-The Times of India CHENNAI: Poor incomes, mounting debts and family issues drove a good number of those in the lower socioeconomic bracket to suicide. Data put out by the National Crime Records Bureau ( NCRB) for 2014 said nearly 70% of the suicides were by people earning less than Rs one lakh per annum. This disturbing trend hasn't changed much. On July 18, in a suicide pact, a 35-year-old cab driver and...
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Many degrees of hopelessness in India's villages -Harsh Mander
-Hindustan Times The picture of rural Indian life today that emerges from what is probably the world's largest study ever of household deprivation is sobering and sombre. It describes a massive hinterland still imprisoned in persisting endemic impoverishment, want, illiteracy and indeed hopelessness. It tells a story that every thinking and caring Indian must heed. Advocates of free markets, opposed to building a welfare state, have long argued that accelerated market-led economic...
More »Agrarian distress and suicides
-The Hindu Too much of public discourse on farmer suicides could bring on unseemly haggling over the numbers. Activists and the media rightly question loopholes in the National Crime Records Bureau data, pointing out that several State governments often report no farm suicides, contrary to local media reportage. However, there is also much needless suspicion and conspiracy-theorising; the NCRB’s data are from police station-level First Information Reports, and FIRs are often...
More »Properly used, Jan Dhan Yojna could lessen farmers' suicides
-Hindustan Times For a country that is set to be ranked among the world’s top five economies over the next decade, India cannot afford to be counted as a home for impoverished farmers who are ending their lives because they do not have the money to return loans as small as Rs 10,000. According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, 5,650 farmers committed suicide in India last year. Bankruptcy and...
More »India’s new farm suicides data: myths and facts -Rukmini S
-The Hindu There has been a lot of misreporting and conspiracy theorising about the new farm suicide numbers. No doubt, these numbers – as with most crime data – likely underestimate the problem. Farmers without clear land title, for instance, may not be recognised as farmers, artificially lowering their number. The negative media reporting around farm suicides may also be an incentive against the police reporting a farm suicide as one. These...
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