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This chapter first examines the structural characteristics of Maharashtra, where most of the workforce continue to depend on agriculture, even as the sector's share in state domestic product has sharply declined. It then examines trends in public investment, credit, and related issues in agriculture. The main focus is on farmers' suicides in western Vidarbha. The chapter shows that farmers face a variety of risks ranging from uncertain weather to lack of proper technology, volatile markets, lack of proper technology, inadequate institutional credit, and spurious inputs. However, it was indebtedness that proved to play a critical role in farmer suicides. Despite the comprehensive intervention package provided by the Union government, its design and implementation suffer from several deficiencies.

Vexing methodological questions about inter-subjectivity, post-facto explanation, recalling inaccuracies, and falsification have been so far been marginalized in the literature on ‘farmers’ suicides’. After illustrating this point, the chapter offers an empirical examination of 29 officially certified farming suicides to reveal a causal continuum underlying them. At one end of this continuum there is a group of suicide in which farming reasons are necessary and sufficient antecedents; such cases are distinguished by severe indebtedness of the deceased due to non-fructuous farm-investments and inescapable expenditure on marriage and health. But on the other end, there is a subcategory of suicides that are neither exclusively or principally farm-related; they are instead explained locally in terms of a range of familial or inter-familial disputes around sexuality, (non-farm- related) alcoholism, dowry demands, and so on. Mediating these groups, there are also cases in which farm-related antecedents, although principal, are so closely intertwined with other familial causes in the local narratives that it is difficult to catalogue them either way. The importance of social processes through which motives are ascertained officially is therefore central to the discussions of ‘farmers’ suicides’.

This chapter presents an account of farmers' suicides in the state of Andhra Pradesh starting in 1996. Based on a survey of several studies, it shows that farmers' distress in the state can be attributed to the increasing fragility of resources, particularly the groundwater resources, as well as unsustainable and inappropriate cropping practices, notably in resource-poor areas. A number of factors were responsible for the agrarian crisis in Andhra Pradesh, including growing input costs, falling farm incomes, increasing dependence on unstable groundwater resources, and volatility of output prices. Another cause was heavy household investment in groundwater, with farmers borrowing from informal sources at high interest rates, causing them to pile up debts. This chapter also discusses the economic reforms in Andhra Pradesh in relation to agriculture, along with institutional retrogression and rural distress.

This chapter examines the nature and factors contributing to the agrarian crisis and rural distress in India. It shows that the Indian economy remains predominantly rural, with urbanization taking place slowly, but that rural-urban disparities in income and living standards continue to widen. As the most important source of livelihood in the countryside, agriculture accounts for a disproportionately high share in the total workforce while its share in the gross national product continues to dwindle. The chapter also investigates the structural changes in employment across various sectors and within rural areas, the political economy of the technological transformation in agriculture, the nature of economic reforms and their impact on agriculture and farmers, and suicides brought about by the agrarian crisis. Finally, the chapter addresses the sustainability of farming in the context of reforms and considers ways in which to solve the agrarian crisis.

This chapter analyses the underlying causes of the agrarian crisis in Punjab, one of the most prosperous states in India. It shows the pronounced deceleration in agricultural growth since the early 1990s and the decline in profitability in agriculture because the cost of inputs has been increasing faster than output prices, coupled with poor or stagnant yields. Other factors responsible for the decline in income from agriculture are the increasing cost of capital equipment such as tractors, the rising cost of irrigation as a result of the sharp drop in the water table, and significant idle capacity in capital equipment. Although farmers' suicides can be attributed to many factors, the main culprit is economic stress due to indebtedness.

This chapter examines agrarian distress, debt, and farmer suicides in three villages in Wayanad and Idukki districts of Kerala. Agriculture and plantations account for about 35 per cent of the total income in both districts and about 50 per cent of the labour force. Since 2000, Wayanad and Idukki faced severe agrarian crisis resulting in farmer suicides. A marked decline in prices of plantation crops such as coffee, tea, pepper, and cardamom was accompanied by a decline in yields due to pests and poor weather conditions. Compounding the situation were trade liberalization, particularly the free trade agreement with Sri Lanka, and declining state support.

Although the crisis in agricultural growth and agrarian crisis are overlapping perspectives, they give rise to contrasting diagnoses of the problems in Indian agriculture. This chapter describes farming communities in India as a three-tier pyramid created by government policies over time. Poverty-stricken farmers make up the base of the pyramid, the so-called upwardly mobile farmers (that is, farmers struggling to move up the productivity level but often relegated to the middle) are in the middle, and a small section lobbying for subsidies, and seeking rents or unproductive profits instead of utilizing their potential for entrepreneurship for agricultural growth are at the top. The chapter argues that by providing state support to the upwardly mobile farmers, growth is possible even for those situated at the bottom of the pyramid. It examines case studies of farmers' suicides in five states and suggests critical interventions in terms of credit, extension services, and institutional structure.

Karnataka is a drought-prone region with a large proportion of wastelands, high outstanding agricultural credit from scheduled banks, and high density of marginal and small farmers. These conditions could trigger a serious agrarian crisis. In addition, Karnataka is dominated by rain-fed agriculture but has poor irrigation. Under these circumstances, the narrow techno-centred green revolution strategy gave rise to inappropriate cropping patterns in many parts of the state. Agricultural distress is acute in Karnataka's northern dry regions, while the incidence of suicides has been very high since 1997. Aside from indebtedness, farmers' distress in Karnataka can be attributed to lack of proper marketing facilities, increasing stress on natural resources, poor extension services, frequent failure of monsoon and droughts resulting in crop losses, and absence of institutions where farmers could seek counselling.

Capitalist transformation in postcolonial societies follows an altogether different path. The resolution to agrarian question no longer seems necessary for capitalism. This leaves a large number of petty commodity producers precariously surviving in agriculture in India. This chapter shows that this class and the area operated by them is increasing, in spite of the fact that their agriculture is essentially unviable. Farmer suicides reflect the distress faced by this class. However, this chapter also shows that this class survives through various strategies, including considerable diversification away from their dependence on farming. As a result, land becomes no longer central to their survival, while the post-colonial state manages their desperate condition through welfare transfers. This chapter provides evidence for the changing profile of rural farm households, land holding structure, farm and non-farm incomes of rural farm households, and welfare transfers. The changing portfolio of rural incomes brings out the shifts in dependence on agriculture for the rural households and their implications for the land question.

Peepli (Live) is a film about farmers’ suicides, but approaches it as black humour. This chapter compares the portrayal of the rural poor and the treatment of indebtedness in the film with that in earlier films like Mother India (1956) in which leading stars played the poor farmer. An important factor with regard to Peepli (Live) is the sense to be got from it that the poor have no affinities, like with their families, and their lives lack teleology. Since the film is apparently addressing the Anglophone class—the concluding legend is in English—there is evidence that the audience sees itself as belonging to a world different from that of the protagonists. This provides insights into the asymmetric constitution of the Nation in Hindi cinema today.

This chapter deals with Badal Sircar’s Third Theatre plays. Most of them are thought-provoking, embracing more than one problem in one breath, sometimes juxtaposing similar or opposite issues. This kind of textual development enriches drama with dynamism, but at some risk of repetitiveness and simplicity. Supplemented with an overview of the political situation in post-Independence India, this chapter investigates the tangential attachment of the Third Theatre plays to reality, and a performance discourse, which was barely concerned with the economically and educationally disadvantaged people’s vocabulary.