Farmer Suicides in India: Levels and Trends across Major States,

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1 University of Massachusetts - Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Economics Department Working Paper Series Economics 2016 Farmer Suicides in India: Levels and Trends across Major States, Deepankar Basu Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts, dbasu@econs.umass.edu Debarshi Das Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, debarshidas@iitg.ernet.in Kartik Misra Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, kmisra@econs.umass.edu Follow this and additional works at: Part of the Economics Commons Basu, Deepankar; Das, Debarshi; and Misra, Kartik, "Farmer Suicides in India: Levels and Trends across Major States, " (2016). Economics Department Working Paper Series. Paper This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Economics at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Economics Department Working Paper Series by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact scholarworks@library.umass.edu.

2 DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS Working Paper Farmer Suicides in India: Levels and Trends across Major States, by Deepankar Basu Debarshi Das Kartik Misra Working Paper UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST

3 Farmer Suicides in India: Levels and Trends across Major States, Deepankar Basu Debarshi Das Kartik Misra This Version: January 2, 2016 Abstract In the paper, we use data on farmer suicides from the National Crime Records Bureau and population data from the Censuses of 1991, 2001 and 2011 to estimate the suicide mortality rate (SMR) of farmers and non-farmers for 19 major states of India and for the country as a whole. We use movements in the SMR ratio (ratio of farmer SMR and non-farmer SMR) to understand the level and trend of the problem of farmer suicides across states and over time. For the country as a whole, and for many individual states, the SMR ratio has increased over time. This suggests that the problem of farmer suicides has become more severe across large swathes of the country, and calls for immediate and well planned policy interventions. Keywords: farmer suicides, India, debt, agrarian crisis. JEL Codes: Q10, I30, J Introduction Between 1995 and 2014, more than 300,000 farmers cultivators and agricultural labourers have committed suicide in India. That is roughly equivalent to a staggering figure of one farmer suicide every 30 minutes. The phenomenon of suicide by farmers, on such a large scale, is especially worrisome for India because the majority of the workforce is still dependent on agriculture for its livelihood. According to data from the latest census in 2011, about 55% of Indian workers were employed in agriculture, either as cultivators or as agricultural labourers. This tragic and startling phenomenon has given rise to at least three strands of literature. First, it has been widely reported in the national and international media, perhaps characterized best by the insightful reportage of P. Sainath. 1 Second, the phenomenon has been investigated at the state and sub-state level, using fieldwork and official data, by several researchers (for instance, see, Deshpande (2002) for Karnataka, Gill and Singh (2006) for Punjab, Mishra (2006) for Maharashtra, Mohankumar and Sharma (2006) for Kerala, and Sridhar (2006) for Andhra Pradesh). Third, the phenomenon of farmer suicides has also been analyzed at the national, and cross-state, level by a Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA. Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, India. Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA. 1 For a collection of his reports on the issue of farmer suicides, see

4 few studies (Nagraj, 2008; Mishra, 2014; Sadanandan, 2014). This paper contributes to this third strand of the literature on farmer suicides in India in several ways. First, we argue that many commonly used measures of farmer suicides are not adequate in capturing the severity or extent of the problem. We make the case that the best way to quantify the problem of farmer suicides at the state level is to use the ratio of farmer and non-farmer suicide mortality rate (SMR). We call this our preferred measure the SMR ratio, and argue why looking at merely the total number of farmer suicides or the farmer SMR is inadequate. Of course, we are not the first to use the SMR ratio to quantify the problem of farmer suicides. Other researchers like Mishra (2014) have also used this measure. Hence, our contribution on this count is more to reiterate the usefulness of the SMR ratio, rather than to have used it for the first time. Second, we show that many existing studies have made an error in computing estimates of farmer and non-farmer SMR. We discuss the reasons behind this error and show that the error overestimated the farmer SMR in many existing studies. We present corrected estimates of farmer and non-farmer SMR across 19 major Indian states from 1995 to 2011 relating both to the level and trend of the SMR ratio. We find that while the level of the SMR ratio at the all-india level has been lower than 1 for every year since 1995, it has also displayed an increasing trend over this period. This suggests that the suicide rate among farmers is lower than for non-farmers, but also that it is rising and the difference has narrowed down over the years since Third, our framework of analyzing the ratio of farmer and non-farmer suicide mortality rate for 19 major states from 1995 allows us to identify states where the problem of farmer suicide remains, or has become, a serious issue. In terms of levels, Kerala has by far the highest SMR ratio the SMR ratio in Kerala has been consistently above 1.5 which suggests an extremely high SMR of farmers in comparison to non-farmers. No other state recorded such high SMR ratios but Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand recorded SMR ratios above 1 in some years since In terms of the trend, while Assam, Bihar, Haryana, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand have statistically significantly positive trends for the period since 1995, many other states like Haryana and Punjab display significantly rising trends since the early 2000s. This suggests that the problem of farmer suicides persists, and has in fact worsened, across large parts of the country. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we discuss three different measures of farmer suicides and argue that the SMR ratio is best for capturing the problem. In Section 3, we discuss the reason underlying incorrect estimates of farmer suicide rates by existing studies. In Section 4, we provide details of our data sources and definition. In Section 5, we present the main results of this paper: estimates of the level of and trends in the SMR ratio for India and 19 major states. The last section concludes the discussion. 2. Quantifying the Problem of Farmer Suicides A common way of quantifying the problem of farmer suicides is to study the evolution of the total number of suicides in the country and in individual states. However, the total number of farmer suicides is a blunt measure to capture the severity of suicide deaths. This is because the population

