Some Have Killed Themselves As Pests Ravage Fields And Banks Seek Payback Economic Boom's Dark Side
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KADAVENDI, India - A. Narsoji rose from his restless sleep in this southern Indian village on a recent night to got something to drink.
The 45-year-old farmer had reason to be anxious. His
cotton crop had failed, he had already sold his two oxen
to repay one loan and had nothing more to offer usurious
moneylenders who were hounding him. He owed about $3,300,
equal to two-and-a-half years' earnings --in good
harvests. Yet this season, caterpillars, immune to
pesticides that he sprayed frantically, ravaged his
cotton. What failed to rid him of that plague at least
ended his torment that Jan. 25 night:
Mr. Narsoji gulped pesticide and collapsed in a fit of convulsions in his open-air kitchen.
Two days later in a nearby village, S. Sailam finished
lunch and told his wife he was off to spray pesticide on
his besieged cotton. Instead, he squirted it down his
throat. Recounting the story, his illiterate widow, six
months pregnant with their third child and saddled with
debt, sobs as she throws herself on a visitor's feet to
beg for help. Advice from villagers gathered in the
Moonlight hardly consoles her.
"Sell your oldest son to a landlord," a man suggests, pointing to the six-year-old. Bondage pays $80 a year cash upfront.
In large cities, new cars shimmer and cellular telephones sing. But in the countryside, where almost three-fourths of India's 959 million people live and toil, benefits of the new wealth are often as fanciful as the Hindu myths that make for popular cinema. Though agriculture largely propelled India's 7.5% gross domestic product growth for the year ended March 31, 1997, economic expansion is bypassing some of India's most impoverished rural areas, and many people, like these cotton farmers, are trapped in a feudal time warp.
No state encompasses the dichotomy more starkly than Andhra Pradesh, home to 72 million people, including two of India's leading economic reformers. Native son P.V. Narasimha Rao was the prime minister who launched the freemarket policies in 1991. Current state leader N. Chandrababu Naidu, Who surfs the Internet with his IBM ThinkPad, projects modernity and is a darling of the World Bank. He has made the capital city, Hyderabad, a magnet for high-tech investment.
Subsidy cuts have made seeds, fertilizer and electricity more costly, while remaining trade barriers prevent farmers from fetching a higher price for cotton.
Government education programs have failed, leaving the mostly illiterate farmers dependent on unscrupulous pesticide dealers for advice on managing crops. Most important, the deaths reveal the collapse of the rural banking system. Short of cheap bank credit, farmers were forced to turn to moneylenders who charged, on average, 36% annual interest.
National elections that started Monday have given the farmers an opportunity to publicize their plight, often in spectacular ways. At a campaign rally two, weeks ago, a cotton farmer tried to kill himself - but was saved - in front of Mr. Naidu. Candidates have exploited the issue for campaign purposes, but many farmers believe that once elected, politicians will again ignore agrarian reform in favor of coddling the rising urban middle class.
That didn't deter Mr. Sailam, the farmer who is survived by his pregnant wife and two sons. With little understanding of the risks or capital involved, he blindly copied a neighbor who was earning handsomely from the fluffy white crop. Four years ago, Mr. Sailam devoted onethird of his four acres to cotton.
At first, it was a dream come true, recalls his 25-year-old widow, Yadamma. Her timorous voice is barely audible above drum beats of another villager's funeral procession. Tilling one's own field was honorable for a peasant such as her husband, who was raised by a landless father and sent occasionally to work for rich landlords. To step up in life, he had gone to Hyderabad to drive a rickshaw, scrimping and saving enough for a down payment on land in Peddamaduru village.
But the dream quickly soured. Mr. Sailam lacked know-how. The well he dug for irrigation collapsed three years ago. Two years of drought and irregular rains hurt his cotton yield, requiring greater investment in fertilizer and pesticides. Meanwhile, wider cotton cultivation had driven down the market price. Mr. Sailam, 35, was already deep in debt when pestilence descended last November.
But like Mr. Sailam, they also began panic spraying of highly toxic pesticides in doses far higher than recommended. And why not? Pesticide dealers swarmed the villages, promising farmers miracle results -and available, if exorbitant, credit. Often, the poisons were bogus or adulterated. No state agriculture official came to give proper guidance. And state-owned banks, either defunct or under pressure from economic reforms to curb risky debts, turned away small farmers needing crop loans. Before the attack, Mr. Sailam was rejected because no one would guarantee his bank loan.
As his crops withered, Mr. Sailam's creditors came calling. In addition to pesticide dealers, some were fellow farmers who had lent surplus cash, also at 36% interest. Others were relatives,, heightening Mr. Sailam's sense of shame. In all, he owed about $1,800, with little prospect of earning anything this season.
