Research Topic

Over the past two decades, declining agricultural growth and rising cultivation costs have diminished farmers' incomes across India. Moreover, large scale adoption of commercial farming has amplified farmers' credit needs, leading to widespread credit defaults. Consequently, small and marginal Indian farmers have been compelled to borrow largely from informal sources (e.g. moneylenders) at exorbitant interest rates, thus plunging themselves into a relentless debt trap. The acute agrarian distress due to indebtedness and other socio-economic factors has led to an alarming spate of farmers' suicides in several states (e.g. Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, and Karnataka) since the mid-1990s, including the prosperous state of Punjab. Although some empirical studies have explored the link between agrarian distress, indebtedness and farmers' suicides for various states, such studies are rare for Punjab. This rigorous empirical study examines the major determinants of growing agrarian distress and indebtedness in Punjab, and analyzes the relationship between farmers' suicides and indebtedness, by using field survey data from Punjab.