5 of farmers varies across states and changes over time. Hence the same number of total farmer suicides will have a very different meaning if the total population of farmers is different. For instance, it might be the case that two years have recorded the same number of farmer suicides even as the total number of farmers has declined over these years. This should mean that in a relative sense, suicides were higher in the second year, although in an absolute sense, the number of suicides did not change. Thus, a better measure than the total number of farmer suicides is what researchers call the suicide mortality rate (SMR), which is the total number of farmer suicides normalized by the population of farmers. The commonly used SMR is computed as the number of suicides per persons, and can be calculated for the whole population or any sub-group of the population, like farmers and non-farmers. While the farmer SMR is an advance over the total number of suicides, it is still not adequate. This is because high or rising farmer SMR in a state or during some year could be the reflection of high or rising SMR for the whole population. In such a case, high or rising farmer SMR would not be the result of causes specific to the population of farmers. Moreover, in such a scenario, it would be incorrect to say that the root of high or rising farmer SMR lies in, or reflects, problems in the agricultural sector. Hence, it would be wrong to infer from the fact of high or rising farmer SMR that the agrarian economy is in distress, as many researchers have done. One way to control for the possibility of a generally high SMR in the overall population and to isolate problems specific to farmers is to compare the SMR of farmers and non-farmers (total population less farmers). A simple way to operationalize this comparison is to use the ratio of the SMR of farmers and non-farmers the SMR ratio. If the SMR ratio is higher (lower) than 1 at any point in time, it would imply that the suicide rate among farmers is higher (lower) than nonfarmers at that point in time. On the other hand, if the SMR ratio were rising (falling) over time, then it would indicate that the problem of farmer suicides is getting worse (better) over time. Our preferred measure to quantify the problem of farmer suicide in India is the SMR ratio, and we will use it for all the analysis in this paper. But before we present our estimates of the SMR ratio, we would like to discuss the reasons that have led to erroneous computation in many previous research studies like Nagraj (2008) and Mishra (2014). 3. NCRB s Definition of Farmers The primary source of data for analyzing the phenomenon of farmer suicides in India is the Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India (ADSI), an annual publication of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) of the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. The NCRB has been publishing the ADSI, which contains data on suicides in the country, disaggregated by states and major cities, since Copies of the ADSI have been digitized and made available on the NCRB s website. 2 Apart from providing data on the number of suicides, the ADSI also gives information on the causes of suicides. From 1995, the ADSI added another dimension of information and started publishing suicide data disaggregated by professions. 2 See

