Published: August
5, 2015 12:30 IST | Updated: August 5, 2015 12:33 IST
Changing the
way you count changes the count. By P. SAINATH
THE total
number of farmer suicides in the country since 1995 crossed the
3,00,000mark in 2014. However, the 2014 data are not comparable
with 19 earlier years of farm suicide data. This is because of major
changes in the methodology of the National Crime Records Bureau
(NCRB).
With the new parameters, the number
of farmer suicides in 2014 falls to 5,650. That is less than half their 2013
figure of 11,772. This happens simply because of the
shuffling of the suicide numbers across new or revised categories in the NCRB
tables. The “fall” in farmer suicides accompanies a
stunning increase in suicides by “Others”. Karnataka, the second worst State
for such suicides in the country, saw 321 farmers take their
lives in 2014. That is a big drop from the previous year’s figure of 1,403. In
the same 12 months, though, suicide numbers in the
“Others” column of that State went up by 245 per cent. From 1,482 to
5,120 suicides. On average, the five worst States for farmer
suicides saw a rise of 128 per cent in suicides by “Others”.
The NCRB 2014 data also record
thousands of tenant farmer suicides as those committed by “agricultural
labourers”. This too helps dilute the numbers in the main
“farmers” column in a big way. By the NCRB’s own admission, there has been no
data audit of its new numbers. The agency simply says
that it has “already decided to organise data audit in the year on random basis”.
(Read: they will now audit numbers already published as
authentic.) Nor were policemen at the lowest level stations—those who record
the data—trained for this new exercise.
Further, a
record 12 States and six Union Territories declared “zero” farmer
suicides in 2014. These include three big farming States: West Bengal,
Rajasthan and Bihar. In 2010, by contrast, not a single big State
had claimed “zero” suicides. And just three Union Territories
had done so. Now, these States assert that not a single farmer, in
the millions amongst them, took his or her life in 2014. For any reason
at all.
On these counts, the NCRB says it “may
seek clarification from the concerned States/ U.Ts where data is perceived
to be abnormal…” (emphasis added).
There is little explanation of how
the data for the new/revised categories in the NCRB’s Accidental Deaths
& Suicides in India 2014 are collected. And when it comes to
causes, the report goes, as always, by what State governments say were
distressdriven suicides. Even so, the number of farmer suicides
since 1995 touches 3,02,116. And while the changes render comparisons dubious,
the aggregate figure across all farmrelated
suicides, at 12,336, is marginally higher than in 2013.
Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh (including
Telangana), Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh are the “Big 5” States
of farmer suicides. For a decade, they logged
twothirds of all such suicides in the country. In the new accounting, the Big
5 States recorded well over 90 per cent of all farmers’
suicides in 2014. Maharashtra, whose 20year total now stands at 63,318,
witnessed over 45 per cent of all farmer suicides in the country
last year. However, serious questions on the changes in categories remain
unanswered. As do even more troubling ones on the data
collection.
The NCRB is
not a data collection machinery. It collates and tabulates
statistics coming in from the States. In that respect, it has no vested
interest in the numbers. However, the changes in formats seem to
further embolden and enable State government fudging of data.
Officials in State capitals will now find that job much easier.
A heavy distortion of the data
began with Chhattisgarh in 2011. The State had, by its own count, averaged
1,555 farm suicides each year between 2006 and 2010. In 2011, it
went to zero, cold turkey. It declared nil farm suicides that year, four
in 2012 and zero again in 2013. West Bengal followed suit
from 2012. Others too began to massage their numbers. Farm suicides had become
a politically damaging issue. Now, with new
categories and columns to shuffle the deaths across, State governments can more
easily reduce the numbers in the main farmers group.
The new (sub) categories include: farmers owning their land, those working on
contract/lease, agricultural labourers and more.
According to
the NCRB, there is “no reclassification” here. “Just further
segregation” of a table that it has published for 19 years: “Self
employed
persons in Agriculture/Farming”. It does not wash. Never at any time
in the past were agricultural labourers stated to be “selfemployed” in NCRB data or
anywhere else. A defining characteristic of agricultural labourers is that they
are not selfemployed. They roam the country seeking work
from others.
