No help only survey-State's fresh survey of distressed Vidarbha farmers-Times of India

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State's fresh survey of distressed Vidarbha farmers
13 May 2009, 0642 hrs IST, Ramu Bhagwat, TNN



NAGPUR: The state government may undertake yet another massive door-to-door survey of the over 18 lakh farmer families in the six distressed districts of Vidarbha hit by the farmer suicide crisis.

This decision was communicated by the government to the state human rights commission last week. The commission headed by former chief justice Kshitij Vyas was told about the decision following a directive issued by the commission to the state government to implement the Narendra Jadhav report.

The human rights body of the state , while hearing a pending petition filed by Kishore Tiwari of Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti, expressed surprise that the Jadhav report which the government had accepted over six months ago was yet to be implemented.

Jadhav had recommended urgent measures like food security, quality healthcare, better educational facilities and a regulator for monitoring farm credit flow to the six distressed districts. The special relief packages had been announced by the prime minister in 2006 for these districts, and the state government has done little to rescue farmers from economic distress.

Strangely, the state has sought some time claiming that it would conduct a fresh survey of beneficiaries of the relief schemes. The earlier and first of its kind of door-to-door survey was conducted in April-May 2006 under the leadership of the then Amravati divisional commissioner Sudhir Kumar Goyal. Widely hailed for the disturbing data it brought to fore, the survey had identified around four lakh farmers living under serious financial stress, on the verge of desperation and needing urgent relief. It was a massive exercise involving the huge state government machinery.

The fact that another survey will be conducted is nothing but buying time, alleged Tiwari.
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vidarbha saga-Middle Of Nowhere -The suicide chain can't be broken-OUTLOOK Reports

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Magazine| Apr 13, 2009 Maharashtra Middle Of Nowhere The suicide chain can't be broken ARTI SHARMA

Unlike other parts of Maharashtra, very little has changed in the lives of the farmers in the 11 districts of Vidarbha. Rising debt, poor rainfall, high input costs and reducing yields are their burdens to bear. The MSP of cotton, the primary crop here, may have gone up by around 40 per cent to Rs 3,000 per quintal last year. But it’s been of little consequence, given lower output due to the poor rainfall (among other reasons).

In Khairi, a prosperous village at one time (when cotton was more precious than gold), there’s a sense of foreboding. For the first time this January, the villagers woke up to the news of one their own ending his life. For Purshottam Bhedurkar, the construction of a tarmac road ten years back changed the course of his life. The road blocked the flow of water in a stream that passed through his five-acre land, leaving it water-logged for the most part.

His widow, Venutai, has no idea how much debt her husband had, but figures it must be a large amount. Now, with no other option, she will probably lease the land for a measly Rs 2,500 for the year. "There’s no question of farming," she says. "Where will I get the money to buy the seeds?" Her only hope of survival is her two sons who depend on daily wages (Rs 80) whenever they find work.

Some farmers may have benefited from the relief packages announced but it’s clearly not been enough if 50-60 are still choosing to kill themselves every month. And that is the average estimated number since January this year. Come May-June, when sowing begins, that number could rise, as more farmers realise they have no access to credit to pay for inputs. "The loan waiver and packages announced have done little to solve the real problems farmers face—lack of irrigation, credit, the rise in input costs and so on," says Kishor Tiwari of the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti. Then there are the problems with the distribution of BPL and Antodaya cards, which subsidise rice and wheat for the family.

Even the NREGS has found no takers. The kind of work and rates offered are not motivating enough, say farmers, and in many places the scheme hasn’t been adequately promoted. The people of Vidarbha have lost all faith in the politicians. A change is imminent.

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Arti Sharma in Yavatmal, Chandrapur, Wardha

Our food will be made toxic and our seeds contaminated for all time if GM food crops are approved for commercial planting

please circulate this discussion widely.

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I'm very happy to see that Kishore Tiwari has written to the Supreme Court about its astonishing comment on balancing the myth of high yields against "side-effects" These side-effects are more properly, the science of the serious hazards intrinsic to the technology of genetic engineering and pesticidal crops which is what GM crops are.

There are some plain facts that need to be known by our people and our farmers. Kishore has the hard experience, which he has written about, on the facts surrounding Bt cotton and farmer suicides in India, particularly in Vidharbha. I have also written to the Times of India (reproduced at the end of this email. I don't think their editors will publish my critical 'rejoinder').