6 Between 1995 and 2013, the ADSI roughly used similar categories of professions. For instance, in 1995, the categories of professions listed in the ADSI are the following: housewife, self-employed, service, student, unemployed, retired persons and others. The category of self-employed was further broken down into the following sub-categories: business activity, professional activity, farming/agriculture and others. Similarly, the category of service was broken down into the subcategories of private, and public sector undertaking. In 2013, the categories of professions used by the ADSI were the following: housewife, service, public sector undertaking, student, unemployed, self-employed, retired persons, and others. The category of service was broken down further into the following sub-categories: government, and private. On the other hand, the category of selfemployed was broken down into the following sub-categories: business activity, professional activity, farming/agriculture, others. While there are some small changes between 1995 and 2013, what is important for us is that the category of self-employed (farming/agriculture) has remained constant throughout this period between 1995 and Evidently, this category will provides us information on suicides committed by farmers. But before one proceeds further, one needs to ask: who are counted in the category of self-employed (farming/agriculture)? Does it refer only to what the Census defines as cultivators? Or, does it refer to cultivators and agricultural labourers? The NCRB report does not provide an answer in the ADSI. Most researchers assumed, quite reasonably in our opinion, that the ADSI category of selfemployed (farming/agriculture) referred only to cultivators. This is because in the case of agricultural production, it is natural to identify the self-employed with the Census category of cultivators. These are the people who earn their living from farming, but with the important qualifier that they own the land, or have leased in the land. Thus, agricultural labourers would not fall in the category of the self-employed because they hire out their labour power to others (those who own or lease in land). With this assumption, the SMR of farmers would be computed as the ratio of farmer suicides (reported by the ADSI) and the population of cultivators (reported by the decennial Census). Using this methodology, Nagraj (2008) found that the SMR of farmers was higher than the SMR for the general population, and especially so for male farmers (Table 3, Nagraj, 2008). Mishra (2014) reported the same pattern male farmer SMR higher than male non-farmer SMR for the country as a whole for most of the period between 1995 and 2012 (Table 3, Mishra, 2014). The publication of the ADSI in 2014 indicated that this assumption was incorrect. It now appears that the ADSI category of self-employed (farming/agriculture) referred to cultivators and agricultural labourers, and not to cultivators alone. How do we know this? The categorization of professions in the 2014 ADSI is a little different from the format used in previous years. What is important for us is that, unlike previous years, ADSI 2014 has subdivided the category of self-employed in agriculture into agricultural labourers, and farmers. The subcategory of farmers has been further sub-divided into those owning land, and those leasing in land. So, there does exist a category called self-employed persons (farmers) in the 2014 ADSI. But if one compares the figures reported under this category in 2014 with the figures reported under the category of self-employed (farming/agriculture) in previous years reports, one notices a big discrepancy.

7 For instance, the total number of suicides for the category of self-employed persons (farmers) in India in 2014 was The total number of suicides for the category of self-employed (farming/agriculture) in India in 2013 was This would suggest that farmer suicides more than halved between 2013 and Since this is clearly implausible, one has to compare data under the category of self-employed (farming/agriculture) of 2013 (and earlier years) with the category of self-employed persons [agriculture (total)] of Once that is done, the total number of farmer suicides is found to have risen from in 2013 to in 2014, an increase of about 5%. The important point is that while computing the SMR of farmers for years before 2014, one needs to divide the number of farmer suicides by the population of cultivators and agricultural labourers, not the population of cultivators alone, as previous researchers have done (Nagraj, 2008; Mishra, 2014). Normalizing the number of farmer suicides reported by the NCRB in the ADSI by the population of cultivators (from the Census) overestimates the suicide rate of farmers because the reference population in the denominator leaves out agricultural labourers (which is, however, included in the numerator). By an analogous argument, this procedure will underestimate the suicide rate of non-farmers. That is why the analysis of levels and trends of the farmer and nonfarmer suicide rates are incorrect in Nagraj (2008), Mishra (2014) and many other researchers and commentators. The correct way of computing farmer suicide rates that we have used in this paper also explains the disagreement about the quantitative dimension of the problem of farmer suicides in the extant literature. On the one hand, researchers using time series data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) and the Census of India have suggested that the suicide mortality rate of farmers is higher than non-farmers (Nagraj, 2008; Mishra, 2014). On the other hand, demographers using cross sectional data from a nationally representative sample survey of suicides in India between 2001 and 2003 have suggested the opposite, viz., suicide rates of farmers is less than non-farmers (Patel et al., 2012). As we have argued above, the error in the methodology used by Nagraj (2008) and Mishra (2014) have led them to overestimate (underestimate) the suicide rate of (non-farmers) farmers. This explains why they have arrived at conclusions that are opposite of those arrived at by Patel et al. (2012). 4. Data: Sources, Definitions and Time Period Our preferred quantitative measure for capturing the severity of farmer suicides is the ratio of the farmer suicide mortality rate (SMR) and the non-farmer suicide mortality rate. By farmer we mean a person who is either a cultivator (someone who works on owned or hired land) or an agricultural labourer (someone who works on others land). 3 The SMR for farmers is defined as the number of farmer suicides per 1 lakh farmer population. The SMR for non-farmers is defined in an analogous manner as the number of non-farmer suicides per 1 lakh non-farmer population, where 3 We would have liked to compute SMR for cultivators and agricultural labourers separately. But this is not possible because the ADSI did not provide suicide data separately for the two categories of farmers before Instead, its category of self-employed (farming agriculture) included both. That is why our preferred category includes both categories of farmers.

