India's ‘listening ear’ seeks to end farmer suicides

This year, six awardees from different parts of Asia take center stage in the annual Ramon Magsaysay Awards, the Asian equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize, to serve as models of leadership and service. In this series, GMA News Online asks each awardee: What can the Philippines learn from your story? The twin problems of drought and debt were driving Indian farmers to kill themselves. How did Nileema Mishra, one of the six Ramon Magsaysay awardees this year, stop the farmer suicides in her village? Nileema, a social worker and psychologist from a middle-class family, notes that at least 44 farmers committed suicide in 2004 alone in her village of Bahadarpur, Maharashtra. In India as a whole, previous estimates have placed the number of farmer suicides at 17,500 annually. Just like in the Philippines, drought has been a scourge to Indian farmers. Worse, they have to borrow from private moneylenders who charge interest rates as high as 100 percent to irrigate their farms, Nileema says in an interview with GMA News Online. (See her story as told by the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation in the PDF below) To address these problems, Nileema’s group, the Bhagini Nivedita Gramin Vigyan Niketan (BNGVN), did not present a set of solutions to the farmers. "The villagers are intellectual. They know their problems; they know the solutions. But they don't have instruments," she explains. "They need ears who will listen to them." To help the farmers get money for irrigation without having to resort to usurious loans, BNGVN sought groups that can lend money at minimal interest rates. The group also helped them create a revolving fund and self-help groups, among other things. (Watch video below) For other countries like the Philippines, Nileema emphasizes the need to go beyond mere policy-making to address rural problems. "We are making the policy here but the people are suffering there," she says. "If we stick to policy, then it will not match with the people’s surroundings. So we want to see the surroundings. We want to see the people. We want to listen to them." – YA, GMA News

---

OTHER RAMON MAGSAYSAY AWARDEES: