Chhattisgarh has highest rate of Farmers' Suicide: But the figures are fudged!

Chhattisgarh has highest rate of Farmers' Suicide: But the figures are fudged!

Shubhranshu Choudhary


I would like to begin today with a story- about Sharma ji and Verma ji. Of course it is all in my imagination- but what happened to them was indeed terrible.

One day Sharma ji's son committed suicide. Much hue and cry was made over why a young boy would commit suicide. The media considered the issue at length. The Prime Minister personally visited Sharma ji with compensation. The reason behind the suicide, according to the inquiry
commission, was that the boy studied in a co-ed school. Co-ed school is one where girls and boys study together. The report elaborated thus- The girls had ridiculed the boy for some reason, and his sensitive nature could not bear the trauma.

The issue was hotly debated in the Parliament- how to save our youth from recurring suicides- but clearly the option of immediate closing down of co-ed schools could not be considered.

Some years passed by.

One day Sharma ji's friend Verma ji's son also committed suicide.

It was a sad occasion. People had gathered to console Verma ji, who was desolate. But he said he had read all the reports of Sharma ji's son's suicide. His own son was not studying in co-ed school. So Verma ji felt that the doctor was fudging facts by suggesting that his son had committed suicide.

The body was there, right in front of him, but Verma ji would not report suicide. And thus the Prime Minister did not visit Verma ji for compensation.

Sharma ji lives in Vidarbha and Verma ji in Chhattisgarh.

I don't know if this point is going across to the reader or not- but the conditions in Chhattisgarh today are very similar to Verma Ji's.

Two weeks earlier, on 8th of february, I had written in this column that according to the figures available with the National Crime Record Bureau of the Central Home Ministry, approximately 1400 landholding farmers commit suicide in Chhattisgarh every year- ie 4 farmers per day.

This does not include the numbers of those Farmers who commit suicide but are not landholders.

The reaction in Chhattisgarh was similar to the one of Verma ji.

It was said that the farmers of Vidarbha and Andhra cultivate cash crops for which they take loans. But as the farmer in Chhattisgarh cultivates paddy, for which the labour requirement is high, however high loans are not required, so the figures of farmers' suicides are fudged.

Minister of Agriculture, Sharad Pawar has accepted in the House that the figures of farmers' suicide provided by the National Crime Record Bureau are accurate. (30th November, starred question number 238, the Agriculture Minister responds to Ram Jethmalani.)

The Bureau figures do not claim that the farmers are committing suicide due to reasons related to farming. And I am not claiming that here either.

I am only requesting for a study of these figures, to probe and understand what is happening.

Rhetoric of the kind- "Are we blind, that 4 farmers committed suicide everyday and we did not know", does not serve any purpose. For seven years these figures have been available with the National Crime Record Bureau. Not a peep from any Chhattisgarhiya in the direction!

I then began an exploration for any earlier study of Farmers' Suicides in Chhattisgarh.

I know of Verier Elwin's book Maria, Murder and Suicide, in which he studied the issue of Suicide amongst the Tribes of Bastar, and found that suicide is more prevalent in Maria tribe as compared to the Muria Tribe.

Subsequently I also found out about Professor Jonathan Perry of London School of Economics. He conducted a study in 2003, about suicides in the Bhilai Region. I contacted him and he told me, "Some years back I was in Bhilai for a research project and I found that in the settlements of Bhilai where I was carrying out my survey, the incidence of suicide was above average. In fact the figures were so significantly high that I started collecting figures from the hospitals and Police Stations , although this was not the subject of my study".

Professor Perry added, "This was about the same time as news of Andhra Pradesh Farmer suicides had started streaming in. I always felt that the conclusion that loans were at the root of the Farmers' Suicides was coming from a very superficial type of study. After my Bhilaiexperience I am not surprised by the figures you quote to me about Chhattisgarh Farmers."

In the meantime, my friend Yuvraj Gajpal who is pursuing his PhD in Canada, took a deeper look at the figures of National Crime Record Bureau. He calculated the rate of Farmers' suicides in the various states, and points out the following:

That in Chhattisgarh, 6.29 farmers commit suicide per lakh of population. Maharashtra follows at 4.59, Andhra Pradesh is next with 3.42, and Karnataka stands at 3.25.

He questions why so much attention is given to suicides in Maharashtra by journalists whereas he has not read anything about suicides in Chhattisgarh!

Yuvraj continues, "In Chhattisgarh, the percentage of landowning farmers is 17% of the total population. However the figure for farmers committing suicide as a percentage of total suicides is 33%, i.e, compared to other professions, twice as many farmers in Chhattisgarh take their own lives. What is the reason?"

I thought it might be a good idea to share these figures with Professor K Nagaraj of Madras Institute of Development Studies as he has been studying the subject for many years now. Professor Nagaraj said that he has recently received the figures for the year 2003 onwards, and his analysis will be ready in a few weeks. On the face of it, he sees no mismatch in the figures.

I asked Prof Nagraj, that people in Chhattisgarh say that this is a paddy cultivation area, and not a cash crop cultivation area. So how can Farmers be committing suicide?

He laughed and said, "Please go to Thanjavur district of Tamil Nadu, which is a paddy cultivation area. Many Farmers are committing suicide there. As opposed to this, the rest of Tamil Nadu has substantial cash crop production. But the rate of farmers' suicide is much lower here.

The reason is that the road network is excellent and upon crop failure, the farmer is able to find other livelihood. The only conclusion which can be drawn from this is that every problem is unique in itself."

I asked him, "Bihar and Uttar Pradesh are also paddy cultivation areas, but not many farmers commit suicide in those states as compared to Chhattisgarh"?

Prof Nagraj told me, "Chhattisgarh needs to be studied. But it is obvious that it is not comparable to the areas along the Ganga and Yamuna. Secondly a farmer does not commit suicide only because of agriculture loans- though loans may be a predominant reason. If you examine India after 1991, State help for the common man has reduced steadily, whether it is irrigation, or education. Suicides are caused by a mix of these problems."

