Allam Sattenna, a 35-year-old farmer from Perkalaguda, a small hamlet near Utnoor in Andhra Pradesh’s Adilabad district, owned farms spread over 0.8 hectare (ha). He took another 1.2 ha on lease by paying Rs 6,000 per acre (0.4 ha). Motivated by the high prices last year, Sattenna planted cotton in all of the 2 ha which is rain fed.
But he could not harvest even one quintal cotton from the entire land in the first picking. His crop failed due to scanty rains and long dry spells. Worse, cotton price fell to Rs 3,500 a quintal—half of what it fetched last year because the demand for cotton in the international market was falling. Having borrowed Rs 20,000 from a local money lender last year, and with an additional debt of Rs 50,000 this year, he found no means to tide over the crisis. He ended his life in October by consuming pesticide.
He left behind a wife and a seven-year-old son. His wife, Allam Vijayamma, struggling to survive, is not even aware that a relief package exists for the families of farmers who commit suicide. “Nobody has come to me to ask about my husband’s death,” she says. Not even the village revenue officials, who should have verified and recorded the suicide as per a government order of 2005.
Despair driven by delayed and scanty rains
Andhra Pradesh is witnessing yet another spate of farm suicides. Delayed rainfall, prolonged dry spells, subsequent crop failures and unfriendly government policies have forced many farmers to kill themselves. Even as the state government maintains there were only 66 “genuine” farm suicides in the whole state between January and November in 2011, a recent report estimates as many as 95 farmers have ended their lives within a span of just one month in six districts. Cotton farmers account for maximum farm suicides.
The report, prepared by the Alliance for Sustainable Holistic Agriculture (ASHA), a nation-wide informal network of more than 400 organisations from 20 states, was based on a fact-finding survey in Adilabad, Anantapur, Karim Nagar, Medak, Mehbubnagar and Khammam districts, and on media reports on farm suicides between October and November 2011. The driest district of Anantapur tops the list with 24 suicides. Adilabad is second with 18 (see table).