Our food will be made toxic and our seeds contaminated for all time if GM food crops are approved for commercial planting

You can't strike a balance between toxic food, a major threat to India's biodiversity, which also means the environment that sustains Indian farming on the one hand and any advantage (to the poor) that the SC sees that it should weigh in the balance, even assuming there were some merit to the SC's observation that GM crops will help the poor because they are high yielding crops. I also address this myth below.

If a food is toxic, then it will cause illness: food that causes people to get sick can no longer be classified as food. It is POISON. Also the kind of illnesses that GM foods will likely cause, as studies by independent scientists are increasingly showing, will be long term, like cancers and they will not be attributed to genetic engineering because in India at least, we do not have the ability or the will to track these foods and monitor their impacts. These kinds of studies, which only governments can do at the macro level at which they are required, are called epidemiological studies. Of course, the further point is, that it is precisely the poor who will suffer intensely because they have no access to medical aid of anything approaching 'enough'. 1 billion people will be exposed to GM food crops if the government has its way. As Dr Judy carman says,

"If only 1 in 1,000 of exposed people later gets ill, or has an underlying illness made worse, then over one million Indians would be ill and requiring treatment. This would result in a huge cost to the Indian government and community" (Carman).

It will also be a social cost and health scam of an unimaginable magnitude that will make 'chicken-feed' of every other scam in the country including the Satyam scandal and it will continue without any possibility of reversal. A trade off of any kind is unimaginable.

The GM MYTH of High Intrinsic Yields

The plain science is and there is NO AMBIGUITY, that GM crops do not carry any TRAITS for INCREASED YIELDS. The traits for increased yields belong to the parental lines that are used for making transgenics QED. Doug Gurian Sherman of the UCS (union of Concerned Scientists) says this:

"No currently available transgenic varieties enhance the intrinsic yield of any crops. The intrinsic yields of corn and soybeans did rise during the twentieth century, but not as a result of GE traits. Rather, they were due to successes in traditional breeding".

On the question of whether there are increased 'operational' yields because Bt is a pesticidal crop targeted at a particular cotton worm, then the jury is in. In China, in AP, in Gujarat, pest resistance is proven to have set in. Unless farmers spray more, yields are falling after an initial rise in the first 2- 3 years. We also have insect shifts in common with the Chinese experience, (the mealy bug in India ), which has led to huge crops failures in more than one State. In Vidharbha, a rain fed area, the inappropriate Govt. approval to sowing Bt cotton in this region in particular, has led to heart-breaking crops failure, devastation and suicides. The high input costs are attested to by Sainath, and the Mumbai High Court and the link to suicides confirmed.

The Government of India's stated concerns for the plight of farmers is exploded by P Sainath in numerous articles. The most telling feature of all is this (his May 1st article) and I quote:

"We had locked our farmers into the volatility of global cash crop prices, rigged and controlled by a handful of corporations. Add to this the obscene subsidies that the US and EU threw at their corporations and growers. In the US, subsidies made up two per cent of total farm income in 1974. By year 2000, they made up 47 per cent of total farm income. In item after item, US-EU subsidies destroyed millions of livelihoods, not just in India but across the world.

In India, we made no effort to raise duties to halt the dumping of highly subsidised US cotton on this country. Sharad Pawar was not in the least interested. Cotton was not his baby. The subsidized US cotton was grabbed by our textile magnates. They were getting it virtually free. No prizes for guessing what this did to the cotton price for Vidharbha farmers. Maharashtra’s suicides are perhaps unique. In that state, farmers have written suicide notes addressed to the prime minister and chief minister on the issue (while many experts ponder about why these people are taking their lives)"

There is one very important detail about the US cotton subsidy that Mr Sainath doesn't know about. The cotton is mainly GM.

Will Kishore please send one of those suicide notes to the media so this deep mystery of farmer suicides is cleared up once and for all. Please ask the leading papers to print. And Kishore, you should have sent it to the SC along with your letter to demonstrate the bonafides of our government.

Aruna R

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Letter to the Ed. The Times of India, below:

Subject: Your News Item dated 1^st May ‘09

“Poverty More Dangerous than GM Side-effects: SC”

Sir,

I write to express my astonishment at the choice of headline on the outcome of yesterday’s SC hearing of the PIL where I am the lead Petitioner; that it passed the Times of India’s editorial screening.

I am not questioning the veracity of your report about the comment made by the Chief Justice (CJ) of the Supreme Court. But it was a comment and your paper has elevated that comment and instead given it the gravitas of a pronouncement of the Supreme Court Bench headed by the Chief Justice of India. I am therefore, questioning the objective of a national daily of importance suggesting to your reading public that such is indeed the benefit of GM crops (that GM crops will feed the poor with their high yields). Since GM crops are unquestionably a question of national security, (both food and critically India’s biodiversity) I’m constrained to say that it fell short of responsible reporting and is to the detriment of your reading public and the national interest.

