V S Gopalakrishnan October 11, 2006

Tags: economy , history , loans , regional , india

href="/tag/career">career in the Indian Administrative Service as a trainee in Amravati, and later worked as Sub Divisional Officer at Balapur in Akola District, Chief Executive Officer of Akola Zilla Parishad and finally Nagpur Divisional Commissioner (1981-83). I had not known farmers’ suicide cases then. So what has gone wrong with the farmers now?

The most striking feature of Vidarbhites is that they are most friendly and polite. (The Konkan people are notoriously unfriendly and rude as per the experiences of many administrators.) The black cotton soil of Vidarbha is legendary and is supposed to breed “aalsi” (lazy) farmers since you simply have to throw the seeds onto the fields and you will have a rich cotton crop! So why the suicides in the cotton belt now?

My fondness for Vidarbha propels me first to describe to readers what Vidarbha is. It is a hoary place that is mentioned in Mahabharata and Ramayana. King Bheeshmika of Vidarbha had a daughter named Rukmini whom Lord Krishna abducted and married. There is an old Rukmini (incarnation of Lakshmi) temple in Amravati city and it is said that that is the spot from where Rukmini was taken away by Krishna. Princess Rukmini had heard of the name and fame of Krishna and wanted to marry him. Her family had no objection to it except for her powerful eldest brother Rukma who disliked Krishna and wanted her to marry King Shishupala of Chedi. Rukmini sent a letter to Krishna who fought a war with Bheeshmaka and Shishupal and took Rukmini away. This I find is the quaintest story of old Vidarbha.

Very few would not have heard the story of Nala and Damayanti. Damayanti was a princess of Vidarbha who married king Nala of the Nishada kingdom. Sage Agastya who married Lopamudra was also a Vidharbite. Lopamudra finds mention in Rigveda. Sage Kaundinya was from Vidarbha as per Brihadaranya Upanishad.

The great land of Vidarbha was fertile. The story goes that King Danda of Vidarbha had libidinous ways and violated the daughter of sage Bhargava. (Danda was the son of Iksvaku and grandson of Manu). The sage Bhargava duly cursed King Danda for his act. The fertile Vidarbha turned as a result into the forest Dandakaranya ( note ‘Danda’ here). In this forest the sudra sage Sambuka practised austerities. The story goes that Lord Rama beheaded him for this, and instead revived the life of a Brahmin boy! Rama was a kshatriya.

Coming to real history, Vidarbha was a part of the Asokan empire. The thirteenth Asokan rock edict mentions Bhojas who were rulers of Vidarbha. After Asokan rule, Vidarbha seceded from the weak Mauryan empire. Prince Agnimitra of the succeeding Sunga empire married princess Malavika of Vidarbha and invaded Vidarbha . The famous Sanskrit work “Malavikagnimitra” by Kalidasa is about this Malavika, and Agnimitra.

Vidarbha later went into the possession of various winning dynasties such as the Satavahanas (also called Andhras, circa 200 BC to 250 AD), the Vakatakas (till circa 550 AD) who matrimonially got connected to the great Gupta Empire, the Early Chalukya dynasty, then the Rashtrakutas, then the Later Chalukyas and finally the Yadavas of Devagiri. The Hindu Kingdom of Devagiri ended in 1318 AD with the Muslims supplanting them. It is said that Kalidasa probably conceived writing “Meghadhuta” at Ramtek, near Nagpur.The Vakatakas were patrons of Art. They take credit for the Ajanta caves XVI, XVII, and XVIII decorated by paintings. Bhavabhuti who ranks next to Kalidasa in literature was a native of Vidarbha, and he later shifted to Kanauj. The Yadava kings constructed several temples in hemadpanti style all over Vidarbha.

Much of Vidarbha came under the Bhonsle dynasty from the mid eighteenth century. After the Bhonsle’s defeat in the third Anglo-Maratha war, the British fully took over the Nagpur region in 1853. The Nagpur Division was included in the British Raj’s Central Provinces (C.P.) in 1861. The Berar area of Vidarbha was under the Nizam of Hyderabad but in 1853 the British took it over for alleged misgovernance. The Berar was integrated with C.P. (Central Provinces) in 1903. After India’s independence, the C.P. and Berar areas (jointly known as Vidarbha) became part of Madhya Pradesh. During the States’ Reorganisation on linguistic basis in 1956, the C.P. and Berar where Marathi was largely spoken became part of the Bombay State. When the Bombay State broke up into Gujarat and Maharashtra in 1960, the Vidarbha area stayed with Maharashtra.