In the end I called P Sainath of the "Hindu" newspaper who has been writing on this subject for many years. I told him that journalists in Chhattisgarh are saying these figures are fudged. Sainath said, "Its like the election results - if they do not match our expectation we say the elections are rigged. Please quote me in your article that if anyone has conducted a study and found that only one farmer is committing suicide in Chhattisgarh every year, then this State is a heaven on earth. I will advise farmers in Europe and America to shift to Chhattisgarh, because even there more farmers commit suicide than this "study" is showing".

It seems, the journalists in Chhattisgarh are behaving like Verma ji- who could not believe that his son had committed suicide because he was not studying in a co-ed school.

But will the leaders of Chhattisgarh please look into the matter? The assembly session is on, will someone please raise this issue?


Shubhranshu Choudhary
Email: shu@cgnet.in

Chhattisgarh has highest rate of Farmers' Suicide: But the figures are fudged!

Chhattisgarh has highest rate of Farmers' Suicide: But the figures are fudged!

Shubhranshu Choudhary


I would like to begin today with a story- about Sharma ji and Verma ji. Of course it is all in my imagination- but what happened to them was indeed terrible.

One day Sharma ji's son committed suicide. Much hue and cry was made over why a young boy would commit suicide. The media considered the issue at length. The Prime Minister personally visited Sharma ji with compensation. The reason behind the suicide, according to the inquiry
commission, was that the boy studied in a co-ed school. Co-ed school is one where girls and boys study together. The report elaborated thus- The girls had ridiculed the boy for some reason, and his sensitive nature could not bear the trauma.

The issue was hotly debated in the Parliament- how to save our youth from recurring suicides- but clearly the option of immediate closing down of co-ed schools could not be considered.

Some years passed by.

One day Sharma ji's friend Verma ji's son also committed suicide.

It was a sad occasion. People had gathered to console Verma ji, who was desolate. But he said he had read all the reports of Sharma ji's son's suicide. His own son was not studying in co-ed school. So Verma ji felt that the doctor was fudging facts by suggesting that his son had committed suicide.

The body was there, right in front of him, but Verma ji would not report suicide. And thus the Prime Minister did not visit Verma ji for compensation.

Sharma ji lives in Vidarbha and Verma ji in Chhattisgarh.

I don't know if this point is going across to the reader or not- but the conditions in Chhattisgarh today are very similar to Verma Ji's.

Two weeks earlier, on 8th of february, I had written in this column that according to the figures available with the National Crime Record Bureau of the Central Home Ministry, approximately 1400 landholding farmers commit suicide in Chhattisgarh every year- ie 4 farmers per day.

This does not include the numbers of those Farmers who commit suicide but are not landholders.

The reaction in Chhattisgarh was similar to the one of Verma ji.

It was said that the farmers of Vidarbha and Andhra cultivate cash crops for which they take loans. But as the farmer in Chhattisgarh cultivates paddy, for which the labour requirement is high, however high loans are not required, so the figures of farmers' suicides are fudged.

Minister of Agriculture, Sharad Pawar has accepted in the House that the figures of farmers' suicide provided by the National Crime Record Bureau are accurate. (30th November, starred question number 238, the Agriculture Minister responds to Ram Jethmalani.)

The Bureau figures do not claim that the farmers are committing suicide due to reasons related to farming. And I am not claiming that here either.

I am only requesting for a study of these figures, to probe and understand what is happening.

Rhetoric of the kind- "Are we blind, that 4 farmers committed suicide everyday and we did not know", does not serve any purpose. For seven years these figures have been available with the National Crime Record Bureau. Not a peep from any Chhattisgarhiya in the direction!

I then began an exploration for any earlier study of Farmers' Suicides in Chhattisgarh.

I know of Verier Elwin's book Maria, Murder and Suicide, in which he studied the issue of Suicide amongst the Tribes of Bastar, and found that suicide is more prevalent in Maria tribe as compared to the Muria Tribe.

Subsequently I also found out about Professor Jonathan Perry of London School of Economics. He conducted a study in 2003, about suicides in the Bhilai Region. I contacted him and he told me, "Some years back I was in Bhilai for a research project and I found that in the settlements of Bhilai where I was carrying out my survey, the incidence of suicide was above average. In fact the figures were so significantly high that I started collecting figures from the hospitals and Police Stations , although this was not the subject of my study".

Professor Perry added, "This was about the same time as news of Andhra Pradesh Farmer suicides had started streaming in. I always felt that the conclusion that loans were at the root of the Farmers' Suicides was coming from a very superficial type of study. After my Bhilaiexperience I am not surprised by the figures you quote to me about Chhattisgarh Farmers."

In the meantime, my friend Yuvraj Gajpal who is pursuing his PhD in Canada, took a deeper look at the figures of National Crime Record Bureau. He calculated the rate of Farmers' suicides in the various states, and points out the following:

That in Chhattisgarh, 6.29 farmers commit suicide per lakh of population. Maharashtra follows at 4.59, Andhra Pradesh is next with 3.42, and Karnataka stands at 3.25.

He questions why so much attention is given to suicides in Maharashtra by journalists whereas he has not read anything about suicides in Chhattisgarh!

Yuvraj continues, "In Chhattisgarh, the percentage of landowning farmers is 17% of the total population. However the figure for farmers committing suicide as a percentage of total suicides is 33%, i.e, compared to other professions, twice as many farmers in Chhattisgarh take their own lives. What is the reason?"

I thought it might be a good idea to share these figures with Professor K Nagaraj of Madras Institute of Development Studies as he has been studying the subject for many years now. Professor Nagaraj said that he has recently received the figures for the year 2003 onwards, and his analysis will be ready in a few weeks. On the face of it, he sees no mismatch in the figures.

I asked Prof Nagraj, that people in Chhattisgarh say that this is a paddy cultivation area, and not a cash crop cultivation area. So how can Farmers be committing suicide?

He laughed and said, "Please go to Thanjavur district of Tamil Nadu, which is a paddy cultivation area. Many Farmers are committing suicide there. As opposed to this, the rest of Tamil Nadu has substantial cash crop production. But the rate of farmers' suicide is much lower here.

The reason is that the road network is excellent and upon crop failure, the farmer is able to find other livelihood. The only conclusion which can be drawn from this is that every problem is unique in itself."