8 the difference of total suicides and farmer suicides gives us the number of non-farmer suicides. We calculate SMRs for male and female farmers, and male and female non-farmers at the all-india level and for 19 major states. The data on the number of farmer suicides and total suicides have been extracted from relevant issues of Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India, an annual publication of the National Crime Records Bureau of the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. The data on the population of cultivators and agricultural labourers have been taken from reports of the Censuses for 1991, 2001 and The number of farmers is the sum of the number of cultivators and agricultural labourers. Since population data is only available at intervals of 10 years, we have used linear interpolation to arrive at the population of farmers for intervening years is the last year for which we had population data, so that moving beyond 2011 would require us to extrapolate the data. Since extrapolation is much less reliable than interpolation, we stop our calculations in The ADSI started publishing suicide data disaggregated by professions from This determines the starting year of our sample. Data on total population and the population of farmers (cultivators and agricultural labourers) is available till This determines the end point of our sample. Thus, the analysis of farmer suicides in this paper refers to the period from 1995 to Before we present our results, a few caveats about the data sources are in order. Many activists, journalists, and demographers have pointed out that the NCRB data seriously underestimates the number of suicides because these data are collected on the basis of police reports. Given the stigma attached to suicides and the possible legal problems that surviving family members might face, many suicides are liable to go unreported. These data problems seem to be operative even in the case of farmer suicides. For instance, the sharp fluctuations in the number of farmer suicides in Chhattisgarh seem problematic. In 2010, Chhattisgarh reported 1126 farmer suicides; in 2010 it had fallen to 0! In 2013, it reported 0 farmer suicides; in 2014, the number had jumped back up to 755. These numbers certainly point towards problems of data collection. To take another example, West Bengal did not report any numbers for 2012 and then reported 0 farmer suicides in These are perplexing given that the state had been witnessing close to 1000 farmer suicides in the years before The point in highlighting these data problems is not to suggest that we jettison NCRB data completely. That cannot be done because, with all its limitations, the NCRB data remains the only national level data source on suicides in India that cover a long time span. The point in highlighting the problems is to keep the caveats in mind while interpreting the results. It might very well be the case that the problem of farmer suicides is much worse than what is captured by the official NCRB data.

9 5. Main Results 5.1. All-India Picture: Level and Trend Figure 1 plots the total number of farmer suicides in the country from 1995 to We can see that there was a break in the trend in Between 1995 and 2004, the total number of farmer suicides displayed a rising trend, increasing from in 1995 to in From 2004 onwards, the total number of farmer suicides in the country has trended downwards, falling to in 2013 and then climbing back to in It is worth noting that the total number of farmer suicides in 2014 is still a lot higher than the number recorded in Figure 1: Farmer suicides in India, Source: suicide data is from Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India (ADSI) and population data is interpolated from the Census for 1991, 2001 and As we have argued above, the total number of farmer suicides is not a good quantitative measure to track the problem of farmer suicides over time or across space. This is because the population of farmers might be different. Hence a better measure is the SMR of farmers. Figure 2 plots the SMR of farmers, disaggregated by sex and for all farmers, for the country as a whole from 1995 to The SMR for all farmers displays a pronounced upward trend over this period. It increased from 4.95 suicides per 1 lakh farmers in 1995 to 8.76 suicides per 1 lakh farmers in 2009, before declining a little over the next two years. There are striking differences between the SMR for male and female farmers. First, the SMR of male farmers is always significantly higher than for female farmers, with the former becoming 3 times larger than the latter in the period For instance, in 2008, the SMR of female and male

