Why farmer suicides are continuing in the Punjab & rest of India while Bangladesh has seen none in the past decade?

What a contrast?  The farmers in the Punjab, and other states in India, do not get the market price for their produce held back by the fraud of ‘Minimum Support Price’ which is way below what India pays when it imports the same commodity. Wheat is an example. The Punjab (Indian) farmers are at the mercy of the fickle ‘rain-god’ and the evil nexus of the Police and usurious money leaders – banias - who convert the debt-traps into death-traps, resulting in misery and many farmer suicides. In neighboring dirt-poor Bangladesh no farmer has died of hunger or had to commit suicide, to escape the creditor and the police in the past decade. How come?

The reason is, that an economics professor, Dr. Mohammad Yunus, 66, has changed the face of rural Bangladesh, in the past 30 years, through micro-loans distributed through his Grameen Bank and its branches. This bank does not ask for collateral guarantees for small loans to buy a sewing machine, digging a well, or buying a mobile phone, or starting a chicken farm and so on. The Grameen Bank hands out small loans on trust, and the poor in Bangladesh have proved that they are extremely trustworthy. Less than 3% there, have not so far returned their loans, while in India, in marked contrast, the total estimated 'non-performing loan' is around Rs. 90,000 crores, (yes Rs. 90, 000 crores) and a majority of these debtors are extremely rich, who build up their business empires with other people’s money. Of the Rs. 90, 000 crores the rural demand in India is Rs. 40,000 crores of which barely Rs 2,000 crores is met by banks. The remainder, Rs. 38, 000 crores is lent out by the ‘Banias’ – the usurious village money lenders.

Professor Mohammad Yunus first got involved in fighting poverty during a famine that hit Bangladesh in 1974. He found the poor totally crushed by abject poverty. He came upon the idea that very small loans could make a disproportionate difference to a poor person. His first loan consisted of the equivalent of $27 from his own pocket to women in the village of Jobra — near Chittagong University — who made bamboo furniture. It required no interest and the terms for repayment were made easy to help the borrower establish a functioning business. Previously the poor had to borrow money on very high interest rates from moneylenders, who would then tie them down into more or less permanent debt-bondage; they would make the debtors sell all their goods to them, pay interest and never have anything left to pay back the debt. Neither were traditional banks interested in making tiny loans at more reasonable interest rates to the poor, who were considered a repayment risk.

Professor Yunus’ experiment proved successful and resulted in the establishment of the Grameen Bank in 1976. Since then the Bank has issued more than US$5.1 billion to 5.3 million borrowers. To ensure repayment, the bank uses a system of ‘solidarity groups’. These small informal groups apply together for loans and its members act as co-guarantors of repayment and support one another’s efforts at economic self-advancement. In addition to micro-credit, Grameen also offers housing loans as well as financing for fisheries, irrigation, and other activities, along with other banking services such as savings. More than 96 percent of Grameen loans have gone to women, who suffer disproportionately from poverty and who are more likely than men to devote their earnings to their families. The success of the Grameen model has inspired similar efforts throughout the developing world and even in industrialized nations, including the United States. In fact the Grameen Bank micro-credit system has been replicated in more than 40 countries in Asia, Africa, Central and South America..

The three-decades-long activities of Dr. Yunus and his Grameen bank in Bangladesh were also noticed by the Nobel Peace Committee which has awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize to Dr Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh and his Grameen Bank a few days ago. Besides the coveted medal, both will receive equal half-shares of 10 million Swedish kronas (slightly more than US$1.3 million). The statement issued by the Nobel Peace Committee, on this occasion, asserts that the peace prize has been given to Dr. Muhammad Yonus and the Grameen bank, “for their efforts to create economic and social development from below”. Proceeding along these lines, the statement makes a direct connection between the elimination of poverty and consolidation of peace. It is indeed a great day for Bangladesh that one of its citizens, Dr. Muhammad Yunus, has qualified to win the coveted Noble prize. The foundations for the Nobel prize were laid in 1895 by one, Alfred Bernhard Nobel, who was born in Stockholm Sweden in 1833 (died 1896) who was a  scientist, inventor of dynamite, entrepreneur, author and pacifist, when he wrote his last will, which left much of his wealth to the establishment of the Nobel Prize. Since 1901, the Nobel Prize has been honoring men and women from all corners of the globe for outstanding achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and for work in peace. Since then 766 individuals and 19 organizations have been awarded the Nobel prize.

Dr. Yunus was born in 1940 in the village of Bathua, in Hathazari, Chittagong in a family of jewellers. Yunus studied at his village school in the early years. Later, the family moved to Chittagong. In 1957, he enrolled in the department of Economics at Dhaka University where he did his MA in 1957. After teaching for a few years, he went to the USA from where he obtained his PhD in economics from Vanderbilt University. We salute him.

When one reads Indian newspapers one hears of India stealing a march in the world of steels. After the Mittal Steels had taken over a Ukranian steel company in October 2005 and the Luxemberg giant Arcelor some months ago they have emerged as the leading producers of steel in the world, with an annual output of 109.7 million tonnes. Now the Tatas have taken over the Anglo-Dutch steel giant, Corus Group, to emerge as the 5th largest steel producer in the world. In the last six years the Tatas have taken over some foreign concerns, the foremost among whom are the UK's Tetley, Singapore's Natsteel, and 30% of the shares of the US-based Glaceau, which has brought prosperity to maybe 10% (about one hundred million) of the population which is enjoying Western standards of life. As a result, more Indians now go out on foreign tours every year than foreigners come to India. But, the hundreds of millions of rural/urban poor – who form the overwhelming majority - is the reality that is India.

The dehumanizing poverty of India’s countryside was brought out by the fact that around 300 farmers in Vidarbh chose to commit suicide, in the last few months even after Prime minister Manmohan Singh sanctioned an aid grant of Rs 3,500 crores for farmers' relief there. Obviously, the rampant corruption for which India is notorious ensured that hardly anything reached those, for whom the aid grant money was meant. In the last six years India has been claiming that it has succeeded in reducing the number of those below the poverty line, i.e living at less than one US dollar a day, to 29% (over two hundred and ninety million) of over a billion population, forgetting that another group of Indians – about 40% - live on less than US$.2 a day. One can well imagine in what hell over 70% (700 million) Indians are still living. About 50% Indians have no access to proper medicine and cannot afford proper treatment when sick, and around 60% children are under-nourished while over 70% (over 700 million) of the rural and urban population has no access to latrines. The Sikh Homeland of Punjab ought to take a lesson from plucky Bangladesh and go after the money-lender (Bania) to put an end to rural misery and farmer suicides which shame us all.

In an interview given last week to Outlook magazine, after he was nominated for the Nobel prize, Professor Mohammad Yonus ‘said a book’ when he said that, “The Grameen Bank won it. We (Bangladesh) have taken many things from the world, now we have given something to the world, a model to build a poverty-free society.” (>http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20061030&fname=Micro+%28F%29&sid=3 <) How long are the poor (Over 700 million) going to tolerate such exploitation and discrimination when every evening the TV screen tells them how the affluent (less than 100 million) live and waste. Naturally many of them take to common crimes and many join the Naxalite rebellion which has spread to nearly half of rural India. A society that cannot save its poor will soon have no safe place for its rich. There is a lesson here for the Sikh Homeland of Punjab, captive in the Indian ‘map’ since 15 August 1947, when an exhausted Imperial Britain quit the subcontinent in a hurry after the end of World War II, where corrupt politicians rule the roost without a thought for the poor or our future generations. We urge all political parties to invite the Grameen Bank to setup branches in the Punjab so we can put an end to farmer suicides.