Background: Farmers’ suicides have become an important socio-economic concern in India that has profound implication on the quality of life of farmers and their families. There are not many epidemiological studies on this. We propose to estimate suicide rates for farmers and non-farmers across the states of India and over time. We will also contextualise our results to the discourse on agricultural technology and development in general and that of cotton farming in particular.
Methods: Suicide rates are computed per 100,000 people using suicide incidences for farmers and non-farmers reported by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) from 1995 to 2012 and normalising the same with age-adjusted interpolated/extrapolated population computed from census.
Findings: At the aggregate all India level, one observes that the SDR for male farmers increases to a peak in 2004 and there is a second spike in 2009 but then it declines and also becomes lower than the suicide rates for male non-farmers in 2011 and 2012. However, state-specific analysis, while showing mixed pattern, indicates that the decline in recent years is largely on account of an abrupt drop in Chhattisgarh on account of changes in reporting and non-reporting of farmers’ suicides for West Bengal in 2012. The states of Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra with large cotton-growing areas and with relatively higher incidence of farmers’ suicides, in contrast to the all India trend, show an increasing trend in recent years.
Interpretation: Relatively higher incidence of farmers’ suicides is symptomatic of risk and raises livelihood as also public health concerns among the population dependent on agriculture. Public policy should focus on livelihood-enhancing and sustainable agricultural practices. Public health interventions should address the need for mental health care, reduce response time to lower harm and prevent deaths from poisoning and other self-inflicted harm, and restrict and regulate the access to and use of organophosphorous poisons. We also call for shifting the development discourse linked to farmers’ suicides from a techno-centric yield or income focus to a people-centric livelihood and quality of life focus.
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