What a fascinating history Vidarbha has had! Now, let us come to the issue of hundreds of farmers’ suicides in recent times. Vidarbha contains the old C.P. districts now named Nagpur, Wardha, Chandrapur, Gadchiroli, Bhandara and Gondia; and the old Berar districts now known as Amravati, Akola, Yeotmal, Buldhana and Washim. I have already alluded to the rich black cotton soil of the Vidarbha region. There are several rivers flowing in the region such as Purna, Wainganga, Wardha etc. Several dams have been built in the region. The incidence of drought or famine is pretty rare compared to several drought-prone areas/talukas in the Western Maharashtra and Marathwada areas. It is true that industrialization has lagged behind in Vidarbha compared to Western Maharashtra, for a number of reasons. But then why suicides by farmers in recent times?

In a recent article, Dr.Sharad Joshi of Shetkari Sanghatana has blamed the Maharashtra Government’s monopoly cotton procurement scheme for the Vidarbha farmers’ distress and suicides. In actual fact, the scheme ensured the payment of sky-high prices to the cotton farmers, very much above the Support Prices fixed by the Government of India, or the cotton procurement prices of the Cotton Corporation of India. The scheme, over the last thirty years, has resulted in the treasury loss of several thousands of crores of rupees to the Maharashtra Government thanks to the unreasonably high prices paid to the cotton farmers. For ensuring the votes of Vidarbha farmers, the Congress governments of Maharashtra had continued the monopoly procurement scheme year after year against the objections of the Reserve Bank of India and the Government of India. The cotton monopoly procurement scheme was indeed a big boon for the cotton farmers.Can Sharad Joshi explain why the cotton growers in Marathwada are not committing suicide?

Secondly, Dr.Joshi says that Vidarbha has been neglected in favour of Western Maharashtra and that the suicides would stop only if a separate State of Vidarbha was allowed to be formed. This is just a political argument. Some Chief Ministers like V.P.Naik, Kannamwar and Sudhakarrao Naik were actually from Vidarbha. Several Chief Ministers were from Konkan and Marathwada regions and not from the Western Maharashtra, such as Antulay, Nilangekar, Narayanrao Rane and Vilasrao Deshmukh. How is it possible that the Maharashtra governments could have favoured only the Western Maharashtra?

It is true that the Vidarbha farmers are apparently less hard-working than the farmers of other regions. However, the problem is not one of constantly poor harvests and consequent starvation deaths. The problem is one of indebtedness. Marrying off the daughters means large expenses. Private medical treatment, thanks to moribund Primary Health Centres, is expensive. The festivities consume huge expenditures. Drinking is another expensive vice with men. The borrowed moneys for agriculture therefore always get diverted.

In a sense, the normal lending institutions for agriculture have also become the villain of the piece. For major expenditure like digging of wells, buying tractors and pumps etc., the District Cooperative Land Development Banks used to give loans to the farmers. Most of these Banks are now practically defunct due to lack of funds, poor recovery work, malpractices, corruption etc. Secondly, the District Central Cooperative Banks that give crop loans to farmers (for seeds, fertilizers, insecticides and operations) have also become moribund in recent years for similar reasons of ill-governance, malpractices, corruption etc. There was a time some decades ago when the cooperative leaders ran the cooperative banks efficiently and honestly. Now, the farmers have been practically left to the mercy of money- lenders. The nationalized banks are of little or no use to farmers despite adverse comments by the World Bank. The private money- lenders charge anything up to 12 percent a month interest on their loans. Recently there have been newspaper articles about a particular congress M.L.A. from the Nagpur district who had been lending money to farmers at 4 percent a month interest.

Such high interest borrowings lead to acute distress in repayment of loans. Highhandedness and ‘goonda’ tactics for loan recovery by the lenders drive the borrowing farmers literally to suicide. If indebtedness by itself should drive people to suicide, many captains of our industry whose companies have borrowed very heavily, should be committing suicide. It is basically the harassment and cruelty for effecting loan recovery by the lenders that make the borrowers take the extreme step.

The demonstration-effect, herd mentality and the lemming-like behaviour of men in a community, add to the number of suicide deaths. This becomes a prevalent fashion-statement as it were. The insecticide is always at hand for the farmer to take his own life. The recently announced State Government’s policy of giving one lakh rupees in compensation to each affected family is not the remedy. This may on the other hand act as a subversive financial incentive towards suicide by a distressed person. The Prime Minister’s announcement to waive the interests due from farmers across the board is also not a well thought -out proposal. The remedy lies in re-establishing credible and efficient lending institutions like the cooperative banks and writing off of both the interests and principal loan amounts owed by only the highly distressed farmers who should be identified by a carefully conducted farmer-by-farmer census.