DESCRIPTION OF MOVIE This is an investigative journey film to study and understand why farmers are still continuing to commit suicide when India’s GDP is growing in leaps and bounds.
The complicated nature of the truth comes out through testimonials of widows of suicide victims, farmer activists, social workers, analysis of journalists and evasion of crucial questions by Govt. officials.
Visuals of cotton harvesting, cotton factories, market and procurement centres, bring out how crucial the white gold is to the economic well being of Vidarbha.
Vidarbha district in Maharashtra in western India has become a dark spot in the bright sunny picture of India’s economic resurgence. In the media otherwise filled with news and images of fun and frolic, the news of farmers’ death in Vidarbha has become a recurrent motif.(See attached newspaper cuttings). Every other day there is news like In Vidarbha, the toll of cotton farmers taking their own lives crosses thousand or Four more cotton farmers in Vidarbha, burdened with heavy debt, take their own lives by drinking pesticide or Our village is for sale. Headlines like these form an anti thesis to news on progress and development – and it raises the obvious question in one’s mind – why are these farmers compelled to end their own lives?
The answer may be found in the facts and statistics of India’s development. Although agriculture forms the backbone of India’s economy, the farming community has remained by and large deprived and exploited. Every government that has ruled India has found it beneficial to keep the industrialist happy. This double standard has eventually created two Indias - those who are a part of India Shining and those left out of it. So, on one hand, some Indians figure among the richest persons in the world and on the other hand some Indians buckle under the burden of debts and are compelled to take their own lives.
The exploited cotton farmer:
Vidarbha is the picture perfect of the ‘other’ India, where in the last five years, 2552 farmers have committed suicide. Every year the suicide rate is increasing twofold. They are all cotton farmers and victims of the global economic game. Cotton is an exportable cash crop – and a commodity much coveted by the multi nationals. Buying cotton cheap from the Indian farmers and feeding the textile industry of Manchester, has been a practice even in the early years of industrial revolution.. A new phase of exploitation gradually started when the Indian economy was liberalized in 1991. Multinational dealers and the Indian manufacturers took complete control of the cotton market. The textile industry reaped the benefit at the expense of the cotton farmer, who became more and more impoverished.
America’s role:
America is one of the biggest and perhaps the most decisive player in the cotton market. They give heavy subsidy to their 20,000 odd cotton farmers. As a result, the farmers can sell their harvest at a very low price. This has brought down the price of cotton in the international market. In India, on the other hand, subsidies in the agricultural sector have been lifted. As a result, the Indian cotton farmer is unable to compete with such low prices in the international market. The result is the present scenario in Vidarbha.
Some vital facts and figures:
In 1994, the cotton farmers of Vidarbha used to sell one quintal cotton for Rs. 2700 or 2800. Today, the same cotton is being sold for not more than Rs. 1800. Production expenses, on the other hand, have increased at least four fold. Under the WTO regime, since 1992, the Govt. of India has been forced to lift subsidies on agriculture. The farmer is being lured to buy the seeds of the so called high yielding variety of BT Cotton. This high yielding variety of cotton demands increased use of fertilizers and pesticides.
Earlier, the farmer had to spend Rs. 700 to 800 to grow one quintal of cotton. Now he has to shell out Rs. 1700 to 1800. So, the loan taken for growing the cotton is compounding every year. To come out of this vicious cycle, he is tempted to end his life.
If this is not a conspiracy, then what is? 65% of India’s population is engaged in the agricultural sector. Yet, even after 60 years of independence, the agricultural sector is suffering a lack of irrigation facilities, a lack of modernization and a lack of land reform.
The first Planning Commission had allocated 14.9% to the agricultural sector. The Indian economy was recognized as an agrarian economy. This year, the finance minister has allocated 4% of the total budget to the agricultural sector. No wonder the development in the agricultural sector is on the downhill. The gross monthly income of a person in rural India is Rs. 600.
Today, 86.5% of the farmers in Vidarbha are in debt. On an average, each one of them has a debt of Rs. 40,000 on his shoulders. Farmers in other districts of India are not much better off. Soon we may witness the Vidarbha phenomenon erupting in other parts of India – farmers lined up with bottles of pesticide – not to spray in the fields, but to pour in their throats.
Is this an inevitable fall out of ‘development’ or is there a way out?
The agriculture minister of the Union Govt. is busy patronizing the cricketers when the cotton farmers of Vidarbha are continuing to die at an average rate of three in a day – or one death every eight hours |