10 farmers was 3.06 and respectively. Second, the SMR for female farmers declined between 1995 and 2005, and has been increasing since then. On the other hand, the SMR for male farmers has been increasing over the period , only declining a little since Thus, both in terms of level and trend, suicides by male farmers have been decisive in determining the pattern for the country as a whole. The increasing trend in the SMR of farmers, especially male farmers, certainly indicates towards the worsening situation of those engaged in agriculture. But before we can be sure of that conclusion, we need to compare the SMR of farmers with the SMR for non-farmers. For, it might very well be the case that the pattern of increasing SMR is shared by the whole population, not only by farmers. To see if this is indeed the case, Figure 3 plots the SMR of non-famers from 1995 to In Figure 3, we see that the SMR for all non-farmers increased sharply from 1995 to 1999, declined from 1999 to 2005, and has slowly increased since then. The SMR for male and female non-farmers display similar trends, other than a sharper increase since 2005 for males and a flattening out after 2005 for females. Thus, non-farmers do not display the almost continuously rising SMR that we saw for farmers. Figure 2: Farmer suicide mortality rate (SMR) in India, The farmer SMR is the number of farmer suicides per 1 lakh farmers. Source: suicide data is from Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India (ADSI) and population data is interpolated from the Census for 1991, 2001 and To better understand the difference in SMR for farmers and non-farmers, Figure 4 plots the SMR ratio (the ratio of the SMR for farmers and non-farmers) in India between 1995 and The first striking fact highlighted by Figure 4 is that the SMR for all persons, as well as for men and women, has always been lower than 1. This finding contrasts with previous studies that have often found

11 the SMR ratio to be higher than 1 for the country (Nagraj, 2008; Mishra, 2014). As we have pointed out above, this difference stems from the incorrect method that has been used by earlier researchers, who have overestimated farmer SMR and underestimated non-farmer SMR. The second important fact highlighted in Figure 4 is that the SMR ratio has a pronounced rising trend for all persons and for men from 1995 to On the other hand, the SMR ratio for women declined between 1995 and 2001, and subsequently displayed a rising trend till This suggests that the problem of farmer suicides has become more severe over time. Figure 3: Non-farmer suicide mortality rate (SMR) in India, The non-farmer SMR is the number of non-farmer suicides per 1 lakh non-farmers. Source: suicide data is from Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India (ADSI) and population data is interpolated from the Census for 1991, 2001 and Pattern across States: Level of SMR Ratio In this section, we present data on 19 major states in India that have together accounted for more than 97 percent of all farmer suicides in India every year since Table 1 and 2 present data on the number of farmers suicides, farmer SMR, nor-farmer SMR and the SMR ratio for these 19 states and the country as a whole for two sub-periods, (Table 1) and (Table 2). In both tables, states have been arranged in a decreasing order of the average SMR ratio over the relevant period. We choose the year 2004 to divide the whole period of analysis into two subperiods because that year saw a break in the trend of total farmer suicides reported in the country: as can be seen from Figure 1, the total number of farmer suicides increased from 1995 to 2004 and started declining thereafter. For the data in Table 1, we see that in the period , the following states had SMR ratios above the all-india level of 0.56: Kerala (2.2), Punjab (0.8), Maharashtra (0.75), Karnataka (0.74),

12 Chhattisgarh (0.69), and Madhya Pradesh (0.63). Kerala shows the most severe incidence of the problem of farmer suicides during this period, with an average SMR ratio of 2.2 (for all persons). Punjab, Maharashtra and Karnataka are the next three states in terms of the severity of the problem, followed by Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. Over this period, the states with the lowest degree of the problem of farmer suicides were: Assam, Orissa, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh and Jharkhand. 4 Figure 4: Ratio of farmer SMR (suicides per 1 lakh farmers) and non-farmer SMR (non-farmer suicides per 1 lakh non-farmers) in India, Source: suicide data is from Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India (ADSI) and population data is interpolated from the Census for 1991, 2001 and In Table 2, we have the corresponding data for the period The first thing to note is that the average SMR ratio for India is significantly higher during this period, at 0.69, than the previous period, when it was Over this period, the following 8 states have SMR ratios above the all- India level: Kerala (2.43), Maharashtra (1.15), Uttar Pradesh (0.96), Chhattisgarh (0.92), Punjab (0.8), Karnataka (0.8), Jharkhand (0.76), and Uttarakhand (0.72). While Madhya Pradesh has an SMR ratio that is just a little lower than the all-india level, three states have newly joined the list of above-average SMR ratio states: Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand. Uttar Pradesh was just at the cut-off in the previous period, but Jharkhand and Uttarakhand were much further down in the ranking list of countries. Thus, the problem of farmer suicides has significantly worsened in these two newly formed states. The states at the very bottom of the list in this period are the following states: Gujarat, West Bengal, Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Orissa. 4 For Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Uttarakhand, the sample period starts in 2001.

