Institutional failure and farmers' suicides in Andhra Pradesh

Abstract

Small and marginal farmers are the worst hit by the problems that afflict agriculture. The macro and micro level factors together have created stress among the poor farmers forcing them to commit suicide. These are preventable deaths and with proper reorientation of the policies, the government could rescue the farmers who are in distress conditions. Farmers under distress conditions committing suicide is not a new phenomenon in the state of Andhra Pradesh. In 1987, 27 cotton growers in Warangal and Guntur districts have committed suicide when they lost the entire cotton crop due to pest attack. Similar incidents have been repeated during 1997-98 on a bigger scale and continuing thereafter. However, the government did not pay any attention to identify the root causes and other related risk factors that are forcing farmers into distress conditions. An attempt is made here to examine how some of the macro and micro level factors have led to distress conditions in agriculture, especially how they impacted on the small and marginal farmers.