New Delhi: Karnataka agriculture minister B.C. Patil on Thursday said farmers who die by suicide are cowards, drawing flak from the opposition.
“The farmers who commit suicide are cowards. Only a coward who can’t take care of his wife and children commits suicide. When we have fallen (in the water), we have to swim and win,” Patil said, addressing farmers at Ponnampet in Kodagu district of Karnataka.
Congress and Janata Dal (Secular) leaders slammed him for his comments.
The minister told bamboo growers of Ponnampet how profitable the agriculture business is, but some “cowards” do not realise that and die by suicide.
To buttress his point, Patil claimed to have had a conversation with a woman who was wearing gold bangles.
“When I enquired with her how her hands were full of gold bangles, You know what she said? She said, “This mother earth has given me for my 35 years of toil.”
Coming down heavily on Patil, former chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy termed his statement an insult to the agrarian community.
In a series of tweets, he said self-respecting farmers are forced to end their lives when they are pushed to an extreme situation. “Farmers are born with self-esteem and respect. When they don’t find any alternative when the money lenders reach their doorsteps to pester them, they take the extreme step. The farmer is not a coward, as the Agriculture Minister has said,” Kumaraswamy said.
Also read: The Farm Widow: A Suicide and a Life Left Behind
Congress Karnataka unit spokesperson V.S. Ugrappa too condemned the minister’s statement, saying he has shown disrespect to the farming community. “He should apologise for it,” Ugrappa told PTI.
He said the minister should have conducted research to find why some farmers die by suicide. “No farmer wishes to end their life. There are many reasons such as floods and droughts, which have not been understood and solved yet. Instead of understanding the gravity of the problem, the minister gives such an irresponsible statement,” Ugrappa said.
As the controversy grew, Patil issued a statement to clear the air – but simply reiterated his earlier claim. “I never called farmers cowards. I only said those who commit suicide are cowards,” Patil said.
According to data from the National Crime Records Bureau, Karnataka witnessed a high number of farmer suicides in 2019, second only to Maharashtra. A total of 1,992 farmers died by suicide in Karnataka in 2019, down from 2,405 in 2018.
Farmers’ leaders have argued in the past that unless governments across the country take agrarian distress seriously and act to curb it, farmers’ crisis and suicides will continue.
Unlike what Patil would like us to believe, the causes of farmer suicide have been documented. Though the NCRB did away with the column detailing causes in 2016 (the report was released in 2019), previous years’ data can shed a light on the issue.
In 2015, the NCRB report says, “‘Bankruptcy or Indebtedness’ and ‘Farming Related Issues’ are reported as major causes of suicides among farmers/cultivators, accounting for 38.7% (3,097 out of 8,007 suicides) and 19.5% (1,562 out of 8,007 suicides) of total such suicides respectively during 2015. The other prominent causes of farmer/cultivators suicides were ‘Family Problems’ (933 suicides), ‘Illness’ (842 suicides) and ‘Drug Abuse/Alcoholic Addiction’ (330 suicides), accounting for 11.7%, 10.5% and 4.1% of total farmers/cultivators` suicides respectively.”
(With PTI inputs)