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News Alerts | Farmers’ suicides continue in Vidarbha despite relief package

Farmers’ suicides continue in Vidarbha despite relief package

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published Published on Sep 24, 2009   modified Modified on Sep 24, 2009

Five farmers committed suicide from the Vidarbha region of Maharastra within the last two days of the month of August, 2009. The farmers who committed suicides belonged to the districts for which special relief package was being announced recently. According to a press note circulated by the Vidarbha People’s Movement Committee, within the last 48 hours of August, farmers were forced to commit suicide as they faced crop failures owing to severe drought. Those who took to suicides were: Dilip Chawan (Yavatmal), Onkar Unhale (Buldhana), Ramdas Rathod (Wasim), Babarai Daware (Wardha) and Balkrishna Sonawane (Gondiya).    

The news of farmers’ suicides from Vidarbha, a region whose name emerged previously too in the international media for being the dark spot of agrarian crisis, appeared at a time when the government boasted that the number of suicides being committed dropped drastically during the first six months of 2009. According to a recent report published in a national daily, 1105 number of farmers committed suicides during 2008 due to crop failures, indebtedness and drought. However, the figures provided by the government shows that the number of farmers who committed suicide during the first half of 2009 declined to 206. According to a press note released by the Vidarbha People’s Movement Committee, the number of farmers who committed suicides during the month of August, 2009 alone counted 55, leave alone the number of farmers’ suicides in the last two days of August. Certainly, one may doubt the claims made by the government that the situation is under control.  

Kishore Tiwari, an activist from Vidarbha People’s Movement Committee thinks that the claims made by the government that rural India is out of agrarian crisis is grossly misplaced because till now 286 districts have been declared as drought affected and time for sowing and harvesting in South and Central India has already passed. With each and every passing day, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar have cautioned, the country is going to face acute hunger. The present situation may lead to crop failures and indebtedness of farmers who rely on growing cash crops. If the loan relief waiver and the debt package announced by the Prime Minister do not work out then more trouble is forthcoming for the farmers from Vidarbha.

The government is not eager to update the information provided in the www.vnss-mission.gov website, thus violating the Honourable Mumbai High Court order. The website has been designed to keep an eye on the incidents of farmers’ suicides from Western Vidarbha and to collect useful information pertaining to agrarian stagnation. The report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) released last year points to implementation failures of special relief package meant for the Vidarbha farmers.

Shortage of south west monsoon rainfalls (almost 60 percent) has created drought like situation in the Vidarbha region. Almost 90 percent of the farmers in Vidarbha rely on rains for irrigation (between June and September). Cotton cultivation in this region depends on application of Bt cotton seeds that requires assured irrigation for successful outcome. Drought like situation coupled with crop failure might reduce crop production by half this year.

In order to know more about the situation of farmers and farming in Vidarbha, kindly go to the following links:


Chapter V, Monitoring and evaluation, CAG Report,
http://cag.gov.in/html/cag_reports/maharashtra/rep_2007/fp
_civil_chap_5.pdf
 

http://vidarbhatimes.blogspot.com/2009_08_01_archive.html 

Peasant surprise from suicide belt by Kartikeya, The Times of India, 30 August, 2009,
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/city/mumbai/Peasan
t-surprise-from-suicide-belt/articleshow/4949746.cms
  

Suicide of Farmers in Maharashtra: Background Papers (Submitted to the Government of Maharashtra) by Srijit Mishra, Sangeeta Shroff, Deepak Shah, Vivek Deshpande, Anjali P. Kulkarni, Vinayak S. Deshpande and PR Bhatkule, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, 26 January 2006,
http://www.igidr.ac.in/suicide/BackgroundPapers_SFM_IGIDR_
26Jan06.pdf

Rural Credit and Suicides in Maharastra, India: A Case-Control Study by Srijit Mishra, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, March 2006,
http://www.igidr.ac.in/~money/mfc_08/Rural%20Credit%20and%
20Suicides%20in%20Maharashtra,%20India%20A%20Case-Control%
20Study...Srijit%20Mishra.pdf

Suicide of Farmers in Maharashtra Annexure (Submitted to the Government of Maharashtra) by Srijit Mishra, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, 26 January 2006,
http://www.igidr.ac.in/suicide/Annexure_SFM_IGIDR_26Jan06.pdf

Suicide of Farmers in Maharashtra–Causes & Remedies by SM Wakude, AGM, CSID, NABARD, HO, Mumbai,
http://www.nabard.org/databank/IARD%20Web/csidfiles/Suicid
e%20of%20Farmers%20in%20Maharashtra.pdf

 

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