Punjab Peasantry in Life and Debt

The agrarian crisis engulfing the country is bankrupting the farming communities. The euphoria that began with the green revolution, making India self-sufficient in food grains and increasing the incomes of farmers across the board, was eroded within a matter of decades, so plunging the agrarian economy into deep gloom. Facing low yields, spiraling costs of cultivation, a near stagnant technology and dipping incomes, farmers are now struggling for survival. Their heavy borrowing to meet their day -to-day expenditure on subsistence and farming, coupled with their inability to repay back loans, have brought them to a stage where they are choosing death rather than debt. The state’s apathy, and the failure of institutions to provide adequate, timely and cheap credit, has aggravated the problem. Punjab’s economy is no exception, although the media and policy makers alike have largely ignored the crisis in this grain bowl of India. The present paper attempts to highlight the agrarian crisis and its manifestations in indebtedness and suicides in the state of Punjab. The widely held misconception that indebtedness is a result of unproductive expenditure has been refuted by our analysis of the empirical evidence. The study points out that the problem is multidimensional and attempts to curb this crisis would require both short-term as well as long-term measures. ________________________________________________________________