IT undoubtedly was the most difficult task for the All India Kisan Sabha-challenging emotionally as well as organisationally. It required the Kisan Sabha activists to go down to the families in extreme distress, understand their suffering, stand in solidarity with them and mobilise them to be a part of the struggle against the neo-liberal economic policies and the insensitive state as well as central governments that had snatched their loved ones from them. Over the last eight months Kisan Sabha teams visited Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Bihar, Odisha, Maharashtra, Kerala, West Bengal etc and met the families of farmers who had committed suicide. These families were not associated with the Kisan Sabha and more often than not had no link whatsoever with the Left movement. The common thread that bound them was the unprecedented human tragedy that had befallen them due to deliberate policies of different governments. The months of efforts led to 106 families representing the families of over 3.2 lakh farmers who committed suicide in the last two decades to join hands for a unique protest action in Delhi. 

One of the first speakers at the first-of-its-kind two-day sit-in dharna was Megha Singh, the daughter of Gajendra Singh from Dausa in Rajasthan who had committed suicide at the Aam Aadmi Party Rally in April last. Standing a few paces away from the tree from which her father had hanged himself she said that suicides were not the answer and called upon all to take the path of struggle instead. An undergraduate student doing her Bachelor of Arts at Maharani’s College she came for the Kisan Sabha protest with her grandfather Banne Singh. Banne Singh was equally clear about the way out. He blamed the government policies for the plight of the farmers and pointed out that the insensitive central as well as state governments had not kept their promises. “Kisans should not fall to divisive campaigns. They should unite and fight” he said.

The travails of the farmers and the humiliation they undergo at the hands of the moneylenders, traders, middlemen, bank officials and feudal landlords are unthinkable. Haryana witnessed over a hundred suicides since the last week of April. Suman Devi, a landless dalit peasant from Dinod village of Bhiwani district in Haryana was one of them whom the AIKS team had met on their visit to the state in May. Her husband Madan Pal had committed suicide on May 7, 2015 listing out the names of the moneylenders whose threats and intimidation as well as humiliation he found too difficult to handle. Suman rues the fact that although their family had voted for the BJP in the Lok Sabha as well as the Haryana assembly elections its leaders had suddenly found them to be untouchables after the electoral victories. None had bothered to visit her family when they were stricken by tragedy and no compensation came their way she claimed. Menaka from Theni district of Tamil Nadu had come with her three year old daughter for the protest. Her Father Alagavel had leased-in a hectare of land to grow banana. Price crash led to extreme losses and over Rs 5 lakh loan as well as gold loan was outstanding. The family gold was put on auction by the City Union Bank and also moneylenders were harassing him. She blamed the state government for doing nothing for the farmers.

The case of Rajshekhar Reddy from Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh is a pointer to how falling public investment, dismantling of the public extension services and procurement facilities, inaccessibility to institutional credit, high input costs as well as unremunerative prices has pushed the farmers of our country into a precarious situation. His father Raja Reddy was cultivating 16 acres of land growing primarily groundnut. He had dug up six bore-wells taking loans of over Rs 8 lakhs from banks as well as moneylenders at exorbitant interest rates. All the bore-wells failed and absence of irrigation also led to total loss of the groundnut crop. He committed suicide in 2011. It fell upon Rajshekhar, then just 22 years old to inherit the debt and also struggle to pull out his family from the crisis. And fight he did in a manner that is testimony to the resilience of Indian farmers. He went in for the seventh bore-well taking the risk knowing fully well its consequences. This time it was a success and he is able to cultivate his land despite most parts of the district reeling under the sixth consecutive drought. His loans are not yet cleared and he at present has a debt of 11 lakhs including what he inherited and the government has waived only Rs 21,000, though the Chandrababu Naidu government had promised total loan waiver. Amidst the tragedy he says with pride that despite the precarious situation he could successfully educate his brother who has just a week ago joined as a software professional in Bangalore. He went back inspired by the struggle with the resolve to organise farmers under the red banner and fight the policies responsible for their plight.  

Over forty peasants had come from Telangana which was the largest contingent with a predominant section of women peasants who were widowed. Holding the framed photos of the farmers who had committed suicide, their family members sitting in stoic silence enduring their pain could shake even people unconnected to them. The ruling classes are made of different material; their apathy continues unabated. Notably the TRS and KCR had promised loan waiver like his betenoire in Andhra Pradesh with each one seeking to out-do the other in election promises. Like in Andhra Pradesh the peasants have been betrayed and the banks are also refusing to issue fresh loans forcing them to depend on the moneylenders. Mangalamma from the Lambada tribe pointed out that her husband Sreenivas had committed suicide after the government failed to waive loans and the harassment by moneylenders was becoming unbearable. She reminded that she had come all the way to Delhi, leaving her home for the first time since she was concerned about the future of her children.   