The constable at the lowest police
station in a district will apparently lay down whether the person who has
committed suicide is a farmer, a cultivator, a tenant, a landowner or a
labourer. Something that is difficult even for a trained surveyor. The NCRB
does say that the “data is based on official records of police stations”. The
data on unnatural deaths (UDs) are fed to the District Crime Records Bureaus
(DCRBs). And upwards to the State crime records bureaus (SCRBs), which format
them and send them on to the NCRB.
The NCRB says that it, in fact,
held a “onemonth rigorous training of trainers (ToT)” last year. That is, for
officials of the SCRBs. These are people located in State
capitals. Not at the local police stations. “The trained officials of the
SCRBs,” says the NCRB, “were requested to impart similar
training for concerned officials of the DCRBs/police stations of their
respective States for data feeding.” Did the SCRBs ever do that? It just
never happened. Officials at the police stations we contacted in high
farmsuicide regions like Vidarbha in Maharashtra and Mandya
in Karnataka seemed baffled. So were top police officials in four of the Big 5
states. “We know of no circular asking us to collect
or collate the data this way, recording those categories,” said a senior police
official in Andhra Pradesh.
In Telangana, a top police official
said: “The classification is not the job of the constable but of the tehsildar.
Who is a farmer or not, that is the Revenue Department’s
call. A copy of the FIR [first information report] goes to the tehsildar. The
policeman present simply notes the apparent reason of the
suicide.” This means the classification can get done at the Revenue Department
or the SCRBs in the capital. And, when in doubt, he
said, “the entry will likely go into the ‘Others’ category”. That last seems to
have happened with thousands of cases.
In Maharashtra, the worstaffected
State, senior police officials we contacted were only aware of a 2006 State
government circular on the farm crisis. “That required us
to report any farm suicide to the District Collector,” said one officer. He
also forwarded us a copy of the circular.
In Karnataka,
reeling under a spate of farm suicides at present, the police said
they were mystified by the new data classification system. Local
stations had not been instructed to make such distinctions in the
FIR or its summary. Top police officials in Madhya Pradesh said
that to their knowledge, the constable in the field had not been
asked to collect such data.
The NCRB report itself reflects the
confusion the new moves have caused. The second paragraph of its note on farmer
suicides says quite correctly: “Farmers include
those who own and work on field (viz. cultivators) as well as those who employ/hire
workers for field work/farming activities. It
excludes agricultural labourers.” Then how do the latter fit into a
table of “selfemployed”?
Take tenant farmers, those who
cultivate the land owned by others, paying a rent in cash or with a share of
the produce. Most tenancy contracts in India are informal and
not recorded. So tenant farmers struggle to get bank credit. They are deep in
debt to moneylenders and many have committed suicide.
However, with no record of identity, tenant farmers have all along been
undercounted in the farmers suicide category.
Now they will be even more
decisively excluded. Only a tiny fraction with recorded tenancy will make it to
the NCRB’s new subcategory for them. Most will
simply be counted as agricultural labourers. And this has clearly happened in
the latest data. The number of agricultural labourers
across India committing suicide in 2014, at 6,710, is over a thousand higher
than farmers. In Andhra Pradesh, for instance, the record
shows just 160 farmer suicides for 2014 but nearly three times as many
agricultural labourer suicides in the same year.
The NCRB’s response to this: “It is
presumed that the concerned police station has fed the category of victims,
viz. agricultural labourers, farmers, etc., based on
finding of enquiry into such unnatural deaths.” However, the agency concedes
that, given the potential problems, “the Bureau
will seek clarification from the concerned State”.
The NCRB knows there is a problem.
And senior officials admit that only those whose tenancy has been recorded
would have been counted. Yet, it also says: “NCRB
at present does not intend to carry out detailed study on tenancy rights/issues
which varies from State to State.” Alas, that is
precisely the point. The recording or lack of it, of tenant farmers is a mess
that wrecks the 2014 data. “The NCRB 2014 misclassifies many tenant
farmers as agricultural labourers,” says AllIndia Kisan Sabha (AIKS) vice
president Malla Reddy.
