Agrarian stress | Grim reaper stalks Gujarat
The rising graph of extreme weather events in Gujarat is matched by its mounting agrarian debt. Result: a string of farmer suicides in one month, after one spell of heavy unseasonal rain
Just before the calendar turned to November, Gujarat was lashed by a very heavy burst of unseasonal rains. Not a code-red climate emergency of the sort in vogue these days, but bad enough. For one, it washed out 4.2 million hectares of standing kharif crop across the state—in as many as 16,000-odd villages, strewn across over 90 per cent of the state’s talukas.
Just before the calendar turned to November, Gujarat was lashed by a very heavy burst of unseasonal rains. Not a code-red climate emergency of the sort in vogue these days, but bad enough. For one, it washed out 4.2 million hectares of standing kharif crop across the state—in as many as 16,000-odd villages, strewn across over 90 per cent of the state’s talukas.
Two weeks later, 42-year-old Shailesh Devjibhai Savaliya walked through his devastated groundnut crop with trembling hands. What followed next is not something usually associated with Gujarat: he consumed pesticide, the farmer’s hemlock, and died. He left behind two children, a farmland of 6.7 hectares in Junagadh, a mountain of debt and a piece of statistic. He was the fifth farmer in the state who had died by suicide in just three weeks.
Though official data is sometimes disputed, Gujarat ranks low on farmer suicides—nowhere near Maharashtra’s Vidarbha or other hotspots of agrarian distress. Naturally, there’s disquiet and gloom. “This is the seventh consecutive season that farmers are suffering losses to standing crops. Either it’s excess rain, unseasonal rain or a cyclone. We are unable to recover even our investment,” says Pal Ambaliya, a Dwarka-based farmer and chairman, Gujarat Kisan Congress.
In mutually enmeshed ways, the old equilibrium is being disturbed. Unnoticed elsewhere due to their relatively modest toll, the state has of late seen a bit of erratic and violent weather. In 2023, it was ravaged by Cyclone Biparjoy; in 2024, by Cyclone Asna. According to data analysed by the Centre for Science and Environment, Gujarat was among the worst-hit states in the 2025 monsoon. It saw extreme weather events on 94 days, a 70 per cent rise since 2022.
Scientists situate Gujarat’s pattern shift within a larger spike in volatility linked to global warming: it hugs a warmer Arabian Sea, for one. In a peer-reviewed paper in November, in the journal Public Library of Science (PLOS), researchers from the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology held out a dire warning: “Models indicate Gujarat will face more intense downpours, higher sea-level risks, and increasingly volatile monsoon behaviour by mid-century.”
‘THE ANGST IS REAL’
The climate is an apolitical beast, but for now the Opposition is milking it. The Congress has got going a 60-day ‘Jan Akrosh Yatra’: state president Amit Chavda is touring rain-hit villages. “Many are scared to come out and be seen in our rallies, but we can feel their angst—it’s very real,” he says. The Aam Aadmi Party has stepped up its farmer mahapanchayats. Former Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal has visited Gujarat multiple times in two months.
But neither politics, nor policy has a solution right now. Gujarat has around 5.5 million farmers; some 2.9 million have applied for relief. But average land holdings, according to a 2016 census, stand at around 1.88 hectares. Going by this, the two-hectare cap on per farmer relief may appear justified, but Ambaliya explains that several farmers have more than one parcel of land. That may imply higher prosperity—or greater debt.
R.K. Patel, general secretary, Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, says 20 per cent of farmers have suffered a 100 per cent loss and the relief would not cover their losses. He also blames mounting farm loans on “discretionary expenses”, but that’s a different story, owing to changes in the social climate.