I asked him, "Bihar and Uttar Pradesh are also paddy cultivation areas, but not many farmers commit suicide in those states as compared to Chhattisgarh"?

Prof Nagraj told me, "Chhattisgarh needs to be studied. But it is obvious that it is not comparable to the areas along the Ganga and Yamuna. Secondly a farmer does not commit suicide only because of agriculture loans- though loans may be a predominant reason. If you examine India after 1991, State help for the common man has reduced steadily, whether it is irrigation, or education. Suicides are caused by a mix of these problems."

In the end I called P Sainath of the "Hindu" newspaper who has been writing on this subject for many years. I told him that journalists in Chhattisgarh are saying these figures are fudged. Sainath said, "Its like the election results - if they do not match our expectation we say the elections are rigged. Please quote me in your article that if anyone has conducted a study and found that only one farmer is committing suicide in Chhattisgarh every year, then this State is a heaven on earth. I will advise farmers in Europe and America to shift to Chhattisgarh, because even there more farmers commit suicide than this "study" is showing".

It seems, the journalists in Chhattisgarh are behaving like Verma ji- who could not believe that his son had committed suicide because he was not studying in a co-ed school.

But will the leaders of Chhattisgarh please look into the matter? The assembly session is on, will someone please raise this issue?


Shubhranshu Choudhary
Email: shu@cgnet.in

36Garh Suicide Figures Fudged? 4 farmers commit suicide every day.

36Garh Suicide Figures Fudged?

4 farmers commit suicide every day.

by

Shubhranshu Choudhary

A city dweller like me has very little understanding of Farming and Farmers. But dreams for a region's future need to include the issue related to the livelihoods of more than 80% of the people of that region.

Which is why the first session of the annual Dream CG Meet, a gathering of memebers of the CGnet group, is about Agriculture. This year we thought of inviting some farmers from the adjoining Vidarbha region to learn from their experiences and apply the same to Chhattisgarh. Thousands of farmers are known to be committing suicides and we wanted to be forewarned and fore armed.

We contacted Kishor Tiwari of the Vidarbha Andolan, and the farmer leader Vijay Jawandiya. They have been monitoring the issue of farmers' suicides and mailing journalists regularly to keep the attention of the media on the subject. Along with P. Sainath, they have made significant contribution in drawing world attention to the farmer's suicides in Vidarbha.

I also got in touch with Professor P Radhakrishnan of Madras Institute of Development Studies. He has a substantial body of work with him, on the Farmers' Suicides. He introduced me to Professor K. Nagraj who said, “It is true that Maharashtra has the biggest problem of Farmers' Suicides and you should invite the people of Vidarbha, but it is more important to initiate a study in Chhattisgarh. A large number of farmers are committing suicide in Chhattisgarh.”

It was the last week of December and Professor Nagraj was proceeding for his annual vacation. I think I was sceptical about what he said with reference to Chhattisgarh. I recalled a study conducted by one of my friends. According to this study, from the year of formation of Chhattisgarh till 2006, only 5 or 6 farmers have committed suicide- which meant one suicide per year.

Both Vijay Janwadiya and Kishor Tiwari could not attend the Dream Chhattisgarh meet. Many issues related to agriculture were discussed but the specific lessons which could be drawn on from the Vidarbh experience could not be considered.

A news article published some time back quoted the annual report of The National Crime Records Bureau ( 2006) which claimed that though Maharashtra continues to lead in the matter of Farmers' Suicides, but the combined figure for Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh ranks second. I was shocked.

The report further elaborated that in the year 2006 ( the figures for 2007 shall be available only next year) a total of 17,060 Farmers' suicides were reported, of which the maximum ie 4453 were from Maharashtra . The second rank was held by Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh for which the figure was 2858. Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka were next with 2607 and 1720 Farmers' suicides reported in 2006. According to the same report, the figures for Andhra Pradesh have risen a little over the previous year, and in Karnataka they have gone down.

I was surprised, and confused. According to my information, the number of farmers committing suicide in Chhattisgarh was very small (1 per year) in the last 6-7 years. Which meant that Madhya Pradesh figures ought to have been significantly large. However I was not aware of Madhya Pradesh being in the lime light for Farmers' suicides.

The first question on my mind was, Chhattisgarh State was created 7 years back. Why are the Chhattisgarh figures still clubbed with those of Madhya Pradesh? If Chhattisgarh farmers are not committing suicide then what is behind maligning the name of this State?

Subsequently I found an article by Sushmita Malwiya on one of the websites. Sushmita also quoted combined figures for Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. In the same report, the Agriculture officer for Chhattisgarh has been thus quoted- “ We have no record of Farmers' suicides with us. We have not received this report, but the figures are baseless”

I was getting really confused now. I contacted the editor of the newspaper “ Chhattisgarh'. He told me- “ The entire Chhattisgarh is not Dantewada that thousands of farmers will commit suicide here, and no one will write about it in the media”

I wondered why the Prime Minister, in his package of 17000 crores for the Farmers who committed suicide, did not declare a package for farmers of Madhya Pradesh, if the figures of farmers' suicide in Madhya Pradesh was indeed higher than that of Andhra, Karnataka and Kerala?

I called up many journalists in Madhya Pradesh. They said that they did recall reports of Farmers' suicides, but when the government disputed the figures quoted, the issue went into cold storage.

Then I called up P. Sainath, who is the editor for rural matters with the newspaper “Hindu”. Mr Sainath said, “ I have been writing about Farmers' suicides from the year 2000. For a long time, I was ridiculed. In 2004, after Chandra Babu Naidu lost the elections, people started taking me seriously in Andhra Pradesh. But even then people of Vidarbh would say that this was happening only in Andhra Pradesh and not in Vidarbha. But the official figures show that from the nineties decade, twice as many farmers are committing suicide in Vidarbha as compared to Andhra Pradesh.

