Explainer: What is the Farmers Distress Index?

Source: The post is based on the article “Explainer: What is the Farmers Distress Index?” published in Down To Earth on 6th July 2023

What is the News?

Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture (CRIDA), an institution under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has developed an early warning system called ‘farmers distress index’.

What is the Farmers Distress Index?

Aim: To minimize the agrarian distress in the form of crop loss / failure and income shock. This will help in decreasing farmer suicides.

Working of the index: The index methodology involves going  through local newspapers, other news platforms and social media platforms for any report on incidence of farmers distress like localised cases of issues with debt repayment, death by suicide, pest attacks, drought, floods, migration, among others.

– Following this, contacts of farmers from the area will be collected to conduct telephonic interviews, which will have 21 standardized questions to gauge early signs of distress. 

– Based on these questions, the degree of distress will be identified.The index will have values from 0-1. A value between 0-0.5 will indicate ‘low distress’, 0.5-0.7 will indicate ‘moderate’ distress and above 0.7 will indicate ‘severe’ distress. 

– If the index is severe, it will identify which component among the seven is more severe and contributes maximum to farmers’ distress.

Significance of the index: The index will help in anticipating agrarian distress and prevent its spread from a few farmers to the village or block level by pre-warning different stakeholders, including central, state, local and also non-government agencies about the future occurrence of farmers distress in a particular block / district so that they can take timely preventive measures.