#dnaEdit: Killing fields of Marathwada

For the farmers of Marathwada in Maharashtra, the promise of economic prosperity sounds like a cruel joke. The change in governments in the state and at the Centre has made no difference to their existence — haunted by drought and poverty — pushing many of them to take the extreme step of committing suicide. In the first 45 days of 2015, 93 farmers took their own lives to escape financial debts, brought upon by yet another cycle of crop failure. This shocking statistic offered by the divisional commissionerate confirms the worst suspicion: many more deaths could be in the offing in this perennially drought-prone region, which is emerging as the second Vidarbha in the state. It’s the same old story of scanty rainfall or unseasonal rain coupled with the farmer’s inability to get proper prices for his produce in the market. The former Congress-NCP government and the current BJP-Shiv Sena dispensation are aware of the gravity of the situation. This is the third year Marathwada is staring at the crisis that claimed 569 lives in 2014 — registering more than a two-fold increase from the 207 death toll in 2013. Going by the current spate of suicides, 2015 might turn out be the worst spell for these farmers for whom government succour is a fairytale concept. 

In December last year, less than a month after coming to power, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’s cabinet had decided to seek the Centre’s help in the form of Rs4,000-crore financial package for the drought-stricken farmers in Marathwada and other regions. A month prior to that, the opposition, sniffing an opportunity to corner the government over the issue of farmer suicide, demanded Rs10,000 crore financial package for the drought-like situation in the state. Ironically, Ajit Pawar, who had spearheaded the opposition’s campaign, is facing a probe for his alleged role in the multi-crore state irrigation scam. Two years ago, he had to tender an apology to aggrieved farmers for his reckless comment on urinating in dams. 

As the politics of drought plays out in the corridors of power, the agrarian crisis, which has, by now, become an annual affair, rarely features on the government’s priority list. It’s not that Maharashtra lags behind other states in terms of resources. With maximum reservoirs —  36% of the country’s total number of dams — the state should have reduced its dependence on rainwater. What has clouded this achievement is poor water management. An important cause for the high incidence of farmer suicide is the tussle for water between upstream and downstream users, agriculture and industry and urban and rural users. Even village-level politics plays an important part in the water wars. 

The preference for water-intensive orchards and perennial crops like sugarcane, bananas, grapes and papaya in Marathwada is the outcome of a faulty agricultural policy. Orchards are capital-intensive and slow to pick up for which farmers incur huge debts. There is an urgent need to return to the traditional rain-fed cropping pattern to reduce distress, but without active encouragement from the government, farmers are least likely to change their ways. Though Mahahrashtra is among the handful of states to have made the most from the microfinance institution network, the benefits still continue to elude a large section of farmers.

These are issues that need to be addressed urgently. It would involve systemic changes at many levels, including a reworking of the current agricultural policies of the state. An ad-hoc approach, which the government often resorts to, cannot contain a chronic disaster that just keeps growing every year.