Rural debt, distress, death to be in focus as 8 states go to polls in 2018

Nearly four in ten of 8,007 Indian farmers who committed suicide in 2015 were in debt, compared to two in ten in 2014; more rural households went into debt over 11 years; and the average rural household had borrowed Rs 1.03 lakh, according to an IndiaSpend analysis of government data.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost 16 seats in rural Gujarat–winning less than 40% of such constituencies–as unrest grew in a failing farm economy. As eight states, including the BJP-run, largely agrarian states of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh (MP) and Rajasthan go to the polls this year, we investigate, in a two-part series, how rural debt, distress and death are growing nationwide.

In an era of increasingly uncertain weather and suicides on farms, attributed to climate change and likely to worsen, the rural economic downturn is likely to be an important issue in the general elections of 2019, and it is unlikely Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promise that farmers will double their incomes by 2022 will be kept, as IndiaSpend reported in December 2016.

Chhattisgarh, MP and Rajasthan had a collective rural population of 123.6 million in 2011, equivalent to the current population of Mexico, the world’s 11th most populated country. Agricultural growth rates in all three states have declined, Hindustan Times reported in December 2017, while farmer unrest roiled MP and Rajasthan, as farmers struggling with falling crop prices demanded loan waivers and government guarantees for higher prices.
A key manifestation of the distress is rising rate at which farmers are committing suicides and its association with their inability to repay loans.READ MORE