The Enigma’s of Indian Agriculture Sector: Farmers Suicides in Punjab

Abstract

The recent spate of farmer suicides in Indian states has become the core of research and policy debates in the field of agrarian studies over the last one and a half decades. One sees a flood of publications indicating the causes of these suicides and policy prescriptions. The history of Indian farmer suicides is not new but officially the statistics is available from 1990s. The first state where suicides were reported was Maharashtra. Soon newspaper has gone to report similar occurrences from other states of the country. Growing pressure of indebtedness, rising cost of cultivation, declining returns from agriculture, adverse impact of economic liberalization, etc. are commonly identified as the main causes of this agrarian distress. The present paper made an attempt to analyses the reasons for farmer’s suicide in Punjab and to presents the farmer’s inconvenient condition leading tosuicides, its consequences on society and remedies are suggested to address the issue.