More than a dozen debt-laden farmers have committed suicide in recent weeks in India, and discontent in many rural areas against government policies is turning into anger against Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi less than a year after he swept into office.
Unseasonal storms have badly damaged the winter crop in large parts of the fertile northern plains, most likely contributing to the suicides, and villagers have blamed Modi for not stepping in to help the distressed farmers or ensuring that crop prices remained stable.
The farmer suicides in India’s most politically sensitive region are the latest in several setbacks for Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is hoping to consolidate power by winning local elections in large, predominantly rural states over the next two years.
The government has delayed a comprehensive health plan as it shifts focus from subsidies to investment, while religious tensions have made minorities uneasy. Nevertheless, Modi has made progress with economic reform in his first year — although not as rapidly as some investors would like — and has reined in inflation.
In a village in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, Dharmendra Singh mourned his brother Babu Singh, who committed suicide after rain destroyed wheat growing on the two-hectare farm he leased from a landlord.
Babu Singh, who had run up debts amounting to US$13,000, soaked himself in kerosene and set himself on fire on March 19. He succumbed to burn injuries six days later.
“My brother was banking on the crop so the loss came as the last straw,” Dharmendra Singh said in his village, Vaidi, 185km southeast of Delhi. “For God’s sake why hasn’t the government reached out to us? We overwhelmingly voted for Modi as he promised to take care of us, but he has stabbed us in the back.”
In more than a dozen villages across the state that sends the most lawmakers to parliament, farmers said there was a “crisis” in the countryside, where 70 percent of India’s 1.2 billion people live.
Angered by low farm-gate prices and the lack of state compensation for crop damage, some villagers said they have ostracized local members of Modi’s BJP and barred them from attending weddings.
Parties crushed by the BJP in last year’s general election have coupled the discontent with street protests against a land acquisition bill that will make it easier for businesses to buy farmland, a potent issue in the countryside.
For the BJP, the next major election is scheduled for November in the large, mostly rural state of Bihar, and a poor performance would be a huge setback.
India’s states send representatives to the upper house of the federal parliament, where the BJP is struggling to form a majority to match its domination of the lower house.
With global food prices low, an anti-inflation policy that has hit rural incomes and the shift from subsidy to investment spending, debt-laden farmers were already suffering when rain devastated standing winter crops across north India.
Over 10 million hectares of crops were damaged, but the government said there is no clear link to the suicides.
“Only the state governments can figure out cases of farmers’ suicides,” said a senior federal farm ministry official, who did not wish to be identified. “We’ll work closely with the affected states if they ask for any specific help.”
In the case of Singh at least, his family said there is no doubt why he died.
The rains earlier this month washed out his entire crop. The fields would have paid for his son’s education and daughter’s wedding, relatives said.
“He knew that he couldn’t pay his debt and live with dignity after the crop loss. A little help from the government could have saved my brother,” Dharmendra Singh said.
It is not unusual for federal and state government compensation for crop damage to trickle down slowly, but farmers said they expected more from Modi, who came to power promising efficient and responsive government.
Modi tried to address the issue in a radio address last week, arguing that the land bill would help create rural jobs, but in the villages of Uttar Pradesh, farmers were not impressed.
“Instead of ensuring some concrete help to farmers, especially after rains this month, Modi and his government are spending time and energy on the land bill,” said Buddha Singh, a district chief of the Bharatiya Kisan Union, a leading farmers’ body.
The turnaround is dramatic — Modi swept Uttar Pradesh last year, winning 73 of 80 seats with rural voters swayed by a promise to pay high crop prices along with religious tensions that favored his Hindu nationalist party.
Now the same farmers say they regret their support.
“Modi has let us down. We have decided to socially boycott BJP politicians, including lawmakers we elected,” said Jitendra Kumar, a farmer in Sisola Khurd village. “Some of us had joined BJP as part of its membership drive, but we are now going to surrender it.”
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion