Every hour, somewhere in India, a farmer ends his or her life. The NCRB 2023 report estimates that 10,786 cultivators and agricultural labourers died by suicide last year—6.3 per cent of all suicides in the country. On paper, this represents a 4.5 per cent decline from 2022. But behind the cold statistics is a stubborn crisis that refuses to subside, particularly in Punjab and, in a different form, in Haryana. What these two agrarian states reveal is that the epidemic of farmer suicides is less a string of personal tragedies than the symptom of deep-rooted structural fault lines.
Debt and Desperation
The single most pervasive factor is debt. Crop loans, non-institutional borrowing from commission agents, microfinance traps, and additional liabilities for health, marriages, and education all pile onto farm families. Studies consistently show that a vast majority of farm suicides are linked to indebtedness. The logic is simple: costs—whether of seed, fertiliser, diesel or hired labour—are paid upfront and rise year after year. Revenues arrive late, uncertain, and often eroded by middlemen or delayed procurement. The mismatch between monthly obligations and seasonal inflows is a ticking time bomb, and when climate or market shocks strike, the bomb goes off.
The cost–price squeeze has become structural. Input costs grow faster than crop prices; market linkages remain weak; and government procurement, where it exists, is riddled with delays. The result is a pervasive sense of insecurity, with each bad season pushing farmers closer to insolvency.
Punjab: Prosperity and Pain
Punjab, paradoxically, is one of India’s richer farming states. Its farmers earn among the highest average monthly incomes in the country. Yet behind this prosperity is a mountain of liabilities. Reports estimate that nearly 89 per cent of farm households in Punjab are in debt, with each family owing close to ₹3 lakh. The total outstanding farm debt in the state now runs into over ₹1 lakh crore. The Kisan Credit Card portfolio continues to swell, suggesting that exposure per borrower is only increasing.
This is not merely about statistics; it is about structure. Punjab’s agriculture remains trapped in a paddy–wheat monoculture. Ninety-three per cent of cultivated land is devoted to these two crops. Free power for irrigation, along with an assured procurement system, has entrenched this cycle. The consequences are disastrous: groundwater tables falling by half a metre every year, soil degradation from excessive chemical use, and rising energy costs. Farmers cannot diversify because alternative crops lack assured markets or government support. When procurement falters—as it did in the 2024–25 paddy season—working capital chains collapse.
The crisis has a public-health dimension too. The Malwa region, notorious for its “cancer train” ferrying patients to Rajasthan, faces high cancer rates. Families often borrow afresh to pay for healthcare, pushing them further into the debt trap. In Punjab, debt is not merely a farm-financing tool; it has become a substitute social safety net.
Haryana: A Labourer’s Crisis
Haryana presents a very different picture. The bulk of farm suicides here are not by cultivators but by agricultural labourers. In 2023, the state recorded 266 farm-sector suicides, of which only one was by a farmer. Agricultural workers, often landless, face sporadic employment, wage volatility, and minimal access to institutional credit. Their dependence on microfinance companies or informal lenders exposes them to exploitative interest rates and harsh recovery practices.
Here, the crisis is not monoculture or MSP dependence but the absence of basic social security. Illnesses, accidents, or seasonal joblessness are enough to tip families into hopelessness. Rising Kisan Credit Card debt across Haryana indicates stress across the agricultural economy, but it is the landless who suffer most silently.
Undercounting the Crisis in Punjab
On paper, Punjab’s tally has fallen: from 302 suicides in 2019 to 257 in 2020, 270 in 2021, 204 in 2022 (157 cultivators and 47 labourers), and 174 in 2023 (141 cultivators and 33 labourers). Yet farmer organisations strongly contest these figures. A survey by three Punjab universities in 2016 documented more than 16,000 suicides between 2000 and 2015, averaging over 1,000 annually—far higher than NCRB reports.
The discrepancies stem partly from definitional gaps—whether someone is counted as a “farmer,” “labourer,” or excluded altogether—and partly from stigma, with families often reluctant to register suicides. The danger is obvious: if the baseline is understated, relief is under-targeted. Policy made on incomplete data risks missing those most in need.