This comment of the CJ has no basis in the deliberations and the evidence given to the Supreme Court in the four years since this case was filed. What the public need to know is that the factual scientific issue is that GM crops give no intrinsic yield gains. It is also a fact that we have record-breaking farmer suicides in the Country, levels never approximated in history. In the case of Vidharba these have been linked by the MUMBAI HIGH COURT through its amicus curiae, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences to the inappropriateness of GM crops in a rain-fed region and because of their high input costs. The latter is a point of relevance for farmers everywhere.

The most rudimentary research uncovers the fact that the ‘Industry’ led by Monsanto has contributed to the recent food crisis because of steep price rises sourced in the diversion of food crops to GM biofuel crops. Monsanto has also been docked for hounding farmers in Canada and the US in court cases for patent infringement when their farms were inadvertently contaminated by GM seeds and pollen from other farms. These are companies who exist to promote their bottom line, not feed the poor. Let’s be very clear about this, both as a reality on the ground for farmers and the poor and the science of the present state of GM technology, which does not provide yield gains.

I would be happy to submit an article to your paper detailing the dangers India faces with GM crops and asking the all important question:

Why in heaven’s name is our government prepared to risk the health of one billion Indians in perpetuity by forcing untested and & unsafe GM food onto our plates?

Aruna Rodrigues

(Lead Petitioner to the SC in a PIL

for a moratorium on GM crops pending comprehensive and transparent safety-testing in the national interest)

VJAS urged Indian Supreme Court to know the fact that GM food is most dangerous to poor than food security

VJAS urged Indian Supreme Court to know the fact that GM food is most dangerous to poor than food security

Poverty more dangerous than GM side-effects: SC

Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS) farmers advocacy group apposing introduction of GM seeds in Indian after vidarbha reported more than 5000 cotton farmers suicides since June 2005 when Govt. allowed commercial trials of Bt.cotton seeds , has been shocked to see media report that the Supreme Court of India has observed that GM seeds could possibly be a means to eradicate hunger and poverty. Poverty is probably more dangerous than the side-effects of GM seeds but it is not true as per research reports it is internationally known fact that GM food has caused a series of health problems including adverse effects on growth, impaired immune system, and organ damage that can be carried over generations and the pertinent danger that inadequately tested GM could pose to consumer health, agriculture, environment, and even revenues earned from food exports.

some experts observed that “We will survive without GM (Genetically Modified) food but we will never be able to survive the change unleashed by the tide of modification that is called Genetic Engineering” hence in a letter to hon,ble chief justice of supreme court India VJAS president Kishore Tiwari has urged SC to go in to details of all aspects of unsafe GM food as any SC observation may lead to major health and ecological problem before the nation.

It is reported in Times of India dated 1 May 2009 that

I QUOTE

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday tried to strike a balance between the apprehended side-effects of genetically modified seeds and foodgrains and the high-incidence of hunger and poverty in India.

Hearing PILs seeking stringent regulatory mechanism and advanced testing for the toxicity of the genetically modified organisms (GMOs), a Bench comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Justices P Sathasivam and J M Panchal said the GM seeds capable of dramatically increasing productivity could be an answer to the hunger and poverty in India.

"There is intense competition between GM seed marketing agents. We are a little suspicious of the literature they put forth. GM seeds could possibly be a means to eradicate hunger and poverty. Poverty is probably more dangerous than the side-effects of GM seeds," the Bench said.

Countering the perception of the apex court, advocates Sanjay Parikh and Prashant Bhushan argued that when the country's regulatory regime was lax and there were no advanced laboratories to test the toxicity of the GMOs, open filed trials of such genetically modified seeds could result in an irreversible catastrophe.

They suggested intense reworking of the existing regulatory regime and setting up of a National Centre for Assessment of GMOs, as suggested by a member of the expert committee, Dr P M Bhargava.

The Bench asked the Centre to submit its response by the end of August regarding setting up of a separate the National Centre for Assessment of GMOs and also the need for constituting a separate expert committee to chalk out a comprehensive regulatory mechanism with regard to GMOs.