I told him that the journalists in Chhattisgarh are doubtful about the authenticity of the figures. Mr Sainath queried, “Which newspaper in Chhattisgarh publishes the farmer's news? Does any news paper appoint a reporter for covering Agricultural issues? What all can I do singly? Where all can I visit? I have not been able to travel out of Vidarbha for the past many years. I will try and go to Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh after April. This subject needs to be researched and written about”

In the meantime, Prof K. Nagaraj had returned from his vacation. In response to my first question, he said, “ The figures of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh are not clubbed. But my own study began in 1997, when the State had not been created. And so, for my personal convenience I club the figures of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. The journalists just quote me, they do not explore the source of my figures. But you are wrong in thinking that all the suicides are happening in Madhya Pradesh. In the last few years, more farmers have committed suicide in Chhattisgarh than in Madhya Pradesh. According to the figures of 2006, the figures for Farmers' suicides for Madhya Pradesh are 1375, and for Chhattisgarh the figure is 1483”

Mr Nagraj said, “ The figures for Chhattisgarh shocked me initially, I used to think that as farmers migrate from Chhattisgarh in the same way that they do from UP and Bihar, the number of farmers committing suicide would be small. But if you are claiming that the figures are fudged, then the figures for all the States are also fudged. Because the source for all figures is common. To the extent I understand the issue, these figures are probably less than the reality. eg a farmer who commits suicide but who does not have land registered in his name, would not be included here. The real figure for farmers' suicides is likely to be higher in reality”.

I contacted the National Crimes Records Bureau for the figures of Farmers' suicide in Chhattisgarh, and they gave me the figures ( see box) . The officers told me to contact the Chhattisgarh State police department if I doubted their figures- as these figures are actually conveyed by the State to the Centre.

P Sainath says, “ Not only the journalists, but the activists are also responsible for the silence on the issue of farmers' Suicide in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh.”

This is the election year for both states. Will some body speak up now?

Farmers' suicides in Chhattisgarh

2001 : 1452

2002 : 1238

2003 : 1066

2004 : 1395

2005 : 1412

2006 : 1483

source- National Crime Records Bureau of the Central Home Ministry

36Garh Suicide Figures Fudged? 4 farmers commit suicide every day.

36Garh Suicide Figures Fudged?

4 farmers commit suicide every day.

by

Shubhranshu Choudhary

A city dweller like me has very little understanding of Farming and Farmers. But dreams for a region's future need to include the issue related to the livelihoods of more than 80% of the people of that region.

Which is why the first session of the annual Dream CG Meet, a gathering of memebers of the CGnet group, is about Agriculture. This year we thought of inviting some farmers from the adjoining Vidarbha region to learn from their experiences and apply the same to Chhattisgarh. Thousands of farmers are known to be committing suicides and we wanted to be forewarned and fore armed.

We contacted Kishor Tiwari of the Vidarbha Andolan, and the farmer leader Vijay Jawandiya. They have been monitoring the issue of farmers' suicides and mailing journalists regularly to keep the attention of the media on the subject. Along with P. Sainath, they have made significant contribution in drawing world attention to the farmer's suicides in Vidarbha.

I also got in touch with Professor P Radhakrishnan of Madras Institute of Development Studies. He has a substantial body of work with him, on the Farmers' Suicides. He introduced me to Professor K. Nagraj who said, “It is true that Maharashtra has the biggest problem of Farmers' Suicides and you should invite the people of Vidarbha, but it is more important to initiate a study in Chhattisgarh. A large number of farmers are committing suicide in Chhattisgarh.”

It was the last week of December and Professor Nagraj was proceeding for his annual vacation. I think I was sceptical about what he said with reference to Chhattisgarh. I recalled a study conducted by one of my friends. According to this study, from the year of formation of Chhattisgarh till 2006, only 5 or 6 farmers have committed suicide- which meant one suicide per year.

Both Vijay Janwadiya and Kishor Tiwari could not attend the Dream Chhattisgarh meet. Many issues related to agriculture were discussed but the specific lessons which could be drawn on from the Vidarbh experience could not be considered.

A news article published some time back quoted the annual report of The National Crime Records Bureau ( 2006) which claimed that though Maharashtra continues to lead in the matter of Farmers' Suicides, but the combined figure for Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh ranks second. I was shocked.

The report further elaborated that in the year 2006 ( the figures for 2007 shall be available only next year) a total of 17,060 Farmers' suicides were reported, of which the maximum ie 4453 were from Maharashtra . The second rank was held by Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh for which the figure was 2858. Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka were next with 2607 and 1720 Farmers' suicides reported in 2006. According to the same report, the figures for Andhra Pradesh have risen a little over the previous year, and in Karnataka they have gone down.

I was surprised, and confused. According to my information, the number of farmers committing suicide in Chhattisgarh was very small (1 per year) in the last 6-7 years. Which meant that Madhya Pradesh figures ought to have been significantly large. However I was not aware of Madhya Pradesh being in the lime light for Farmers' suicides.

The first question on my mind was, Chhattisgarh State was created 7 years back. Why are the Chhattisgarh figures still clubbed with those of Madhya Pradesh? If Chhattisgarh farmers are not committing suicide then what is behind maligning the name of this State?

Subsequently I found an article by Sushmita Malwiya on one of the websites. Sushmita also quoted combined figures for Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. In the same report, the Agriculture officer for Chhattisgarh has been thus quoted- “ We have no record of Farmers' suicides with us. We have not received this report, but the figures are baseless”

I was getting really confused now. I contacted the editor of the newspaper “ Chhattisgarh'. He told me- “ The entire Chhattisgarh is not Dantewada that thousands of farmers will commit suicide here, and no one will write about it in the media”

I wondered why the Prime Minister, in his package of 17000 crores for the Farmers who committed suicide, did not declare a package for farmers of Madhya Pradesh, if the figures of farmers' suicide in Madhya Pradesh was indeed higher than that of Andhra, Karnataka and Kerala?

I called up many journalists in Madhya Pradesh. They said that they did recall reports of Farmers' suicides, but when the government disputed the figures quoted, the issue went into cold storage.

Then I called up P. Sainath, who is the editor for rural matters with the newspaper “Hindu”. Mr Sainath said, “ I have been writing about Farmers' suicides from the year 2000. For a long time, I was ridiculed. In 2004, after Chandra Babu Naidu lost the elections, people started taking me seriously in Andhra Pradesh. But even then people of Vidarbh would say that this was happening only in Andhra Pradesh and not in Vidarbha. But the official figures show that from the nineties decade, twice as many farmers are committing suicide in Vidarbha as compared to Andhra Pradesh.

