A Psycho-financial Experiment

Farmer suicides in India and particularly in Maharashtra is now a so commonly discussed issue that few people bother about it these days. The official reports of the government show that average of about 13,500 farmers die every year because of suicide in India (out of total 134 million souls). Just to put it in comparative perspective, during the Uttarakhand landslides, the worst disaster since 2004, the death toll was over 4000 people.

Due to my work with the non profits engaged in agriculture based livelihoods in Vidarbha region, I could get an opportunity to understand this issue first hand. Many of the times there is a psychological distress prior to the suicidal action. During my discussions with farmers this pattern did come up in fact. Farmers reported being entirely dependent on rain-fed agriculture and their rainy season crops were giving one time lump sum income. There was no other income source for the rest of the year. The expenditures were higher than incomes and the income source was single and insecure. That was causing tremendous stress.

Few years later when I started doing free lance work, I found myself in similar situation. The income was lower and uncertain and expenditure was higher and regular. I was digging deep into my savings and debt was piling up. Every day I had to think of the money that was to be raised for the expenditure I was going to have. The stress had built up a lot and it was affecting my decision making. One fine morning I recalled the simple income and expenditure exercise which we used to perform in the villages. I could easily apply that to my own situation.

For four consecutive months I kept tract of every rupee that was being spent. Income was scarce and sporadic any way, but it was also recorded. Then it got entered in a spreadsheet and it presented a pattern. The solution was seen. It gave me a minimum monthly expenditure figure which could not be escaped. I could also realise some opportunities of saving on costs and identify peaks in the requirement of money during the year. It gave me an expenditure plan. The next steps were easy.

With the available funds, what I have created is a series of bank deposits which mature on a specific date in a month and do not get reinvested automatically. They work like a salary and are just available there to meet whatever expenditure that is to be done. Any excess money available goes into savings. Now with expenditure side taken care for few months, the stress gets reduced, decision making is improved and what I can completely focus on is raising my uncertain income.

Most of the current programmes for farmers facing psycho-social distress are working on the income side and that too with the interventions which are tangential in nature like improving yield of crops, making credit easily available, and introducing diversity of crops. The uncertainty of income in agriculture can’t be escaped however. I remember talking with some illiterate but smart ladies in Ghana, who knew that at certain season of the year the expenditure had to happen but had no access to banks. What they simply did was to keep a certain number of chicken from their flocks available for sale at that particular time. I think with the access to banks and 4G networks, we can do a lot with our farmers.

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