UNQUOTE

Vidarbha has been facing lot of heath problems after the field trials GM cotton seeds and

health and environmental impact studies conducted by expert NGOs has already reported major damages to rural life of west vidarbha including multiple issues of mealy bug’s wide spread in forest damaging lot of plants in total and fresh attacks of new viruses like chikungunia creating massive health problems in tribal part of vidarbha and much more health damage to rural masses hence introduction of GM food in vidarbha needs more stringent regulator to monitor ecological disorder due to toxicity of GM food as reported through out the world .

“Eradication of poverty and hunger is must in India but with introduction of GM food ,it should not eradicate all poor” kishor tiwari added in the letter.

.

Please release this pres note

Thanking you,

Yours faithfully, For VIDARBHA JAN ANDOLAN SAMlTI

KISHORE TIWARI

PRESIDENT

kishortiwari@gmail.com

contact-09422108846

Fields Afire-P.Sainath on dying vidarbha

Fields Afire
P. Sainath

Indian farmers wrote suicide notes to Prime Minister, Chief Minister explaining the situation before hanging themselves, even as experts wondered what was deriving them to this end

But for the everyday act of cultivation, there is almost no sector of agriculture that corporations do not dominate. Seeds, fertilizer, pesticides, other inputs. Prices, trade, all the way to Big Retail.

The last 15-18 years of policy measures sculpted the situation that now exists. Investment in agriculture has collapsed. Credit has dried up even as farm incomes have crashed. Sector after sector – for instance, seed – has been opened up to predatory corporate control. Mindless deregulation has been the norm, embracing the World Bank and IMF prescriptions with enthusiasm and bringing Indian agriculture to the WTO heel. Millions of small farmers who cannot take the risks have been shifted from foodcrop to cash crops and locked into global price volatility. Extension services were crippled and most agricultural research now serves corporations, not communities. Input costs have skyrocketed, for some crops (like cotton, for instance) by several hundred per cent over those 15-18 years. Standards (like minimum germination rate of seed) were lowered or done away with.

And the explosion of costs is on all fronts, not just in agriculture. Large numbers of indebted farmers who committed suicide had huge health expenditures. Several had mortgaged land to pay their hospital bills. Many others still do that and also see their children dropping out of an education they can no longer afford. In short, the hyper-commercialization of the countryside.

Some eight million farmers have quit cultivation. There were 111 million cultivators recorded in the 1991 Census, 103 million in the 2001 Census. Where have they gone? We don’t really know since no systematic work has been done on the scale required. In the media, we aren’t really interested. We can tell you where Paris Hilton is, though. When the 2011 Census appears it is likely that even the eight million figure will be dwarfed as the enforced ‘exit policy’ in farming proceeds unchecked. Where will they go? How will they be absorbed? And apart from these troubling questions: at least 1,82,936 farmers have ended their own lives, in the largest sustained wave of suicides ever recorded, anywhere. We are staring at, but not seeing, the most unbelievably intense misery in the countryside. And one sustained over a period of many years.

The agrarian crisis is comprehensive, all-encompassing, reaching almost every crop, touching almost every sector. It has been around for quite a while, too. And the corporate conquest of agriculture is well apace.

The crisis still lives. And thrives. It will not be resolved by band-aid relief packages. Tackling it calls for nothing short of a huge reversal and transformation of policy. And along with that, an addressing of the long-term real reforms that Indian agriculture needs. Including what kind of agriculture we need to replace this dying model with.

Some ground rules that help understanding:

Do not disconnect urban from rural India. This is a big mistake, often made. The same processes are at work in both, the same policies – even if the fallout is more dramatic in the farm sector. Also, the two are closely connected at many levels. Take the diversion of credit, for instance, towards fuelling urban (and rural elite) upper middle class consumption. Through 2003-04 several farmers killed themselves, unable to raise crop loans of Rs 8,000 or less, except at exorbitant rates of interest. This was at a time when banks were offering upper middle class professionals a chance to buy a Mercedes Benz at 4-6 per cent interest – without collateral. In any case, at the political level, the decisions are made in urban India.

Do not disconnect the rural from the rest of the world. The most dramatic effects of neoliberal globalization are, in fact, seen in the countryside. The operations of Wall Street’s Index Funds can have huge impact on the livelihoods of rural Indians. Speculation in markets around the world have a major fallout, likewise.

The rise of inequality in post-1991 India has been nothing short of stunning. India today has 51 dollar billionaires, but ranks 128 in the UN Human Development Index. While 51 individuals in a population of over one billion have a net worth equalling roughly 31 per cent of our GDP, the Report of the National Commission for Employment in the Unorganised Sector tells us that 836 million other Indians get by on less than Rs 20 a day. Such contrasts are endless. The inequality of the past 18 years is different from that of the preceding 40 years in this respect. Never has it been so cynically constructed, so ruthlessly engineered.

