Makhan Singh, whose son Gurpreet Singh committed suicide last June, visits his farm in village Sukhanwala of district Faridkot
Credit: Cheena Kapoor
Like thousands of other farmers in India’s Punjab, Gurpreet Singh was never likely to become a rich man. He had one acre of wheat to his name – barely enough to scrape a living for his family in Sukhanwala village, where agriculture has been a way of life for centuries.
Last year, though, unseasonal rain floods destroyed his entire crop. Already some £2,000 in debt, the prospect of having to borrow yet more money was more than he could bear. Instead, he rang his wife from the fields one day and told her he was about to kill himself by drinking pesticide.
"He told her to talk to him now, to say goodbye, and to look after their two daughters,” said Gurpreet’s father, Makhan Singh, 70, tears streaming down his face. "We reached the farm and tried to rush him to hospital, but he died on the way.”
Tragic as it is, Mr Singh’s story is far from unusual in the Punjab – especially in his home district of Malwa, where most farmers have only a few acres of land, and life is always lived close to the margins.
In the past 20 years, some 3,300 destitute farmers have committed suicide in Malwa – so many, that in some local villages, nearly everyone has a tale of a relative who has died.
What was always a hard life, though, has become ever harder since 2016, when the cost of land rentals and farm supplies began to rise far faster than crop prices. Roughly half of all the farm suicides in Malwa have taken place in the past four years.
Some farmers’ leaders link the rises in farm supply prices on government measures to liberalise the farm economy. They warn the suicide figures are likely to rise even higher thanks to newly-proposed agricultural laws, which will scrap fixed-price guarantees for crops in government markets.
Sharanjeet Singh's wife sits under their wedding photo
Credit: Cheena Kapoor
Critics claim the laws – known as the Farm Bills – will allow large private corporates to dictate the price of produce, squeezing farmers’ meagre profits even further.
“The new laws are totally anti-farmer and instead will benefit the private sector, who will start buying up land from impoverished farmers,” said Dr Balvinder Singh, the chief agricultural officer in Punjab.
“The condition for farmers is only going to get worse and again, we will see a big rise in suicides.”
Mr Singh says there are 400 houses in Sukhanwala alone, 90 per cent of which owe at least £2,000 to micro-finance companies and money-lenders. Local officials are seldom sympathetic to their plight, he claimed.
“A day before Gurpreet died, some of the local officials came and refused to allow us to drain the water through a nearby road, he didn’t sleep that night from the stress,” he said.
“The Indian government knows what is happening on the ground but they don’t want to do anything about it, they don’t care. Gurpreet was always a happy person, but he thought suicide would be a way out for our family from the debt.”
A neighbour added: “Gurpreet’s wife has been in a permanent depression since his death, she barely speaks, it is like she has become a corpse.”
Similar price-liberalisation laws have already been implemented in the Indian state of Bihar. Farmers there say that the sale price of 100kg of rice has fallen from ₹1900 (£19) to ₹1100 (£11).
Late last month, hundreds of thousands of farmers from Punjab and other neighbouring states marched on India’s capital, New Delhi.
Farmers listen to their leaders during a day-long hunger strike at the Delhi- Haryana border, outskirts of New Delhi
Credit: Manish Swarup /AP
With roughly two-thirds of Indians working in agriculture, the protests attracted nationwide sympathy. On November 26, some 250 million people took part in a nationwide strike in support of farmers, the largest demonstration in world history.
Around 500,000 farmers are now planning a longer-term protest in New Delhi, travelling there in their tractors and packing enough wheat, vegetables and clothes to sustain themselves for months.
“The government is not listening to our demands, these are laws that we do not want at all,” said Rana Rajvir Singh, a farmer’s trade union member, at the main protest site at Singhu on Delhi’s outskirts.
“We are all ready to get shot by the Delhi Police, rather than return home without the laws being repealed. We have already told our families we might die here.”
Indian farmers shout anti-government slogans on a blocked highway during a protest against the new farm laws in December 2020
Credit: Yawar Nazir /Getty
Back in the Malwa region, Sunita Garg, a general secretary of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is unrepentant.
“We are ready to make amendments to the Farm Bills but we absolutely won’t roll them back, we’ll continue with the table talks,” she said.
Ms Garg, who owns several factories in Delhi, spoke to The Telegraph from the lounge of her lavish home, where the sofas have Louis Vuitton cushions. Outside, meanwhile, six elderly farmers were bedding down on the street for their 79th successive night in protest.
Only ten per cent of protesting farmers had genuine grievances, she insisted – claiming that the remainder were being funded by China, the United Kingdom and unspecified terrorist groups.
“It is just an attempt to malign the image of Narendra Modi [the Indian Prime Minister] and to go against the BJP,” she said. The new bills, she insisted, would boost farmers’ profits by 50 per cent.
Sunita Garg, General Secretary of the Bhartiya Janata Party in Kot Kapura area of district Faridkot in Punjab
Credit: Cheena Kapoor
Six rounds of talks between farmers’ union leaders and the authorities have proved unsuccessful, with farmers refusing to compromise.
On Thursday, the Indian Supreme Court refused a plea from the Indian government to ban the demonstrations and recognised the farmers’ right to protest.
Meanwhile, back in the village of Sukhanwala, Mr Singh fears for his family’s survival.
Despite promises from the Indian Government to waive his grieving family’s debt, no payment has been made to the microfinance companies he is indebted to.
“Our only concern is running our livelihoods, we don’t want to become rich or become politicians," he said. "We don’t expect luxury, just roll back the laws.”
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