Wardha District

Wardha District falls within the Nagpur Division of Maharashtra, India. It is considered part of the Vidharbha Region. The district is 6,309 square kilometers and in 2011 it had a population of 1,296,157 and a population density of 205 people per km2. As of 2011, literacy in the district was 92.27% among males and 81.89% among females, higher than the literacy rates for each gender in the Vidharbha region, the state, and the nation.

Agriculture in Wardha
Most farmers in Wardha are smallholders. As of 2001, a mere 1.2% of farmers held more than 10 hectares. On the other end of the spectrum, 16.3% of individual holdings in the district were of one hectare or less, 40.1% were between one and two hectares, and another 19.3% were two to three hectares. Altogether, three-quarters of all individual landholdings were three hectares or less. The average individual landholding was 2.4 hectares.

Based on data from 2004-2005, the largest crop in Wardha is soybeans (1955 hectares), followed by cotton (998 hectares). Together, these two crops make up more than 70% of the area cultivated in 2004-05. Together, all pulses and legumes make up 18.8% of the area cultivated and all cereal crops (mostly sorghum and wheat) make up a mere 9.8% of the area cultivated. The remaining 0.6% were sown in other oilseeds (10 ha) and sugarcane (16 ha). Wardha is distinct within Vidarbha for prioritizing cash crops (cotton, soybeans) over food crops to this extent. During the same crop year (2004-2005), only 46.5% of the region's cropland was sown to soybeans and cotton, 27.5% to cereals, and 24.3% to pulses, although there was much variation from one district to the next.

Cotton in Wardha
Notable are the low yields the farmers of Wardha produce in cotton. The top two cotton producing states in India are Gujarat and Maharashtra, the state where Wardha is located. While Maharashtra devoted more land to cotton in 2008-2010, Gujurat produced more cotton during that period. In fact, Maharashtra's cotton yields are the second lowest among India's main cotton producing states: 285 kg/ha in 2009-2010 and 257 kg/ha in 2008-2009. The average for the nation was 403 kg/ha for both crop years, and the highest yields were reaped by the state of Punjab, with 737 kg/ha in 2008-2009. Wardha's yields were dismally low as well in 2004-2005, with only 219 kg/ha.. This is likely linked - at least in part - to availability of irrigation. In 2008-2009, when Punjab's yields topped the nation, 100% of cotton grown there was irrigated. Gujarat, which had the third highest yields in the nation that year, irrigated 56.7% of its cotton area. With only 2.7% of cotton irrigated, the state of Maharashtra had the lowest percent of irrigated cotton fields.

Soybeans in Wardha
Maharasthra is the second biggest soy producer in India, with 31% of the nation's land area sown in soy in 2009-2010 and 22% of the nation's production. In this case, Wardha produced decent yields - 1033 kg/ha - in the 2004-2005 crop year. Unlike cotton, it does not appear that irrigation plays a role in the soybean crop, as very little of the land in any of the major soy-producing states is irrigated.

For comparison, Madhya Pradesh, which produces nearly two-thirds of India's soybeans, yielded 1198 kg/ha in 2009-2010, and Rajasthan, the nation's third largest producer (accounting for 9% of production) yielded 1175 kg/ha that year. That year, Maharashtra yielded a mere 728 kg/ha. The state fared better in 2008-2009, yielding 900 kg/ha, but was still behind the yields of Madhya Pradesh (1142 kg/ha) and Rajasthan (971 kg/ha).

Farmer Suicides

 * "It is in the state of Maharashtra that the problem is particularly acute and distressing. Over the ten years between 1997 and 2006 the number of farm suicides in this state more than doubled, from 1917 to 4453. This gives an annual compound growth rate of an exceedingly high figure of 9.8 per cent for farm suicides here, a rate at which the number would double every 7-8 years. Considering the period 1997-2006 as a whole, every fifth farm suicide committed in the country during this period occurred in Maharashtra; for the latest year, i.e., 2006 this figure is every more stark: every fourth farm suicide in the country occurred here in that year."

Although there is no district-level data available, available evidence, "particularly from an alert socially conscious print media in the country," points to "certain pockets within each of these states... where farm suicides are concentrated and where the problem would be very, very acute. The Vidarbha region in Maharashtra, Deccan and Hyderabad Karnataka regions in Karnataka, Telangana and Rayalaseema regions in Andhra Pradesh seem to be the ones – along with Wayanad in Kerala – have received a great deal of attention and coverage by the press on this issue... Now these sub-regions within these states – i.e., Vidharbha, Deccan and Hyderabad Karnataka, Telangana and Rayalaseema and Chhattisgarh – in fact do constitute a contiguous region in the heartland of India as it were." The area is a "semi-arid, poor, backward region in the heartland of India" and it appears that this is likely where the farm suicide issue is most severe.

Related Sourcewatch articles

 * Vidharbha Region
 * Agriculture in India
 * India's New Economic Policy of 1991
 * Indian Fertilizer Subsidies
 * Indian Farmer Suicides

External Articles

 * P. B. Behere and A. P. Behere, "Farmers' suicide in Vidarbha region of Maharashtra state: A myth or reality?, Indian J Psychiatry. 2008 Apr-Jun; 50(2): 124–127, doi: 10.4103/0019-5545.42401.
 * K Nagaraj, "Farmers Suicide in India: Magnitudes, Trends, and Spatial Patterns," March 2008.