ISSUES FACED BY TENANT FARMERS IN TELANGANA

Farmer Suicides:

There are more than 75 percent of the farmers who committed suicide in Telangana during the
last four years were tenant farmers, is concluded in a study performed by Rythu Swarajya Vedika
(RSV), a non-governmental organisation.

The study focused mainly on land ownership and tenancy in relation to farmer suicides. Of the
total 3,500 farmers, almost 20 percent, i.e., 692 families of victims who committed suicide
between June 2014 and April 2018. Telangana stands second in the country in the number of
farmer suicides.

The study revealed that,

Private Loans Pressure

On the pattern of debt, which pushes the tenant farmers to consider suicide, the study found that
the access to bank loans was very limited, especially among marginal and landless. Thus, most of
them are dependent on private loans to meet their cultivation needs. While 265 out of the 520
tenant farmers who committed suicide reported no outstanding bank loans, they had taken close
to Rs 4 lakh on average from private lenders. This reveals that the pressure of the private loans
played a significant role. This also suggests that these victims did not even avail the benefits
from the government measures such as loan waivers.

The study found that the average bank loan among landless farmers was only Rs 11,000, whereas
the average outstanding private loan was Rs 3.64 lakhs.

Cropping Pattern

In terms of cropping pattern, 81.4 percent of the farm suicide families cultivated mainly cotton,
and many of them also cultivated multiple crops on different parts of their land, followed by 36
per cent, who cultivated paddy, 32 per cent maize and 10 percent, who cultivated red gram.

Social Category

In terms of social category, it is found that the highest percentage of farmer suicides were by
Backward Castes – 61 per cent, followed by Scheduled Castes (17 per cent) and Scheduled
Tribes (11 per cent).

Rythu Bandhu Scheme

RSV also surveyed three villages in Telangana to find out the benefits received by the farmers
from the state government’s support schemes and the state of tenant farmers in particular. The
villages are Pottipalli in Sadashivpet mandal in Sangareddy district, Itikyala in Laksettipeta
mandal of Mancherial district and Gimma in Jainath mandal in Adilabad district.

Telangana government has recently launched Rythu Bandhu Scheme – farmers Investment
support Scheme – according to which, Rs 8000 per acre per year will be given to the agricultural
land owners. However, tenant farmers across the state have led protests demanding the
government to include them into the scheme. However, the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samiti
government under K Chandrashekar Rao denied to do so.

While the state government has been asserting that the tenant farmers are less than 20 per cent, in
the survey of the three villages, it has been revealed that in each village, about 25 to 40 per cent
of households are tenant farmers who have been leasing in land for cultivation.

In the three villages surveyed, it is found that the majority of the agricultural land owners are
involved in other occupations. Only 15.5 per cent of the land owners have agriculture as their
occupation, while 50 per cent of them are either employees or businesspersons and about 10 per
cent are old-aged persons leasing their land. Furthermore, it is found that about 60 percent of the
landowners leasing out their lands are living outside their villages.

Despite the Rythu Bandhu Scheme offering investment support, it is found that the landowners
did not even reduce the leasing rent for tenant farmers.

TENANT FARMING LAWS IN TELANGANA:

Andhra Pradesh (Telangana area) tenancy and agricultural lands act, 1950
The Telangana government has decided to amend this act to provide tenant farmers access to
institutional credit. Majorly, lack of this access had been driving farmers to suicide in many
cases. Basically, tenant farmers are excluded from the formal financial sector because they don’t
have land titles.1 Though the existing act for tenant farmers in Telangana mandates a written
lease agreement between tenant and land holder and requires a copy of every lease to be
presented to the tahsildar concerned, many land owners don’t enter into written agreements
fearing, they might lose the right to their land if the lease is recorded.

1 https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/current-affairs/051216/telangana-loans-to-get-easy-for-tenant-
farmers.html