MSc

The crisis in the agrarian sector due to many socio-economic, climatic and technology related factors adversely affected the farmers and they have been impoverished, dispossessed and marginalized. As a result they fail to meet even their basic livelihood requirements and hence borrow money but fail to repay due to very low income from farming. Thus these deprived farmers become helpless and undergo high level survival stress forcing them to commit suicide. So it is necessary to design a strategy for resolving this most serious human rights issue. This study entitled “Survival stress for livelihood security of farmers” was an attempt to de-construct the concept of survival stress of farmers which enabled to delineate the various dimensions of, and factors contributing to their survival stress.

The study was conducted in Nalleppily Panchayat of Palakkad District. A sample of 100 farmers was selected randomly from the three villages’ viz. Nalleppily, Chittur and Teckaedesam constituted to Nalleppily Panchayat.

The study indicated that most of the farmers belonged to old age group and possessed education up to higher secondary level. Most of the farmers lived in joint families. Nearly 50 percent of the respondent farmers were marginal farmers earning less than Rs.30000 per annum and 32 percent were below the poverty line. The average annual expenditure of a farm family was Rs.59750.50 which is much higher than their annual income. Thus they are unable to meet their livelihood demands and they borrow money from all possible sources. It is found that most of the farmers depend on institutional sources rather than non-institutional sources.


The study revealed that more than 60 percent of the credit availed is utilized for non-agricultural purposes and thus they get low returns from agriculture and could not repay the loans. The average outstanding debt for a family was Rs.49470 which is twice their annual income. Hence the farmers are not able to meet their domestic consumption and social obligations and responsibilities, and become more vulnerable to survival stress.

The results of the study indicated that more than 50 percent of the farmers were under very high survival stress for their livelihood security due the reasons mentioned above. Among them the economic factors were found to be the major contributor for their survival stress followed by social factors, psychological factors and technological factors. To some extent environmental factors were also found generate survival stress for the farmers.

The study on the survival stress of the farmers on four dimensions viz, Physical complaints, Negative affective reactions, Negative overt behaviour and Negative cognitive behaviour revealed that more than 80 percent of the farmers were having high survival stress for their livelihood. Among the dimensional factors influencing survival stress, economic dimensional factor was found to be the major contributor followed by personality, family and technological dimensional factors. To some extent environment dimensional factors also generate survival stress though it is not under the control of farmers.