The same process has been on at the global level. Even the meltdown – which has just begun – is strongly linked to that process. CEO salaries exploded, and wealth concentrated at unprecedented levels in a tiny number of hands, while the real wages of working people stagnated or shrunk all the time. In 2008, a year of millions of layoffs, the heads of New York’s financial firms paid themselves bonuses of $ 18 billion. Wages fell and jobs were lost in millions in an era where two-thirds of US corporations paid zero corporate income tax between 1998 and 2005. Anyone could see that it could not be sustained. You’d have to be an economist to believe it could.

Follow the money. At all times, follow the money: There’s big bucks in misery. And agriculture is going to be the great provider of both, big bucks and misery. Remember the food price crisis last year when the West touted the idea that it was because Indians and Chinese were eating a hell of a lot more? How were the large corporations in that sphere doing? As the Wall Street Journal noted (30 April 2008): ‘At a time when much of the world is facing food riots, Big Agriculture is dealing with a different sort of challenge: huge profits. The grain processing giant Archer Daniels-Midland, for instance, saw a 42 per cent rise in its fiscal third quarter profits. "Including a seven-fold increase in net income in its unit that stores, transports and trades grains such as wheat and corn, as well as soybeans." Seed and herbicide giant Monsanto and fertilizer-maker Mosaic "all reported similar windfall profits in their latest quarters".’

Incidentally, those food prices at the global level fell sharply a while ago. Did it imply the same Indians and Chinese began starving? As a matter of fact, the daily net per capita availability of food grain in India sank from 510 grams in 1991 to 422 in 2005. What had happened was the same with oil, as with food. Speculative capital was moving towards agricultural commodities and fertilizer, driving prices upwards.

As thousands of bank branches shut down in rural India and credit dried up, farmers turned more to moneylenders. But this time of a different kind. The small village sahukar is hardly a force in regions like Vidharbha. Indeed, some small moneylenders have committed suicide – their clients have all defaulted or vanished (or killed themselves). In the decade from 1991-92, Indian farm households in debt went up from 26 per cent to 48.6 per cent. The regions seeing high numbers of suicides are also regions where peasant indebtedness is very high. Over 80 per cent of Andhra’s farm households, for instance, are in debt.

We had locked our farmers into the volatility of global cash crop prices, rigged and controlled by a handful of corporations. Add to this the obscene subsidies that the US and EU threw at their corporations and growers. In the US, subsidies made up two per cent of total farm income in 1974. By year 2000, they made up 47 per cent of total farm income. In item after item, US-EU subsidies destroyed millions of livelihoods, not just in India but across the world.

In India, we made no effort to raise duties to halt the dumping of highly subsidised US cotton on this country. Sharad Pawar was not in the least interested. Cotton was not his baby. The subsidized US cotton was grabbed by our textile magnates. They were getting it virtually free. No prizes for guessing what this did to the cotton price for Vidharbha farmers. Maharashtra’s suicides are perhaps unique. In that state, farmers have written suicide notes addressed to the prime minister and chief minister on the issue (while many experts ponder about why these people are taking their lives).

India’s farmers were and are buffeted on all sides these past 15 years. In different states of the country you will find many who tell you the only way a farm can survive is to have one son or brother working in the city who sends some money back to the farm. More and more people quit farming in the past decade and migrations went berserk, but that’s another story.

The end is not in sight. Not after the prime minister’s 2006 visit. Not after the 2008 loan waiver. Yes, the waiver did bring a measure of relief to some. And yes, the Congress might benefit from it in some pockets. But it was and is no solution. In fact, credit for the fresh season is proving to be a huge problem for millions of farmers. Very few of the major recommendations of the National Farmers Commission have found expression in policy. The CAG’s reports on the ‘relief packages’ have been devastating.

The crisis still lives. And thrives. It will not be resolved by band-aid relief packages. Tackling it calls for nothing short of a huge reversal and transformation of policy. And along with that, an addressing of the long-term real reforms that Indian agriculture needs. Including what kind of agriculture we need to replace this dying model with.

(Excerpted from an article in Seminar, India. P Sainath is one of India’s leading voices of conscience working on issues of farm crisis, credit policy, rural India reporting and much else. His path breaking book, Everybody loves a good drought, forever changed the way India’s engaged journalists look at rural domain.)

29 April 2009