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Effects of Drought and Flood on Farmer Suicides in Indian States: An Empirical Analysis

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Abstract

The study examines the effects of drought and flood on farmer suicides using state-level panel data from 17 Indian states for the period 1995–2011. The empirical estimates based on unconditional fixed effect Negative Binomial model show that while drought significantly increases farmer suicides, flood has no direct impact on the same. The results also show that incidence of farmer suicides is higher in cotton producing states of India because these states experience frequent drought conditions. Furthermore, our findings reveal that states with high levels of rural poverty experience a higher number of farmer suicides as a result of frequent occurrence of droughts and moderate floods. To obtain robust results, fixed effect Poisson model has been used in the study. Overall, the findings are consistent with unconditional fixed effect Negative Binomial model. Hence, in light of the results obtained by this study, it is important for the government to devise suitable policies such as loan waiver for poor farmers, compulsory crop insurance scheme, improving farm income through revamping of agricultural marketing policies, creating public awareness among farmers and providing micro-irrigation facilities as well as introducing alternative cropping pattern in the drought prone areas in order to reduce the occurrence of farmer suicides.

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Notes

  1. India lost around 12% of federal revenue due to natural disasters during the period 1996–2000 (Financing Rapid Onset Natural Disaster Losses in India: A Risk Management Approach, The World Bank, August 2003, Page 8).

  2. Author’s calculation from (http://farmer.gov.in/Drought/Droughtreport.aspx), between 2000 and 2011, 17 states experienced 69 droughts. Out of this, Tamil Nadu experienced 9 times, while Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka faced 8 times each. However, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra faced 7 times each. Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Odisha and Utter Pradesh faced 4 times each, while West Bengal and Kerala faced 2 times each and rest of states faced less than 2 times.

  3. Employment and Unemployment reports (National Sample Survey, 38th and 68th rounds)

  4. www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/sainath/over-2000-fewer-farmers-every-day/article4674190.ece

  5. Here we have calculated farmer suicides per million of rural population for the period 1995 to 2011 in 17 states. The state-wise and year-wise agrarian population data is not available in India. Therefore, we have normalized farmer suicide by rural population because 64% of rural workforce depends on rural agriculture and allied sectors (68th round NSS, 2011).

  6. At present, India has 29 states (including Telangana). Telangana state is recently formed from Andhra Pradesh in 2014. Total farmer suicides stand at 94% in the major 17 states and the remaining 6% of farmer suicides occur in rest of the states.

  7. We estimate log linear OLS model using Eq. (1) with drought dummy. The estimates are shown in Model-3 in Table 9. The impact of drought on farmer suicides is calculated in percentage terms. The coefficient of drought dummy is 0.278 (shown in Model 3 of Table 9) and we take [exp (0.278)-1]*100 = 32.04%.

  8. In this analysis, we have used dummy variables to indicate states producing wheat and cotton because 10 out of 17 states use 99.9% land for cotton production and 9 out of 17 states use 99.23% land for wheat production. For example, the percentage of cotton area estimated = cotton cultivated area for 10 states over total cotton cultivated area for 17 states in the year 2011 (Land Use Statistics at a Glance, 2014). Therefore, we have used the dummy variables for cotton and wheat production states instead of the area of production. The percentage figure shows that some states produce wheat and not cotton. Similarly, other states produce cotton and not wheat.

  9. In year 2011, 83% of total cotton in India was produced by five major states namely Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat. The drought prone area combining all these five states stands at 75%, while farmer suicide stands at 67% in the period 1995–2011 in these states.

  10. See Planning Commission (2014) “Report of the Expert Group to Review the Methodology for Measurement of Poverty”, Government of India.

  11. We have used Rural Head Count Ratio for the year 1999–2000 estimated by Lakdawala.

  12. We have used Rural Head Count Ratio for three years such as 2004–05, 2009–10 and 2011–12 estimated by Tendulkar.

  13. Thick rounds of Household Consumer Expenditure surveys are conducted by National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, GoI, within five years intervals, such as 1999, 2004, 2009 and 2011.

  14. We have used only four rounds of Rural Head Count Ratio (RHCR) data along with drought data compiled for those years only. The data rounds used are as follows: 55th round (1999–2000) of RHCR estimated by Lakdawala and rest of the three rounds of RHCR (61st round, 2004–05; 66th round, 2009–10; 68th round, 2011–12) are estimated by Tendulkar. Total number of observations are (17 States × 4 years = 68 observations). We have matched the drought data with RHCR data available for these four years.

  15. MGNREGS is the largest public funded program in India.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Prof. B. N. Goldar, Mr. Jagadish Prasad Sahu, Ms. Piyali Majumder, two anonymous reviewers and Editors-in-Chief Prof. Ilan Noy for giving their valuable suggestions and comments. We thank participants at 10th Doctoral Thesis Conference, IBS Hyderabad. Any remaining errors are ours.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for International Trade and Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 110067, India

    Yashobanta Parida

  2. Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Ropar, Rupnagar, India

    Devi Prasad Dash

  3. Noida, India

    Parul Bhardwaj

  4. Department of Economics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

    Joyita Roy Chowdhury

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  1. Yashobanta Parida
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Correspondence to Yashobanta Parida.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 6 Impact of drought and flood on farmer suicides: FE Poisson model
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Table 7 Farmer suicides in cotton and wheat production states: FE Poisson model
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Table 8 Impact of poverty and drought on farmer suicides: FE Poisson Model
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Table 9 Impact of drought and flood on farmer suicides: OLS model
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Table 10 Farmer suicides in cotton and wheat production states: OLS model
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Table 11 Impact of poverty and drought on farmer suicides: OLS model
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Table 12 Summary statistics of variables
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Parida, Y., Dash, D.P., Bhardwaj, P. et al. Effects of Drought and Flood on Farmer Suicides in Indian States: An Empirical Analysis. EconDisCliCha 2, 159–180 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41885-018-0023-8

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