Farmers’ suicides as an indicator of the agrarian transformation in rural India

Abstract

The article is a review of the book by the Associate Professor of the Center for Political Studies of the Institute of Social Sciences of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (Delhi, India) Sudhir Kumar Sutar Dilapidation of the Rural: Development, Politics and Farmer Suicides in India (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). The book considers the problems which the Indian peasants face under the state-driven transition from traditional rural community to agrarian capitalism. The book combines philosophical, sociological and political analysis of the causes and factors of the high number of suicides among medium-sized and small Indian farmers in recent decades. Suicides are the most striking manifestation of the social consequences of the capitalist development in the traditional communal peasant village. Among other consequences, the author considers rural social differentiation, growth of individualism and disunity, destruction of community institutions of support and social control, political protests up to riots, alcoholism, drug addiction, and rising crime rate. Thus, the inevitable economic reforms require compensatory measures of social policy.