13 Table 1: Average Suicide Rates of Farmers and Non-Farmers over Number of Farmer Suicides Famer SMR Non-Farmer SMR Farmer SMR/Nonfarmer SMR Female Male All Female Male All Female Male All Kerala Punjab Maharashtra Karnataka Chhattisgarh Madhya Pradesh Uttar Pradesh Rajasthan Gujarat West Bengal Andhra Pradesh Haryana Tamil Nadu Uttarakhand Assam Orissa Bihar Himachal Pradesh Jharkhand India Notes. This table reports average suicides and SMR (suicide mortality rate per 1 lakh population) for 19 major states and the country as a whole. These 19 states accounted for more than 97 per cent of farmer suicides in India for all years. States have been ranked by the SMR ratio for all persons. For Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand, the period of analysis starts in Source: authors calculation from various ADSI and Census.

14 Table 2: Average Suicide Rates of Farmers and Non-Farmers over Number of Farmer Suicides Famer SMR Non-Farmer SMR Farmer SMR/Nonfarmer SMR Female Male All Female Male All Female Male All Kerala Maharashtra Uttar Pradesh Chhattisgarh Punjab Karnataka Jharkhand Uttarakhand Madhya Pradesh Assam Haryana Andhra Pradesh Himachal Pradesh Rajasthan Gujarat West Bengal Bihar Tamil Nadu Orissa India Notes. This table reports average suicides and SMR (suicide mortality rate per 1 lakh population) for 19 major states and the country as a whole. These 19 states accounted for more than 97 per cent of farmer suicides in India for all years. States have been ranked by the SMR ratio for all persons. Source: authors calculation from various ADSI and Census.

15 Figure 5: Ratio of farmer SMR (suicides per 1 lakh farmers) and non-farmer SMR (non-farmer suicides per 1 lakh non-farmers) for Kerala, Source: suicide data is from Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India (ADSI) and population data is interpolated from the Census for 1991, 2001 and Some interesting facts from Table 1 and 2 are worth highlighting. First, the following 5 states have consistently been at the top of the list of states in terms of the severity of the problem of farmer suicides: Kerala, Maharashtra, Punjab, Karnataka and Chhattisgarh. Second, two of the poorest states, Bihar and Orissa, have always been towards the very bottom of the list in both Table 1 and 2. Thus, in terms of the level of the SMR ratio, there does not seem to be a simple relationship between poverty and farmer suicides. In Figure 5 through 8, we present the time series plot of the SMR ratio for the 19 states, which provides information both about the level of the SMR ratio (which we discuss in this sub-section) and about its trend over time (which we discuss in the next sub-section). The 6 states that appear in Figure 8 Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Orissa, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal have always recorded an SMR ratio that was below 1. All the other states in our sample have either crossed or come close to the level of 1 for its SMR ratio. Kerala (Figure 5) is a clear outlier because its SMR ratio has been consistently above 1.5, an extremely high level that has, moreover, not been recorded for any other state. The states that appear in Figure 6 Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab have all recorded SMR ratios above 1, especially for years after the mid-2000s. Punjab, which had witnessed a dip in the early 2000s, has seen a steady increase since the mid-2000s. Hence these are the states where the problem of farmer suicides has assumed serious proportions in the recent past. The states in Figure 7 Assam, Bihar, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand have generally had their SMR ratio

16 below 1. But towards the end of our sample period, i.e., close to 2011, Assam, Haryana and Uttarakhand have recorded SMR ratios close to Pattern across States: Trend in SMR Ratio Now we turn to analyzing the average annual exponential growth rate of the SMR ratio. In Table 3, we report estimates for the average annual growth rate of the SMR ratio for the whole period, i.e., , for all states other than Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand. For the latter 3 states, the period of analysis is because they were formed only in the early 2000s. To compute the average annual exponential growth rate of the SMR ratio, we have run regressions of the logarithm of the SMR ratio on year and a constant for each state separately. The estimate of the coefficient on year is the average annual exponential growth rate of the SMR ratio over the relevant period for each state. Figure 6: Ratio of farmer SMR (suicides per 1 lakh farmers) and non-farmer SMR (non-farmer suicides per 1 lakh non-farmers) for selected states, Source: suicide data is from Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India (ADSI) and population data is interpolated from the Census for 1991, 2001 and The estimates in Table 3 show that the SMR ratio for India grew at an annual average rate of 2.3% per year over the period The following states witnessed a significantly positive annual average growth rate in the SMR ratio over the whole period of analysis: Assam (10.5%), Bihar (5.4%), Haryana (5.2%), Jharkhand (16.8%), Maharashtra (6.3%), Uttar Pradesh (5.6%), and