I told him that the journalists in Chhattisgarh are doubtful about the authenticity of the figures. Mr Sainath queried, “Which newspaper in Chhattisgarh publishes the farmer's news? Does any news paper appoint a reporter for covering Agricultural issues? What all can I do singly? Where all can I visit? I have not been able to travel out of Vidarbha for the past many years. I will try and go to Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh after April. This subject needs to be researched and written about”

In the meantime, Prof K. Nagaraj had returned from his vacation. In response to my first question, he said, “ The figures of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh are not clubbed. But my own study began in 1997, when the State had not been created. And so, for my personal convenience I club the figures of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. The journalists just quote me, they do not explore the source of my figures. But you are wrong in thinking that all the suicides are happening in Madhya Pradesh. In the last few years, more farmers have committed suicide in Chhattisgarh than in Madhya Pradesh. According to the figures of 2006, the figures for Farmers' suicides for Madhya Pradesh are 1375, and for Chhattisgarh the figure is 1483”

Mr Nagraj said, “ The figures for Chhattisgarh shocked me initially, I used to think that as farmers migrate from Chhattisgarh in the same way that they do from UP and Bihar, the number of farmers committing suicide would be small. But if you are claiming that the figures are fudged, then the figures for all the States are also fudged. Because the source for all figures is common. To the extent I understand the issue, these figures are probably less than the reality. eg a farmer who commits suicide but who does not have land registered in his name, would not be included here. The real figure for farmers' suicides is likely to be higher in reality”.

I contacted the National Crimes Records Bureau for the figures of Farmers' suicide in Chhattisgarh, and they gave me the figures ( see box) . The officers told me to contact the Chhattisgarh State police department if I doubted their figures- as these figures are actually conveyed by the State to the Centre.

P Sainath says, “ Not only the journalists, but the activists are also responsible for the silence on the issue of farmers' Suicide in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh.”

This is the election year for both states. Will some body speak up now?

Farmers' suicides in Chhattisgarh

2001 : 1452

2002 : 1238

2003 : 1066

2004 : 1395

2005 : 1412

2006 : 1483

source- National Crime Records Bureau of the Central Home Ministry

Chattisgarh's purification hunt

Chhattisgarh’s purification hunt
Shubhranshu Choudhary

The state’s Adivasis are being treated like marionettes, as political, corporate and state-security interests seek to gain access to their land.


In early 2005, on a visit to Chhattisgarh, people kept telling me, “Tata is coming, something strange is going to happen.” It was not clear what exactly this obtuse prediction meant. But those vague murmurs turned to rumbles within just a few months. By June 2005, there was talk of a “spontaneous uprising” taking place against the Maoists. We were told that because the state’s Maoists had banned the collection of tendu leaves, used in bidi production, the people were in the process of “revolting”. It might have been an odd coincidence, but it was during that same month that two private companies, Tata and Essar, each signed memorandums of understanding with the Chhattisgarh government to set up massive steel projects in the state’s iron-rich Bastar District.

According to newspaper reports, people were gathering and marching from village to village, in an attempt to garner support against the Maoists. Local media accounts called it the start of another jan jagran abhiyan, a people’s-awakening movement. Despite the evidence of armed people taking part in these gatherings, newspapers were continuing to refer to what was taking place as a “peace movement”. Chief Minister Raman Singh and ‘supercop’ K P S Gill, Chhattisgarh’s former security adviser and the man who suppressed the Punjab insurgency, even went so far as to call the whole ordeal a Gandhian experiment.

Within days, the tone of the headlines had changed. While hearing about Maoist attacks on the Jan Jagran Abhiyan meetings, we suddenly also heard about villagers pouring into roadside camps that had been set up by the state – purportedly due to “fear of Maoist attacks”. By December, more than 15,000 people were living in those camps. By that time, the ‘movement’ had also been rechristened salwa judum, and local Congress party leader Mahendra Karma had taken up its leadership. Karma claimed that Salwa Judum meant ‘Peace March’ in the dialect of the Gond Adivasis, though some academics have said that a more accurate translation would be ‘Purification Hunt’.

That December, a report by the People’s Union of Civil Liberties included a damning accusation: that the Salwa Judum was not a spontaneous movement at all, but rather a government-sponsored programme. A report by the Communist Party of India (CPI) also stated that the Salwa Judum had been torching houses and killing people who refused to join them. Nonetheless, the local newspapers continued to describe what was going on as a spontaneous, peaceful people’s movement. Sitting in Delhi, it was certainly difficult to discern what was actually taking place.

Scorched-earth policy
Maoists, also called Naxalites, have been working to create a parallel power system in the Adivasi villages of the Bastar area for the past three decades. Starting very recently, however, a new phenomenon has been becoming increasingly clear. The traditional Adivasi leadership, whose authority was threatened by the new Maoist-created leadership (called sanghams), was making up the backbone of the Salwa Judum. Mahendra Karma himself came from an elite Adivasi family.

While visiting Dantewada District, also known as South Bastar, in February 2006, it became amply clear that it was in fact Salwa Judum members who were forcing people to move to the refugee camps – quite the opposite of what was being reported in the papers. In the camps I spoke with terrified people, many of whom backed up the findings of the CPI report: Salwa Judum members were going from village to village, forcing people to join with them. If the villagers refused to do so, they burnt their houses, even killing many who resisted. Nearly everyone in the camps told me that they wanted to go back home, but were too afraid of retaliation by the Salwa Judum. The state administration, meanwhile, was maintaining a familiar line: the people were remaining in the camps due to fear of the Maoists, and that they would go back once the Maoists were eliminated.

During a subsequent trip to Dantewada, the District Collector of Dantewada provided an official document called “Work Plan for People’s Jan Jagran Abhiyan 2005”. The pamphlet included a large number of details about the government’s support and plan to take the movement to new areas, but the mere presence of this literature led to a still more puzzling question: How could the government make a work plan for a ‘spontaneous’ people’s movement?