"He was worried, but he never talked about suicide," says his widow. Now, she can't make ends meet, and couldn't even afford rice for a Hindu ceremony on the 10th day of mourning. Still, she's uncertain whether the family will quit cotton. "If not cotton, what?" blurts out Padda Reddy, a farmer whose crop has also been damaged. "It's a vicious circle. If we abandon commercial crops, we're certain to have low returns, and the only alternative will be to sell our land."
But more broadly, the suicides betray a breakdown of everything India needs to modernize agriculture: education, supervision of technology, finance, investment and more-equitable markets.
Poring over damage reports, M.R.M. Chalapati Rao, Warangal's top agriculture official, blames small farmers' "bad habits": poor crop choice, misuse of fertilizer that made plants disease-prone, and overspraying of pesticides that built up the caterpillars' resistance. Yet it is his job to advise the farmers, a task that he can't perform with only 39 field officers for 1,100 villages. "I don't even have a proper office or a car," he says.
Pesticide dealers preyed on the farmers' ignorance and encouraged their bad habits.
This season, one dealer, T. Venkata Reddy of Medical India, saw his sales double, with 70% of the deals on credit. But he admits, "This caterpillar is uncontrollable. Farmers would have been better off abandoning their crop." Did he inform them? "No one would sacrifice his own business. Why tell them not to buy?"
Bankers, too, show little remorse. "If the farmers aren't good, how can the farmers' bank do well?" says T.R.K. Rao, general manager of state-owned Warangal District Co-op Central Bank Ltd. The bank has been troubled since writing off bad debts in 1990, a move that created a culture of defaulters, he says. Now, the cooperative's maximum loan to each farmer is $390 a year, at about 15% interest.
Institutional credit meets less than half the farmers' needs. "By underfinancing them, are we pushing farmers to become defaulters?" Shalini Mishra, a federal civil servant who is Warangal's administrator, asks rhetorically. Educated as a psychologist, she denies that failed cotton and debt sparked every suicide. But she is taking the banks to task: She has threatened to withdraw government deposits unless state-owned banks raise lending to small farmers.
Ms. Mishra has no leverage over private usurers, whose power casts a pall over the cotton market in the city of Warangal. Among the bales piled in an open lot, farmers slash burlap sacks to show buyers their crop. Prices are firmer due to short supply, but the mood is subdued. Farmer Malla Reddy is here to sell his land, not just his cotton. Nearby, B. Narasimha Reddy has fetched the best price of the day, but he needs cash immediately, so his broker demands a' higher commission.
"Everything I end up with," the farmer laments, "will go to pesticide dealers and moneylenders."
Outside the auction area, huddled cotton farmers debate how to end their woes. They want the government to reschedule loans, lower interest rates and ensure a minimum support price. But other remnants of socialism must go. The nationalized insurance industry won't cover their cotton crop, so some farmers suggest allowing private - or even foreign - insurers. Old trade policies also hamper: Cotton imports are open while exports are restricted, thus suppressing the local price. The farmers' plea: Make economic reform work for us, not only against us.
In Hyderabad, state leader Mr. Naidu was slow to recognize the cotton farmers' distress, despite a computer database that he touts as the key to improving his government's performance. The on-line system offers daily reports on electricity production and tax collection, and reveals, for instance, that a lazy bureaucrat has been sitting on a particular file for 276 days. The system also tracks rainfall and agricultural output. But it wasn't until well after the suicides began in December that Mr. Naidu rushed to Warangal to promise the families compensation. Many say the aid hasn't arrived. Some widows have received cash, but creditors swooped down promptly, to snatch it. The political fortunes of Mr. Naidu, seen by some as a future prime minister, may be hurt by accusations that he neglected the farmers.
The vacant look on C. Madhav Reddy, a cotton farmer in Pathipaka village, suggests that aid can't wait much longer. He tried to commit suicide in December by drinking pesticide, but his family rushed him to the hospital in time. Standing in his home amid workers packing the remains of his blighted crop, Mr. Reddy, 36, isn't sure he's happy to be alive. Already in debt before the suicide attempt, he had to pledge his four acres of land to a moneylender to pay his medical expenses.
Mr. Reddy's other creditors have extended his deadline until Ugadi, a local festival in late March. But he knows that he won't be able to pay. Nor will thousands of other small farmers in Warangal. Normally, Ugadi is celebrated by eating homemade pickles made from fruits of the harvest. A farmer outside Mr. Reddy's home worries about the way some of his neighbors may mark the holiday. "Come Ugadi, so many people will kill themselves," he says. "What else can we do?"
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