17 Uttarakhand (10.3%). In Table 3, what is also important and worth noting is that for no state is the estimate of growth rate of the SMR ratio negative and statistically significant. Tamil Nadu and West Bengal are the only two states that have negative growth rates of the SMR ratio that are close to being significant. This means for the vast majority of states, the problem of farmer suicides have either worsened or remained constant. In fact, when we complement the estimates in Table 3 with the time series plots in Figures 5 through 8, we see that two additional states have displayed increasing trends in the SMR ratio since the mid-2000s: Punjab and Karnataka. Both these states are important because they have consistently appeared in the list of states where the problem of farmer suicides is most severe. Punjab had one of the highest SMR ratios in the mid and late 1990s. While this fell rapidly for the next few years, that trend was sharply reversed in Punjab has been witness to a steady increase in the SMR ratio since then. On the other hand, Karnataka had seen a relatively high level of the SMR ratio till the mid-2000s, but there was no significant trend in the SMR ratio. Since the mid-2000s, that has been reversed and Karnataka has displayed an increasing trend in the SMR ratio since then. 6. Conclusion In this paper, we have presented estimates of the suicide mortality rate of farmers and non-farmers in India and for 19 major states (which account for more than 97 per cent of farmer suicides) for the period We have used data from two sources: (1) suicide data on farmers and nonfarmers from the ADSI, an annual publication of the NCRB, and (2) population data from the 1991, 2001 and 2011 Census to estimate farmer and non-farmer suicide rates from 1995 to One of the main contributions of this paper is to present correct estimates of farmer and nonfarmer suicide rates for India and its states. We have pointed out that previous studies, like Nagraj (2008) and Mishra (2014), have incorrectly estimated the farmer suicide rate because they have normalized the number of farmer suicides by the population of cultivators. This is an overestimate of the farmer suicide rate because the category of farmer in the ADSI refers to both cultivators and agricultural labourers. This became clear with the publication of the ADSI in 2014, as we have explained above. Our estimates of farmer suicide rates highlight several important facts. For the country as a whole, the SMR ratio, i.e., the ratio of farmer SMR and non-farmer SMR, has always been lower than 1. This means that the suicide rate of farmers has been lower than the suicide rate of non-farmers for all years since In addition to this fact about levels, we also see an important fact about trends: the SMR ratio for India has displayed a statistically significant positive average annual growth rate over the years. This means that the difference in the suicide rate of farmers and non-farmers has closed down over the years. If the suicide rates of farmers and non-farmers reflect their respective material conditions, then the increasing trend in the SMR ratio points towards a relative worsening of the situation of farmers in comparison to non-farmers.

18 Figure 7: Ratio of farmer SMR (suicides per 1 lakh farmers) and non-farmer SMR (non-farmer suicides per 1 lakh non-farmers) for selected states, Source: suicide data is from Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India (ADSI) and population data is interpolated from the Census for 1991, 2001 and Figure 8: Ratio of farmer SMR (suicides per 1 lakh farmers) and non-farmer SMR (non-farmer suicides per 1 lakh non-farmers) for selected states, Source: suicide data is from Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India (ADSI) and population data is interpolated from the Census for 1991, 2001 and 2011.