Forced by the
Kisan Sabha, the Andhra Pradesh government had introduced the Andhra
Pradesh Licensed Cultivators Act in 2011 to confer clear proof of identity to
tenant farmers. They were to be issued “Loan Eligibility Cards” to enable them
to seek bank credit. “But 90 per cent of the 32 lakh
tenant farmers in the present Andhra Pradesh have not been issued the cards,”
says Malla Reddy. “How will they prove their identity?”
Tenants account for a third of all farmers in Andhra Pradesh. Incidentally, the
AIKS counted more farmer suicides in Andhra Pradesh
in seven months of 2014 than the NCRB does for that whole year.
(Even the Indian Banks’ Association
had recognised the problems of this group across the country. It reported in
2008 that they faced a “range of problems dominantly
stemming from the lack of official recognition of tenancy and the fact that
their status as actual cultivators is nowhere recorded”.)
Besides the tenant farmer issue,
there are other problems that discredit the latest farmer suicides data. The
most vital of these is the spectacular increase in suicides
recorded under “Others”. Particularly in the Big 5 States, where they have
doubled in the 12 months of 2014. “Others” in Karnataka shot up
by 245 per cent in just that one year. In Andhra Pradesh by 138 per cent. In
Maharashtra by 94 per cent. In Madhya Pradesh it was
up by 89 per cent. Chhattisgarh saw a rise of 30 per cent.
In the years 201114, when
Chhattisgarh was declaring “zero” (or single digit) farmer suicides, its
average for suicides under “Others” grew by 83 per cent to 1,472. No
prizes for guessing who many of those “Others” were.
The “Others” overall has swollen as
a result, from 24,809 in 2013 to 41,216 in 2014. Astonishingly, the “Others”
category balloons to that figure despite the fact that
15,735 deaths have been withdrawn from it to form the new category of “daily
wage earners”.
“Others” in 2014 accounts for
almost a third, 31.3 per cent, of ALL suicides in the country. The
Big 5 alone contribute 16,234 of those. In 2013, the number was 7,107.
There is also the “Selfemployed
persons (Others)” column within the farm data whose numbers have shrunk.
Creating the new categories obviously implies a
carving up of that grouping. In Chhattisgarh, though, there is an obvious link
between the farmer suicides and the SEP (Others)
columns. When the State reported a high farmer suicide figure of 1,802 in 2009,
its SEP (Others) figure was 861. When it claimed “zero”
farmer suicides in 2013 (for a third year running), the SEP (Others) figure
reached 2,077. If in the three years 201113, we add
"SEP (Others)" and the "Others" categories, they account
for around 60 per cent of total suicides in the State.
Within their limits, the NCRB data gave us a
fair trend, if not accurate figures, for 19 years. Now that integrity is badly
compromised.
Why did the government feel
the need to reclassify farm suicides data? Were the numbers proving to be an
embarrassment? Hence a need to prove that the data—which
are entirely gathered by arms of the government—were an overestimation?
The NCRB says format
revisions are routine. “A regular exercise considering the data requests of
various stakeholders.” They say there is nothing on record to show that the
government or any particular agency sought the revision. However, it does seem
that the agency acted on a “request” from the
Agriculture Ministry in 2013 (the time of Sharad Pawar as Agriculture
Minister).
The argument
appears to be: oh, we were lumping all the categories together
earlier. So now we’re breaking them up to make sense. It wasn’t all farmers.
That won’t work because: The data up to 2013 refer clearly to
selfemployed in agriculture. Agricultural labourers are NOT
selfemployed. To questions raised in Parliament
over the years, the government stated the NCRB figures as being those relating to farmers
only, not to other categories.
Faced with a
tragic, deepening crisis (of which the suicides are but one
symptom), how do governments react? Not by facing up to the problem, but by
fiddling the data in sometimes blatant and often ingenious ways. The
trend that began with the “zero” declarations has worsened. This
year’s fudging is more sophisticated. But there is also this
selfdelusion: If we don’t know the numbers, there is no problem. Change the
way of counting and the count changes. And quiet flows the
countryside.
Sources Collected from- Frontline
No comments:
Post a Comment