In the past six months, three farmers have committed suicide in various parts of Rajasthan especially in the northern region (including districts of Ganganagar and Hanumangarh). In the month of June, a farmer in the Ganganagar district of Rajasthan had committed suicide leaving behind a video message on social media accusing the state government of its failure in implementing the loan waiver. It appears that after Marathwada and Vidarbha regions of Maharashtra, these parts of Rajasthan are also in the process of becoming new suicide hotspots.

There have been instances in the past when farmers had left notes on government bonds before committing suicide mentioning the reasons for their suicides (Vasavi 2012: 189). Such public messages clearly indicate that the effort was to send a message to the wider public. This reflects a deep feeling of exclusion and alienation amongst the rural populations. This pushes them further to take drastic steps to draw public attention to their concerns. The reaction of the governments to such instances has largely been around the questions of debt and providing economic benefits to the farmers.

The government of Rajasthan has come up with a farmer welfare fund a few months ago after announcing its farm waiver scheme. In the past two years, various state governments have also come up with similar policy measures to address the issue of agrarian distress. However, such cases need to be seen in a wider perspective. A new rural-agrarian society is in making and there are sections of rural communities who find it difficult to cope up with these changes and become psychologically vulnerable.

These regions of Rajasthan are newly emerging centers of socio-economic change. Part of northern Rajasthan (like Ganganagar and Hanumangarh) and central Rajasthan (like Sikar) have emerged as major agricultural and educational hubs. The agricultural development of these regions, thanks to canal irrigation or drip irrigation through borewells, has resulted in widespread economic change.

The groups which got impacted by such changes are small and medium farmers. These districts are largely agricultural districts where a majority of the population is involved in agriculture, directly or indirectly. A large number of farmers are either small farmers or marginal farmers. More than half of the workers in the districts are either cultivators or agricultural laborers. The state also has the highest percentage of the scheduled caste population (36.58 percent).

However, this economic change has not resulted in socio-cultural change. Despite better economic conditions and the highest human development rate, the sex ratio of the Ganganagar district is worse than even the Rajasthan state’s average. It is the case with many other districts, which are economically doing well, and yet continues to be ridden with traditional social values of feudal-masculine structures.

Whenever there is a debate on farmer suicides the policy discourse immediately shifts to the question of indebtedness, loan waiver or increasing farmers’ income, leaving aside other crucial reasons. These schemes may not actually resolve the crisis. The governments have also come up with findings saying that the farmer suicides are continuing unabatedly despite loan waiver. Maharashtra Minister Subhash Deshmukh told the state assembly that in the last three years (2015-18) more than 2000 farmers have committed suicide in Maharashtra. Similarly, these cases are reported more from the regions where farmers’ income has seen a rise in the past few decades due to agricultural modernization.

Amidst these ironical developments, it is necessary to understand the sociological and psychological changes followed by the agrarian change in these areas. The emerging towns of Rajasthan including Sikar, Churu, Ganganagar and nearby villages and towns have witnessed a qualitative change in the past three decades. These new towns have witnessed the emergence of a new economic society. This new economic society is qualitatively different from the market that emerged immediately after the agricultural modernization and mechanization during the 1970s and 80s. Along with the financialization of agrarian production services and credit services for agriculture a new consumerist culture is major markers of this new economic society. In the past three decades, a large number of private credit agencies have come up. These private agencies have been trying to expand their customer base by promoting a credit economy based consumer culture in the area. One can see almost all major luxury and consumer brands available in the local markets in these towns. This is more of a case in the Ganganagar district city and also in the nearby towns.

I spoke to the owner of an expansive apparel brand showroom. He explained that farmers from nearby villages come and purchase such expensive items. They would take a loan and buy these products, as this is a matter of social prestige for them. I also spoke to a few shopkeepers, small traders and students to understand this new economy.

After the conversation with these people I found that there has been a massive expansion of the marriage industry, restaurants, and saloons in the region. The youth in the region wants to enjoy these facilities and even pressurize their parents have to borrow for this purpose. Most of such youth come from farming families. Such economic changes have already engulfed the nearby regions of Punjab (Jodhka 2008). These changes are now expanding into the regions of Rajasthan as a spillover effect of Punjab’s socio-economic transformation.

In the traditional masculine values-driven social structure the male members are also under pressure to opt for private-sector education and health facilities. These facilities are considered (and in some respects they are) better than the public sector hospitals or educational institutions. Besides, the public sector facilities have not expanded as per the increasing population and demands.

Consequently, there are large numbers of private actors in school education, college education and technical education to fill up this gap. The new towns have also witnessed the expansion of the private health sector. A major central road of these district towns is now full of hospitals, laboratories, and chemist shops. Amidst popular pressures, families are compelled to be a part of this newly emerging market-based consumer society irrespective of their economic conditions. The credit agencies target such vulnerable groups as their potential clients.

This new consumerist society is gradually replacing the traditional peasant economic society that was based on greater economic interdependence within the rural caste and class networks and labor relations. The new economy replaces these value systems in the name of economic freedom and brings in newer market actors though new credit economy and consumerist demands. Gradually, this new economic society takes over all spheres of rural and semi-urban lifestyles.

This has also resulted in the emergence of a complex competitive rural society as well. The new consumerist society puts farmers or members of the rural community, especially the small marginal farmer coming from the most backward castes or scheduled castes with very few sources of earning, into a complex psychological dilemma. They have aspirations for their families and children to do well as their fellow caste members or others in the neighborhood are doing. Yet, they are also aware of there financial limitations. In such a scenario getting into a credit trap is the only short-term solution available to overcome this psychological dilemma.

However, these short-term solutions become extremely burdensome beyond certain points. This not only brings in economic burden but also fear of destruction of the social image in case of failure of loan repayment or threats by the private money lending agencies. This becomes far more pressurizing if the loan was taken around or before the marriage of the kin.

Amidst these conditions, a farmer gradually distances oneself from the family relatives. Local rural politics fails to address any of these questions and concerns of farmers. Overall, this poses a crisis of recognition. The whole effort to join the consumerist society, to overspend in the marriage or buy ‘branded clothes’ was to get recognition but what occurs is the opposite. By committing suicides and making a public statement through this is an attempt to express the psychological burden of this dilemma and prevailing social and state apathy towards this phenomenon. This is also an effort to make people around realize that an individual non-existent farmer also exists and deserves attention.

These changes can be seen as producing similar fundamental structural changes explained by Emile Durkheim and Karl Polanyi. Durkheim’s (1897) study on suicides and the fundamental behavioral changes he was refereeing to, if placed with Karl Polanyi’s (1944) arguments in the ‘great transformation’ wherein he was referring to the rural and agrarian transformation the English society had witnessed, explain the psychological implications of large scale structural restructuring produced by state actions. The emerging changes in parts of Rajasthan need to be understood in a similar manner.

In such complex processes of socio-economic change, merely focusing on the loan waiver or focusing on increasing income may not be a very effective state policy. The state needs to intervene proactively to regulate the rise of new private players and expand and improve public sector institutions. Besides, the state also has to promote the public sector to ensure equal accessibility of health, education and community services to all sections of rural-agrarian society. There is a need to have more holistic and inclusive policy interventions aiming at positive social change not only in the rural but also in the newly emerging urban or semi-urban centers. The contemporary Indian great transformation has to take into account these new realities of psychological stress situations in these areas else it is not far that we would here cases of suicides more frequently in newer regions of India.

(An edited version of this write up was also published as a letter to the editor in Economic and Political Weekly)