The ‘payback’ from the authorities for trying to do independent journalism seemed to be encapsulated in the experience of Kamlesh Painkra, an Adivasi journalist who had written in a local newspaper about the arson and killings by the Salwa Judum. Since doing so, he had lost his job; his brother, a teacher, had been thrown in jail on charges of being a Maoist supporter; and the rest of his family was living as refugees. Was what Kamlesh wrote true? Unfortunately, there was no time to investigate.

The strategy of systematically driving people into roadside camps actually has a name in English – “strategic hamleting”. Evidently, the same tactic had been tried in many other parts of the world during attempts to cut off guerrilla links to the populace. The same strategy had apparently been tried in Mizoram and Nagaland during the 1960s, but was a dismal failure. Instead of isolating the rebels, the killing of innocent villagers in aerial bombings and the forced eviction from their traditional villages engendered hostility towards the state, and generated more support for the rebel cause. Meanwhile, all of the police officers who were challenged denied that they were engaged in any ‘strategic hamleting’ whatsoever.

I tried to visit some of the villages that were said to have been razed by the Salwa Judum. But the roads to these villages were being blocked by the police and ‘Special Police Officers’, or SPOs, a shadowy group of civilians that the government had started recruiting for the Salwa Judum. Each member received a regular ‘salary’ of INR 1500. As such, no local would agree to accompany reporters to any burned-down village.

Eventually, however, two students from an Adivasi hostel in the state capital of Raipur, 500 km away, agreed to take me to their own village. They knew of an alternate route, where neither the police nor the SPOs would be waiting. After a long trek, we reached their village and witnessed the mayhem. People told us of repeated attacks by the Salwa Judum: They want us to leave the village and come to the camps. We ran away as soon as we saw them, but some of us were caught. By now, they have either been killed or been taken to the camps. These people were almost completely cut off from the outside world, and we saw sick patients who were unable to seek medical care for fear of the Salwa Judum. “We travel 80 km to get salt and oil,” said one elder. “We send old women and children to shops. We are frightened of the Salwa Judum: if they see us in the market, they will kill us.”

It was at this exact time that the Maoists publicly released a recording of an alleged conversation between the police chief of Bijapur, formerly part of Dantewada, and his subordinate. The police chief was reportedly heard saying, “Tell people that the state is giving three lakh rupees to those villages that join Salwa Judum. And if they do not do so, their villages will be burnt.” Later on in the same tape, the police chief orders, “And if you see any journalists, just kill them.” The government dismissed the tape as bogus, but some senior police officers later confirmed its authenticity, though off the record. Certainly, the government did not order any enquiry.

Tendu cover-up
During another visit to Dantewada, I came upon a group of fleeing villagers from Santoshpur, in neighbouring Bijapur District. They told us that members of both the Salwa Judum and the police had killed 12 people in their village. “Other than one, the other 11 had no connection whatsoever with the Maoists,” said one angrily. Families were also getting divided in this dirty war. One mother said, “My older son, who is now an SPO, came to kill my younger son, who is with the Maoists.” After our news reports become public, the state government ordered an enquiry into several of these and related events. But that probe merely found the culprits to be “unidentified people in uniform” –nothing but a veiled reference to Naxalites.

Still, a picture of what was actually happening was slowly emerging. We met a remarkable policeman who had been appointed to protect one of the camps. He claimed that his unit had killed 65 people during the previous three months, and his revelations were stark: “We do not know the language of the Adivasis. We accompany Salwa Judum to the villages. As soon as villagers see us, they run away. We kill whoever we get hold of. We are killing them like goats, like chickens, like ants, on orders from higher ups.” Here was a man clearly in turmoil amidst the state-mandated violence. “Please write about it,” he said. “I know I will be called for an enquiry, but I will tell my senior officers, ‘This is wrong, please stop it’.”

Running away has indeed become a widespread phenomenon in these affected areas of Chhattisgarh. We heard about terrified people leaving their villages in hordes, heading to neighbouring states. Though Chhattisgarh officials deny any such migration, the forest department of Andhra Pradesh has started burning the temporary houses of the displaced Adivasi camps. The High Court of Andhra Pradesh has recently ordered a stay on these forced evictions.

Sunil Kumar, a newspaper editor in Raipur, implies that there was much more to the current phase of anti-Maoist fighting than met the eye. “If you look at the timing of the start of Salwa Judum, it is not only the time of the MOUs with Tata and Essar, but it is also the time when an Adivasi was appointed the home minister of Chhattisgarh,” Kumar noted. “Salwa Judum is conceived and executed in the police headquarters. They knew it would result in bloodshed, and that is the reason they got an Adivasi appointed as home minister.” Following this intriguing correlation, there were other journalists who confirmed that they had received their initial tips on the start of the ‘spontaneous’ people’s movement from police sources. Thereafter, press notes continued to emanate from the fax numbers of police stations.

Few journalists seem to have managed, or bothered, to get to the bottom of the story. N R K Pillay is a veteran journalist based in Bastar who has tried. He says: “The so-called revolt against the Maoists in June 2005 was a combination of drought, a systematic siphoning of subsidised grain, and the rumour spread by a close associate of Mahendra Karma that Maoists have banned tendu-leaf collection. But the Maoists were merely demanding a better rate for the tendu leaf, and had never banned the collection.”

Qualms about tendu leaves notwithstanding, the industrialisation of Chhattisgarh continues apace. Chitranjan Bakshi, of the CPI, who led the first fact-finding team to investigate the Salwa Judum in September 2005, recalls intimations of a larger process afoot from the very beginning. “We wrote a letter to the prime minister but got no reply. Our national leaders raised it with Sonia Gandhi, but she remains unmoved. I wonder if it is the pressure of the companies who are going to gain at the end, when these Adivasis are pushed out of their lands.” Some CPI members have now gone to court with a list of 548 murders, 99 rapes and more than 3000 burnt houses, which they say were all perpetrated by the Salwa Judum. No police complaint was registered regarding a single one of these incidents.

