No one else knew that the steps Sailu Kandhi made through his parched two-acre plot of cotton last August were to be his last. The 45-year-old farmer should have been celebrating the birthday of his granddaughter, but instead he took a rope and hanged himself from a tree.
The cause of his despair was the 150 000 rupee (about R25 320) loan he had taken out to pay for his daughter’s dowry. When the rains failed to arrive, the interest payments — at the usurious rates of local money lenders — became too much to bear.
”Father had sold half our land to pay for my sister’s marriage. Now he is gone and we have nothing left but empty land and a big debt,” said Padma, Kandhi’s younger daughter, outside the family’s mud-and-thatch home in the village of Ragammagudem, nestling deep in central India’s cotton belt.
Her father’s plight is not unusual — farmer suicides register once a fortnight in this south-western slice of India. But the simmering rural discontent is having large repercussions in the country’s general elections, a month-long process which ends this week.
The reason, say political pundits, is that India’s villages have been left behind as the country’s urban centres — built on information technology exports — march ahead. The digital divide between rich and poor is fast becoming a chasm, and nowhere is this more evident than in Mr Kandhi’s home state of Andhra Pradesh.
Opinion polls indicate that the state’s chief minister, Chandrababu Naidu, will be ejected from office tomorrow after nine years in power. Although Mr Naidu leads a regional party, the Telugu Desam, he is also a force on the national stage.
His 29 MPs provide vital support to the ruling Hindu nationalist government.
But more importantly, Naidu has attracted the ”three Bills” that middle-class India reveres: Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, and the dollar bill. The gleaming concrete and glass towers that dominate the state’s capital, Hyderabad, are a testament to business’s love affair with Naidu.
Multinationals such as Dell and Microsoft have set up here — helped by a 20 000 rupee government subsidy for every job created. A 32 square-kilometre plot of the city has been renamed Cyberabad, replete with 24-hour electricity and its own gun-toting SUV-driving police force.
Clinton has publicly lauded the chief minister for his modernising tendencies. There is public disquiet that a change of government would be bad for business.
”There are concerns that we will have a new government,” said Rohit Kumar, the head of Wipro, one of India’s biggest software companies in the state. ”Mr Naidu gets things done. If this process slows down then it will be a big worry.”
In the sprawling shopping malls that line the highways of Hyderabad, there appears unanimous support for the chief minister from young, newly moneyed voters.
”Mr Naidu has done so much for the city. Just look at all the shops. We did not have this until a few years ago,” said Clotilda D’Cruze, a 19-year-old business studies student who is working in a call centre from 3am to 7.30am during the summer holidays for some ”extra spending money”.
But it is Naidu’s agricultural policies that have drawn the most flak from political opponents.
His plan to change farming in Andhra Pradesh saw subsidies slashed for rice, a staple for India’s farmers, and GM crops introduced. He also raised prices for electricity, which the Congress party suggests should be given to farmers for free – something Naidu says leads to wastage.
The World Bank backed Naidu’s programme with cheap loans to the value of £1,2-billion, as did Britain’s Department for International Development, which made a grant of £67-million.
GM crops
The reality of such changes can be seen just a few hours drive from Hyderabad. Under tamarind trees in the village of Wanaparthi, Somakka Kavide explains that promises of a bumper crop from Monsanto’s GM Bt Cotton proved to be empty.
”It was an OK crop. But I have not made any profits, because I had to use more pesticides for this Bt cotton,” said Mrs Kavide, who supports her husband and three children on two and a half hectares of land. ”Now I am 50 000 rupees in debt. I feel angry with the government because they have done nothing to help us. We get only a few hours’ electricity and there is no water. These new crops have not helped.”
Political commentators say that the agrarian crisis has been silently developing for years.
”The defeat of Chandrababu Naidu will be because he neglected farmers,” says P Haragopal, a professor of political science at the University of Hyderabad.
”Two thirds of the state’s population of 80 million depends on agriculture, and you cannot come to power without doing something for these people.”
The lack of jobs in the countryside has also provided a pool of talent for far-left Naxalite guerrillas, who came close to blowing Naidu up last year.
”The Naxalite problem is definitely getting worse, and Mr Naidu’s solution to try to crush them does not appear to be working,” said Haragopal.
Naidu remains unrepentant. ”We have to make the leap from a rural-based society to a service-sector one,” he said.
”We have to educate people so that they understand the benefits of GM crops and use technology so that farming becomes more efficient.”
Naidu acknowledges that farmers have suffered, but says that if he is re-elected, the administration will focus on the agricultural economy.
”My next five years will be about irrigation and power. But people will have to pay for these. If you can afford cable television then you can afford to pay for electricity.”
However, Naidu’s opponents say that although he is loved by foreign companies and lionised by the World Bank, he will be rejected by the voters.
The Congress party has garnered support from populist measures such as free electricity for farmers, and by backing moves to divide the state into two.
”Mr Naidu was only interested in creating hype,” said Y S R Reddy, the Congress party leader in Andhra Pradesh. ”We want to do something tangible in the interests of the people.” – Guardian Unlimited Â