19 Table 3: Average Annual Exponential Growth Rate in the SMR Ratio, Andhra Pradesh Madhya Pradesh (1.29) (0.02) Assam 0.105*** Maharashtra *** (5.82) (5.09) Bihar ** Orissa (3.40) (-1.04) Chhattisgarh Punjab (2.07) (-0.56) Gujarat Rajasthan (-0.90) (-1.27) Haryana * Tamil Nadu (2.85) (-1.76) Himachal Pradesh Uttar Pradesh *** (1.80) (5.59) Jharkhand 0.168** Uttarakhand 0.103** (4.51) (3.65) Karnataka West Bengal (1.14) (-1.81) Kerala India *** (1.85) (6.58) Notes. This table reports the estimate of the coefficient on year for a regression of log (SMR Ratio) on year and a constant. SMR Ratio is the ratio of famer SMR and non-farmer SMR.Tstatistics appear in parenthesis below the parameter estimate. Significance levels: * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p< For Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand, the sample starts in We also see lot of variation in the level and trend of the SMR ratio across states. Kerala is a clear outlier in terms of the severity of the problem: the SMR ratio has always been above 1.5 for Kerala. No other state has recorded such a high SMR ratio. This calls for immediate and special policy intervention in Kerala to address the problem of farmer suicides. Other states that have consistently recorded high SMR ratio are Maharashtra, Punjab, Karnataka, and Uttar Pradesh. All the three newly formed states of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand have recorded high SMR ratios. When we turn to a study of trends, we see several states registering a statistically significant positive average annual growth rate of the SMR ratio since Assam, Bihar, Haryana, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand have recorded positive growth rate of the SMR ratio. What is also alarming is that no state has recorded a significantly negative growth rate in the SMR ratio. Thus, the data suggests that the problem of farmer suicides is only getting worse over time.

20 While we have computed and presented correct estimates of SMR ratios for 19 major Indian states since 1995 in this paper, we have not attempted any causal analysis. This is a research topic that we hope to pursue in the near future. 5 Policy interventions will need to be based on a proper understanding of the mechanisms that drive the worsening trend of farmer suicides in large parts of the country. Some reasons that have been pointed out by researchers are the following: indebtedness, agrarian stagnation, lack of public health infrastructure, lack of insurance. In future research, we hope to use the data set that we have put together for this paper to investigate some of these important mechanisms underlying the phenomenon of farmer suicides. References Bhullar, A. S., Sidhu, R.S., and Singh, S. (2011): Farmers Suicide in Punjab: A Census Survey of the Two Most Affected Districts. Economic and Political Weekly, 47(26-27): Deshpande, R.S. (2002): Suicide by Farmers in Karnataka: Agrarian Distress and Possible Alleviatory Steps. Economic and Political Weekly, 37(26): Gill, A., and Singh, L. (2006): Farmers Suicide and Response of Public Policy: Evidence, Diagnosis and Alternatives from Punjab. Economic and Political Weekly, 41(26): Gruère, G., and Sengupta, D. (2011): Bt cotton and farmer suicides in India: an evidence-based assessment. The Journal of Development Studies, 47: Mishra, S. (2006): Farmers Suicide in Maharashtra. Economic and Political Weekly, 41(16): Mishra, S. (2014): Farmers suicides in India, : Measurement and interpretation. Asia Research Center Working Paper 62, London School of Economics. Mitra, S., and Shroff, S. (2007): Farmers Suicides in Maharashtra. Economic and Political Weekly, 42(49): Mohankumar, S., and Sharma, R. K. (2006): Analysis of Farmer Suicides in Kerala. Economic and Political Weekly, 41(16): Mohanty, B.B., and Shroff, S. (2004): Farmers Suicide in Maharashtra. Economic and Political Weekly, 39(52): Sadanandan (2014) is among the very few papers that have tried to investigate the causal mechanisms underlying farmer suicides with aggregate level data. But serious methodological problems reduce our confidence in the results reported in that paper. First, in the two stage least squares estimation, all the exogenous variables, including the instruments, are regressed on the endogenous variable in the first stage regression. Sadanandan (2014) does not seem to have done that. Second, he has not reported results of overidentification tests. Third, the F-statistic for many specifications, the F-stats for the first stage are low. So, the results might suffer from weak identification.

21 Nagraj, K. (2008): Farmers suicides in India: Magnitudes, trends and spatial patterns. Available here: Patel, V., Ramasundarahettige, C., Vijaykumar, L., Thakur, J. S., Gajalakshmi, V., Gururaj, G., Suraweera, W., and Jha, P. (2012): Suicide mortality in India: A nationally representative survey, Lancet, 379: Reddy, D. N., and Mishra, S. (eds). (2009): Agrarian Crisis in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Sadanandan, A. (2014): Political economy of suicide: Financial reforms, credit crunches, and farmer suicides in India. The Journal of Developing Areas, 48(4): Sridhar, V. (2006): Why Do Farmers Commit Suicide? The Case of Andhra Pradesh. Economic and Political Weekly, 41(16): Vaidyanathan, A. (2006): Farmers Suicide and the Agrarian Crisis. Economic and Political Weekly, 41(38):