Punjab’s Ex Gratia: Help for Borrowers, Not the Penniless
Punjab’s relief framework pays ₹3 lakh as ex gratia to the next of kin only when a suicide is formally certified as debt-related—typically after the authorities verify outstanding loans with banks, cooperatives, or commission agents. By design, this leaves out the suicides in the poorest households that never qualified for credit and therefore cannot furnish “proof of debt,” even when distress is evident. In practice, this gatekeeping has excluded many families from the safety net or forced them into long verification queues, effectively punishing the most vulnerable for being too poor to borrow.
At the same time, officials point out that a few cases have surfaced where families have attempted to pass off natural deaths as debt-related suicides by fabricating suicide notes. Such incidents, though limited, have made revenue authorities and the police more cautious, leading to lengthier verification processes. The unfortunate outcome is that some genuine cases are delayed indefinitely or denied outright, further compounding the suffering of bereaved families.
Climate as a Multiplier
If debt is the root, climate change is the accelerant. Once-in-a-decade events—floods, droughts, heatwaves—are now striking almost every season. For farmers already on the edge, these shocks can be fatal. The irony is sharpest in Punjab, where farmers grow water-guzzling paddy in a semi-arid region, only to see their fields flooded by unseasonal rains. The future, without urgent climate adaptation, promises greater volatility and deeper despair.
The Way Forward: Debt and Risk Reset
What, then, must change? Piecemeal relief will not suffice. Periodic loan waivers or incremental MSP hikes amount to little more than firefighting. The crisis calls for structural reform—a reset that simultaneously addresses debt, risk, and sustainability.
I had once analysed the issue primarily from a legal perspective in The Hindustan Times. But today, it is clear that law is only one lens. To tackle this continuing menace, we must acknowledge the interplay of multiple causes: economic compulsions, policy distortions, ecological degradation, social obligations, and the absence of credible safety nets. Only by viewing the problem through all these perspectives can we begin to craft lasting solutions.
Debt Restructuring and Relief: Create time-bound state-level Debt Relief Commissions with powers to restructure farm loans, extend moratoriums, and prevent coercive recoveries during distress. Formalise protections for tenants and sharecroppers by extending institutional credit access through farmer-producer organisations or Panchayat-backed guarantees.
Diversification with Assured Procurement: Move beyond wheat and paddy by guaranteeing procurement for alternative crops like maize, pulses and oilseeds. Diversification must be underwritten by infrastructure—storage, processing, marketing—and a phased procurement policy.
Water and Energy Reform: Replace blanket subsidies with direct benefit transfers to farmers, decoupling income support from wasteful water and power use. Promote micro-irrigation, canal modernisation, and aquifer budgeting, so conservation becomes part of the profit equation.
Climate Resilience: Build district-level parametric insurance schemes for floods, droughts, and heat stress that pay out automatically within days. Scale up climate-smart seeds and agronomic practices through local cooperatives.
Social Security Nets for Labourers: Haryana’s agricultural workers need predictable incomes and protection. A mix of seasonal public works, portable health cover, accident insurance, and regulated microfinance could shield them from the worst.
Health–Debt Firewall: For high-burden districts, set up interest-free health credit lines and expand Ayushman Bharat coverage to include cancer and chronic illnesses. Without insulating households from medical shocks, any debt relief will only be temporary.
Transparent Data and Quick Relief: Mandate real-time death audits by agriculture and revenue officials, coupled with immediate ex gratia payments and family support. Credible enumeration will also force governments to confront the true scale of the problem.
A Moral and Political Imperative
The persistence of farm suicides, despite decades of interventions, is an indictment of India’s agricultural policy. Punjab and Haryana—once celebrated as breadbaskets—now illustrate the exhaustion of a model that prioritised short-term food security over long-term sustainability. Farmers, whether smallholders in Punjab or landless labourers in Haryana, are paying the price for systemic neglect.
Ultimately, farmer suicides are not just about economics but about dignity. They reflect the collapse of systems—financial, environmental, social—that should have protected those who feed the nation. If India cannot guarantee security and hope to its farmers, the consequences will be felt far beyond the fields—in food inflation, rural unrest, and social fracture.
The crisis is solvable, but only if policymakers recognise it as a structural failure requiring structural solutions. Anything less will be another cycle of announcements, another season of despair, and another set of names added quietly to the tragic roll call of India’s farming dead.