and 1 acre in my name. The patwari, instead of updating the land transaction, kept it as it was, despite the fact that we got the rin-pustika (deed entitlement document).”

His elder brother Santram yadav said, “2 yeaRs back my brother’s wife fell sick, he sold his land to another peRson. When we went to get the copy of it from the Patwari to complete the registration, the name in his record was different. It was in the name of Manoj and Pradeep, the two sons of Thanwarinbai. So there was another rin-pustika in the name of those two peRsons. He ran from post to pillar to get the document corrected, but it never came through.”

His mother intervened to say, “Actually this is Thanwarinbai’s parent’s village. She got it as gift from her family part of her share. Although she sold it to us and got us a rin-pustika, in the official records she got it altered in favour of her two sons and for this she bribed the Patwari. My son went to all different officials. In between he took loans from different sources to take care of his wife’s health with the hope that he could repay it once everything gets fine and he gets the remaining amount of the deal. She was so badly sick. This debt went on mounting and it was a big burden on him.”

Speaking about the agricultural produce Santram said, “We used to get 10-12 sacks of rice paddy. Half of our land has got the canal water. Hence the produce is not bad. However the level of produce has decreased and also the cost of production has increased. We used to take loan for agricultural purpose too. I m having a loan of Rs 7000/- against me from the society.”

Talking about Suresh Pyaribai said, “on that day I went to my sister’s place in Raipur and the elder son went to Dhamtari. only both the daughter-in-laws were at home with children. It was sometime early in the morning, when the younger daughter-in-law saw him hanging from the central pole.” She took us to the suicide spot and animated how he committed it. “He left a suicide note in which he mentioned the names of all the officials who had harassed him. Because of this the government officials acted fast. The rin-pustika for which my brother ran here and there for, and finally gave his life, arrived in no time. Within 3 days”, says Santram.

“During the last few days he was in a lot of tension and depression. He was also under some pressure from the ones who had bought it. They had paid him nearly 1 1⁄2 to 2 lakhs for 2 yeaRs, which is not a small amount. In fact until the land deed is transferred in their favour, it is a debt. Since the land was cultivated by the other”, added Santram.

At last!
These case studies describe some of the pat- terns of suicide in Chhattisgarh. However these few ones are only the tip of the iceberg. The real story is much beyond one’s imagination. These facts also reflect the national picture. It is under this context that we need to develop a wider undeRstanding and proper peRspective about the diveRse dynamics of this issue. to identify viable alternatives, one must undeRstand that the root causes of today’s predicament lies in the devastating development, based on industrialism and wasteful growth, development packages, spread by colonialism – capitalism within an oppressive social fabric. Agriculture cannot survive the onslaught of death unless there are corrective measures leading to land reforms and people’s agrarian economics.

There needs to be urgent focus on the protection of indigenous breeds along with common property rights since only this would help the people to attain agricultural sustainability and food sovereignty. Intrusion of external forces should be check in all possible ways so that the pilferage of knowledge is checked. no patent of IPRs should be a hurdle for this.

Right to land when not recognised leads to land alienation. In case of the indigenous communities it can leads to de-peasantisation. Since land alienation is the crux of the de-peasantisation of the indigenous people, the concept assumes utmost importance in the analysis of their rights as a part of human rights discouRse. The problem of land alienation is a much deeply connected phenomenon with full of contradictions related to the existing socio-economic order. The separation of land from the indigenous communities can be undeRstood in a more scientific way with the assistance of the theoretical formulations of the concept of alienation.

Land reforms, decentralised resource control, regeneration of soil and water as well as rights to housing, work, education and health should be taken with priority for the proper and compact development of any nation and its economy. land reform, broadly conceptualised as a corrective measure to ensure equitable man-land relationship, implies changes in laws, rules and procedures governing the rights, duties, and liberties of individuals and groups in control as well as utilisation of land. In this process we are definite to get some backlash. But that won’t reduce our enthusiasm. This is the lesson that we learn from the people who have shed their blood in the past. Certainly many of us have to sacrifice our life in order to build a new community.

The question of land is also a question of a change in attitude from the dominant one, which in other words could be termed as social transformation. The task of social transformation in general, and land reforms in particular, is too important that it cannot be left to the mainstream political parties or even to the current social structure. The kind of political culture built over the last 65 yeaRs is against the Dalits-Adivasis and other marginalised sections. Further it has nurtured the barbaric and brutish forms of organised and structural violence and counter violence too. Hence the need of the hour is the transformation of politics through social action and to develop a non-violent movement, an alternative to the present one. This movement will challenge the citadels of power, not only of political power but also social power.

All these processes needs to occur concurrently, without undermining the importance of each other. only then perhaps further suicides could be prevented and cultivation practices could become more eco-friendly, which promotes a sustainable life style and ultimately attain food sovereignty.