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India's suicide epidemic is blamed on the British
By agencies
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Monday, 16 May 2005, 19:30 IST
NEW DELHI: Free trade development strategies designed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank has devastated India and left its farmers worse off, a British aid group said in a report released Monday.
The hardline policies of liberalization and privatization, backed by Britain and other Western governments, have led to a suicide "epidemic" among Indian farmers and inflicted terrible social costs, Christian Aid said.
In its report, the London-based group urged Prime Minister Tony Blair to use Britain's temporary presidency of the G8 group of leading industrial countries and, from July, of the European Union to "bring about a radical change of direction" in development policy.
"It is a scandal that the British government has backed policies and pumped British taxpayers' money into schemes, which have contributed to poor Indian farmers killing themselves and Indian workers being laid off in huge numbers," Christian Aid director, Daleep Mukarji, said in a statement.
Three case studies in the report illustrate the costs of what the group termed the "free market credo": in India, the crop farmers are driven to suicidal despair; in Ghana, it has crushed poultry producers and threatened democratic institutions; and in Jamaica sugar cane production has plummeted, sending women into drug-running and prostitution.
When the IMF and World Bank stepped in to help India in 1991, they encouraged the Government to devalue the rupee in a bid to boost exports, while farmers were told to produce cash crops for export, like cotton and sugar, at the expense of staple crops like rice and wheat.
But the move pushed farmers into debt, as they borrowed money to pay for seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, water and power while state subsidies on fertilizers and other needed products were cut.
Meanwhile, liberal banking reforms meant that interest rates grew unchecked, making it harder to get loans and easier to have property seized when farmers could not clear debts.
Emphasis on exports, of both cash crops and staple foods, led to a sharp decline in food stocks for domestic consumption and increased hunger at home, Christian Aid said.
Furthermore, under IMF-inspired measures, India gradually withdrew measures protecting its market from cheap, subsidized foreign palm oil, which in turn caused the crash of India's production of oilseed.
"So debt rises, heaping misery on poor farmers to such an extent that many take what they see as the only way out: suicide," the report concluded.
In the state of Andhra Pradesh, suicide rose from 200 in 1999 to 2,115 last year, with nearly 4,400 suicides recorded since 1998, according to a survey quoted by the group.
Britain played its part in worsening the farmers' plight, investing massively in Andhra Pradesh's development and hiring the right-wing free-market Adam Smith Institute to help privatize state-run corporations, it said.
Christian Aid called on Blair's government to bar British aid from being tied to development policies focused on liberalization and privatization, saying its link to the crises detailed in the report was "a source of regret and shame".