Christian Aid's report on Indian suicides

By Alex Singleton | 16 May 2005

Christian Aid has come out with another emotive report today saying that liberalization policies are causing farmers in India to commit suicide. India has been liberalizing in a major way since 1991, but the latest figures available from the World Health Organization seem to suggest that India's male suicide rate is lower than the USA, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Hong Kong, the Czech Republic, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Switzerland and so on. The most recent figures WHO has for India are only from 1998, but this helps us get some perspective. Even if you take Christian Aid's 2004 suicide figure for Andhra Pradesh, which admittedly only counts farmers, that still suggests a relatively low suicide rate when you consider that there is a population of 76 million people.

The report fails to explain why the 2004 figure specifically is abnormally high - in previous years and in the first three months of 2005 the suicide rate is much lower. Could the fact that Andhra Pradesh experienced droughts unprecedented in its recent history have something to do with driving farmers to suicide?

It is totally regrettable when anyone commits suicide, but the Christian Aid report misses the point. Christian Aid ignores all the millions of lives saved from starvation in India because of liberalization. If saving lives were the point of the report, Christian Aid should be firmly backing liberalization. This report is about backing up ideology.

When the sort of policies Christian Aid advocates were followed in the 1960s and 1970s, India's economy stagnated and living standards fell. Many starved. Now, by following liberalizing policies, India's economy is experiencing some of the world's fastest economic growth. Christian Aid is effectively saying that India should grow more slowly. This would not be in the interests of poverty-relief.

Christian Aid seems to blame the suicides on Britain's Department for International Development for its support of Andhra Pradesh's privatization policies. Yet the report says the suicides are by farmers, not by workers at newly-privatized companies. Indeed, because India taxpayers are paying for fewer loss-making state industries, the government has had more money to spend on its priorities - including on helping farmers.