Meanwhile, the work plan for 2006 handed out by the Dantewada District Collector said that Essar had been helping the state government to put up the roadside camps. The head of the state Planning Commission has announced that the government is now planning to turn these ‘temporary’ camps into permanent villages. Today, 59,000 people are said to be living in these camps. The government has now halted all provision for health, education and subsidised foodgrain in the original villages, on the deceptively simple explanation that all of the people are now living in the camps.

But even greater injustice lies in the fuzzy math behind these camps. The total population of this area was estimated at around 350,000. If 59,000 people are now living in the camps, then what has happened to the additional three lakh? Many may have fled outright, while many others are remaining in their villages – but both of these groups are currently almost entirely outside of the purview of the government.

Chhattisgarh is unique for the raising of the Salwa Judum as a vigilante force by the state to counter the rise of the Maoists – an attempt to pit locals against locals, and to absolve the authorities of the responsibilities of law and order. But if that much is clear, much else is not. Is this, after all is said and done, an attempt to get large companies access to mineral-rich areas that inconveniently happen to be inhabited by Adivasis? Is the Salwa Judum merely a strategy to fight Maoists, or it is it in truth the phenomenon that everyone was warning about three years ago, when they wondered, Tata is coming, what strange things are going to happen?


Published in: Himal South Asian

Photo credits: Dr Haneef, Shubhranshu Chaudhary

Chattisgarh's purification hunt

Chhattisgarh’s purification hunt
Shubhranshu Choudhary

The state’s Adivasis are being treated like marionettes, as political, corporate and state-security interests seek to gain access to their land.


In early 2005, on a visit to Chhattisgarh, people kept telling me, “Tata is coming, something strange is going to happen.” It was not clear what exactly this obtuse prediction meant. But those vague murmurs turned to rumbles within just a few months. By June 2005, there was talk of a “spontaneous uprising” taking place against the Maoists. We were told that because the state’s Maoists had banned the collection of tendu leaves, used in bidi production, the people were in the process of “revolting”. It might have been an odd coincidence, but it was during that same month that two private companies, Tata and Essar, each signed memorandums of understanding with the Chhattisgarh government to set up massive steel projects in the state’s iron-rich Bastar District.

According to newspaper reports, people were gathering and marching from village to village, in an attempt to garner support against the Maoists. Local media accounts called it the start of another jan jagran abhiyan, a people’s-awakening movement. Despite the evidence of armed people taking part in these gatherings, newspapers were continuing to refer to what was taking place as a “peace movement”. Chief Minister Raman Singh and ‘supercop’ K P S Gill, Chhattisgarh’s former security adviser and the man who suppressed the Punjab insurgency, even went so far as to call the whole ordeal a Gandhian experiment.

Within days, the tone of the headlines had changed. While hearing about Maoist attacks on the Jan Jagran Abhiyan meetings, we suddenly also heard about villagers pouring into roadside camps that had been set up by the state – purportedly due to “fear of Maoist attacks”. By December, more than 15,000 people were living in those camps. By that time, the ‘movement’ had also been rechristened salwa judum, and local Congress party leader Mahendra Karma had taken up its leadership. Karma claimed that Salwa Judum meant ‘Peace March’ in the dialect of the Gond Adivasis, though some academics have said that a more accurate translation would be ‘Purification Hunt’.

That December, a report by the People’s Union of Civil Liberties included a damning accusation: that the Salwa Judum was not a spontaneous movement at all, but rather a government-sponsored programme. A report by the Communist Party of India (CPI) also stated that the Salwa Judum had been torching houses and killing people who refused to join them. Nonetheless, the local newspapers continued to describe what was going on as a spontaneous, peaceful people’s movement. Sitting in Delhi, it was certainly difficult to discern what was actually taking place.

Scorched-earth policy
Maoists, also called Naxalites, have been working to create a parallel power system in the Adivasi villages of the Bastar area for the past three decades. Starting very recently, however, a new phenomenon has been becoming increasingly clear. The traditional Adivasi leadership, whose authority was threatened by the new Maoist-created leadership (called sanghams), was making up the backbone of the Salwa Judum. Mahendra Karma himself came from an elite Adivasi family.

While visiting Dantewada District, also known as South Bastar, in February 2006, it became amply clear that it was in fact Salwa Judum members who were forcing people to move to the refugee camps – quite the opposite of what was being reported in the papers. In the camps I spoke with terrified people, many of whom backed up the findings of the CPI report: Salwa Judum members were going from village to village, forcing people to join with them. If the villagers refused to do so, they burnt their houses, even killing many who resisted. Nearly everyone in the camps told me that they wanted to go back home, but were too afraid of retaliation by the Salwa Judum. The state administration, meanwhile, was maintaining a familiar line: the people were remaining in the camps due to fear of the Maoists, and that they would go back once the Maoists were eliminated.

During a subsequent trip to Dantewada, the District Collector of Dantewada provided an official document called “Work Plan for People’s Jan Jagran Abhiyan 2005”. The pamphlet included a large number of details about the government’s support and plan to take the movement to new areas, but the mere presence of this literature led to a still more puzzling question: How could the government make a work plan for a ‘spontaneous’ people’s movement?

The ‘payback’ from the authorities for trying to do independent journalism seemed to be encapsulated in the experience of Kamlesh Painkra, an Adivasi journalist who had written in a local newspaper about the arson and killings by the Salwa Judum. Since doing so, he had lost his job; his brother, a teacher, had been thrown in jail on charges of being a Maoist supporter; and the rest of his family was living as refugees. Was what Kamlesh wrote true? Unfortunately, there was no time to investigate.

The strategy of systematically driving people into roadside camps actually has a name in English – “strategic hamleting”. Evidently, the same tactic had been tried in many other parts of the world during attempts to cut off guerrilla links to the populace. The same strategy had apparently been tried in Mizoram and Nagaland during the 1960s, but was a dismal failure. Instead of isolating the rebels, the killing of innocent villagers in aerial bombings and the forced eviction from their traditional villages engendered hostility towards the state, and generated more support for the rebel cause. Meanwhile, all of the police officers who were challenged denied that they were engaged in any ‘strategic hamleting’ whatsoever.

I tried to visit some of the villages that were said to have been razed by the Salwa Judum. But the roads to these villages were being blocked by the police and ‘Special Police Officers’, or SPOs, a shadowy group of civilians that the government had started recruiting for the Salwa Judum. Each member received a regular ‘salary’ of INR 1500. As such, no local would agree to accompany reporters to any burned-down village.

