Agrarian Crisis India: An Aftermath of the New Economic Reforms

Abstract

The National Crime Records Bureau of India reported in its 2012 annual report that 135,445 people committed suicide in India, of which 13,754 were farmers (11.2%). Of these, 5 out of 29 states accounted for 10,486 farmer's suicides (76%) -Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Kerala. In 2011, a total of 135,585 people committed suicide, of which 14,207 were farmers. In 2010, 15,963 farmers in India committed suicide, while total suicides were 134,599.In 2012, the state of Maharashtra, with 3,786 farmers' suicides, accounted for about a quarter of the all India's farmer suicides total (13,754). From 1995 to 2013, a total of 296,438 Indian farmers committed suicide. During the same period, about 9.5 million people died per year in India from other causes including malnutrition, diseases and suicides that were non-farming related, or about 171 million deaths from 1995 to 2013.Farmer suicides rates in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh -two large states of India by size and populationhave been about 10 times lower than Maharashtra, Kerala and Pondicherry. In 2012, there were 745 farmer suicides in Uttar Pradesh, a state with an estimated population of 205.43 million.