FIVE years ago, farmers’ suicides were considered to be a temporary phenomenon. But, today what we are witnessing refutes that story. Farmers’ suicides regularly appear in the newspaper columns of most of the states supposed to be prosperous. Within a span of six months (May-October, 2003) the suicide toll has crossed 300 and the total crossed 700 in the last few years in Karnataka. In Anantapur district (Andhra Pradesh) alone, more than 1826 farmers have committed suicide in the last five years. Suicides in Punjab, Haryana and Maharashtra also do not appear to have ceased.

On the other hand, starvation deaths are being reported from states like Orissa, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh and of late, even West Bengal. Thousands of people are dying of starvation while the rats are having a sumptuous treat with mountains of food grains rotting in FCI godowns. While agrarian labourers and rural poor are the victims of starvation deaths, small, marginal and lower middle peasants are the victims of suicides.

Starvation deaths and suicides, both point to only one fact – the unprecedented agrarian crisis facing the country today; the poverty amidst plenty; the tortuous, staggering and painful transition of our agriculture, which is tied up in pre-capitalist relations. Starvation and suicides are the two extreme manifestations of the same crisis. And it goes without saying that the agrarian crisis cannot be viewed in isolation and it is part of the larger crisis of capitalist transition itself.