Ramendra Sharma into his early twenties explained how his father Devendra died of a heart attack in despair after the hailstorm destroyed his wheat crop. Hailing from Pachoria village in Gwalior district of Madhya Pradesh, Devendra was seen as a progressive farmer who took pride in farming. Ramendra pointed out that Chief Minister Shivraj Chouhan had visited his village on March 19 and promised his father immediate relief and personal attention amidst much fanfare. The chief minister along with his media managers went the extra mile to portray a ‘farmer-friendly’ image by visiting their fields and inspecting the damage as well as posing for pictures with the distressed farmer also creating an illusion of hope.  The image-building exercise was much-needed for the chief minister embattled by the infamous Vyapam Scam but provided nothing for the farmer. As no relief was forthcoming and pressures were mounting from lenders, Devendra died of a heart attack in the first week of April. Ramendra decided to fight it out and expose the hypocrisy of the BJP government and as media reported their case a meagre amount trickled in as compensation. This was way below the “mother of all compensation” claim of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The family had to sell their land and agricultural implements to clear of debts and at least temporarily ward off the moneylenders.

Granth, a dalit farmer from Bhind district in Madhya Pradesh narrated how his younger brother Janved killed himself last February after hailstorm destroyed his standing crops. No government officials had visited them and the family was not given any compensation. He pointed out that land legally in their names was encroached by upper-caste landlords and they were forced to lease-in land. They had to depend on these very landlords for loans at usurious interest rates for cultivation as well as to meet household consumption expenditure. Dalits were also not having access to the public distribution system and there was a landlord-bureaucracy-politician nexus to deny them, he claimed. His story exposed how deprivation by the state and feudal oppression coupled with the deliberate policies were responsible for the extreme human tragedy.

Arun had to give up his studies and start working as a mechanic as his father Sivadasan committed suicide as the entire paddy crop in his one acre land in Palakkad district of Kerala was destroyed due to extreme drought-like conditions in 2012. He had a loan of Rs 2 lakhs taken from the cooperative and private financiers. On August 2, 2015 two farmers, Radhakrishnan and Krishnan Kutty from the same district had committed suicide. A small farmer Krishnan Nair growing rubber in Kannur district went all the way to Pala, the constituency of the finance minister of the state and committed suicide. The Congress-led UDF government has totally failed to mitigate the suffering of the farmers.

In Karnataka which is a Congress-ruled state, there were 211 suicides in the last two months and in Mandya alone there were more than 43 suicides from June 18 - August 6. Savitramma who came from Mandya said she had come all the way because she wants her grandchildren to have a future. Once prosperous Mandya district known as the sugar-bowl of Karnataka and famous for its silk is witness to extreme agrarian distress. Trade liberalisation, dumping of duty-free raw silk, lack of remunerative prices, price fluctuation is taking a toll. Sugar mills owned by politicians from the Congress, BJP and Janata Dal are refusing to pay the cane dues and even the price fixed by the government. In despair, Ninge Gowda set fire to his sugarcane field and burnt himself to death.

Maharashtra like Haryana had made history by electing BJP to government for the first time on its own. Within a few months the farmers are bitterly regretting their decision as there has been a 40 percent rise in suicides of farmers due to the totally insensitive approach. A minister went to the extent of saying that the farmers should be let to die if they cannot cultivate. Vicky Wadgere who lost his father in July explained that families of victims are forced to run from pillar to post to even get the death classified as a distress suicide for being considered for compensation and then yet again to get a meagre compensation released. In many cases like his own they have to endlessly wait for government action.

West Bengal has been witnessing an unprecedented number of suicides by paddy farmers and potato farmers since the TMC government has taken over. Fourteen families had come from Bengal to join the protest. Like elsewhere, the Mamata Banerjee regime is also adopting an Ostrich-like approach of burying its head in the sand and denying such suicides. All of them were either paddy or potato farmers and the government’s refusal to procure paddy at minimum support price leaving farmers at the mercy of middlemen as well as traders had led to such a situation. Never before had paddy farmers committed suicide in such large numbers anywhere in India like during the TMC regime.

The agrarian crisis has engulfed most parts of India. It would not take much time to understand that it is policy-driven and reversal of neo-liberal policies is indispensable for extricating the peasantry from the perpetual situation of crisis and distress. The BJP-ruled states of Maharashtra, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh as well as Congress-ruled Karnataka have in the last four months been reporting farmers’ suicides at an increased rate. None of these parties are addressing the root of the problem that is the neo-liberal policies and they are only giving some sops or palliatives at the time of elections.

Kisan Sabha took up the challenge of mobilising the peasantry and broadest sections also took part in the unique protest in solidarity. The families went back with the resolve to take back the flame of struggle to their villages and build a broad united movement against the neo-liberal economic policies. Their slogans echo “No to Suicides; Onwards to United Struggles”. United struggle has led to the biggest defeat for the Modi government in the form of the retreat on the Land Acquisition Ordinance. The struggle will only intensify from here on. United struggles with the working class are also coming up. From here the Modi regime will be handed many more defeats.