Eventually, however, two students from an Adivasi hostel in the state capital of Raipur, 500 km away, agreed to take me to their own village. They knew of an alternate route, where neither the police nor the SPOs would be waiting. After a long trek, we reached their village and witnessed the mayhem. People told us of repeated attacks by the Salwa Judum: They want us to leave the village and come to the camps. We ran away as soon as we saw them, but some of us were caught. By now, they have either been killed or been taken to the camps. These people were almost completely cut off from the outside world, and we saw sick patients who were unable to seek medical care for fear of the Salwa Judum. “We travel 80 km to get salt and oil,” said one elder. “We send old women and children to shops. We are frightened of the Salwa Judum: if they see us in the market, they will kill us.”

It was at this exact time that the Maoists publicly released a recording of an alleged conversation between the police chief of Bijapur, formerly part of Dantewada, and his subordinate. The police chief was reportedly heard saying, “Tell people that the state is giving three lakh rupees to those villages that join Salwa Judum. And if they do not do so, their villages will be burnt.” Later on in the same tape, the police chief orders, “And if you see any journalists, just kill them.” The government dismissed the tape as bogus, but some senior police officers later confirmed its authenticity, though off the record. Certainly, the government did not order any enquiry.

Tendu cover-up
During another visit to Dantewada, I came upon a group of fleeing villagers from Santoshpur, in neighbouring Bijapur District. They told us that members of both the Salwa Judum and the police had killed 12 people in their village. “Other than one, the other 11 had no connection whatsoever with the Maoists,” said one angrily. Families were also getting divided in this dirty war. One mother said, “My older son, who is now an SPO, came to kill my younger son, who is with the Maoists.” After our news reports become public, the state government ordered an enquiry into several of these and related events. But that probe merely found the culprits to be “unidentified people in uniform” –nothing but a veiled reference to Naxalites.

Still, a picture of what was actually happening was slowly emerging. We met a remarkable policeman who had been appointed to protect one of the camps. He claimed that his unit had killed 65 people during the previous three months, and his revelations were stark: “We do not know the language of the Adivasis. We accompany Salwa Judum to the villages. As soon as villagers see us, they run away. We kill whoever we get hold of. We are killing them like goats, like chickens, like ants, on orders from higher ups.” Here was a man clearly in turmoil amidst the state-mandated violence. “Please write about it,” he said. “I know I will be called for an enquiry, but I will tell my senior officers, ‘This is wrong, please stop it’.”

Running away has indeed become a widespread phenomenon in these affected areas of Chhattisgarh. We heard about terrified people leaving their villages in hordes, heading to neighbouring states. Though Chhattisgarh officials deny any such migration, the forest department of Andhra Pradesh has started burning the temporary houses of the displaced Adivasi camps. The High Court of Andhra Pradesh has recently ordered a stay on these forced evictions.

Sunil Kumar, a newspaper editor in Raipur, implies that there was much more to the current phase of anti-Maoist fighting than met the eye. “If you look at the timing of the start of Salwa Judum, it is not only the time of the MOUs with Tata and Essar, but it is also the time when an Adivasi was appointed the home minister of Chhattisgarh,” Kumar noted. “Salwa Judum is conceived and executed in the police headquarters. They knew it would result in bloodshed, and that is the reason they got an Adivasi appointed as home minister.” Following this intriguing correlation, there were other journalists who confirmed that they had received their initial tips on the start of the ‘spontaneous’ people’s movement from police sources. Thereafter, press notes continued to emanate from the fax numbers of police stations.

Few journalists seem to have managed, or bothered, to get to the bottom of the story. N R K Pillay is a veteran journalist based in Bastar who has tried. He says: “The so-called revolt against the Maoists in June 2005 was a combination of drought, a systematic siphoning of subsidised grain, and the rumour spread by a close associate of Mahendra Karma that Maoists have banned tendu-leaf collection. But the Maoists were merely demanding a better rate for the tendu leaf, and had never banned the collection.”

Qualms about tendu leaves notwithstanding, the industrialisation of Chhattisgarh continues apace. Chitranjan Bakshi, of the CPI, who led the first fact-finding team to investigate the Salwa Judum in September 2005, recalls intimations of a larger process afoot from the very beginning. “We wrote a letter to the prime minister but got no reply. Our national leaders raised it with Sonia Gandhi, but she remains unmoved. I wonder if it is the pressure of the companies who are going to gain at the end, when these Adivasis are pushed out of their lands.” Some CPI members have now gone to court with a list of 548 murders, 99 rapes and more than 3000 burnt houses, which they say were all perpetrated by the Salwa Judum. No police complaint was registered regarding a single one of these incidents.

Meanwhile, the work plan for 2006 handed out by the Dantewada District Collector said that Essar had been helping the state government to put up the roadside camps. The head of the state Planning Commission has announced that the government is now planning to turn these ‘temporary’ camps into permanent villages. Today, 59,000 people are said to be living in these camps. The government has now halted all provision for health, education and subsidised foodgrain in the original villages, on the deceptively simple explanation that all of the people are now living in the camps.

But even greater injustice lies in the fuzzy math behind these camps. The total population of this area was estimated at around 350,000. If 59,000 people are now living in the camps, then what has happened to the additional three lakh? Many may have fled outright, while many others are remaining in their villages – but both of these groups are currently almost entirely outside of the purview of the government.

Chhattisgarh is unique for the raising of the Salwa Judum as a vigilante force by the state to counter the rise of the Maoists – an attempt to pit locals against locals, and to absolve the authorities of the responsibilities of law and order. But if that much is clear, much else is not. Is this, after all is said and done, an attempt to get large companies access to mineral-rich areas that inconveniently happen to be inhabited by Adivasis? Is the Salwa Judum merely a strategy to fight Maoists, or it is it in truth the phenomenon that everyone was warning about three years ago, when they wondered, Tata is coming, what strange things are going to happen?


Published in: Himal South Asian

Photo credits: Dr Haneef, Shubhranshu Chaudhary