Farmer suicides on the rise in Telangana over loan payments

HYDERABAD: Telangana is witnessing an epidemic of suicides by farmers who are struggling to repay loans and cope with the distress caused by deficient monsoon rainfall. At least 100 farmers are reported to have taken their lives in the last two months in India's newest state, where the Telangana Rashtra Samithi came to power aided by a promise to write off farm loans.

The revival of the monsoon in recent days has bypassed many parts of south India, particularly Telangana where the deficit was 48% until August 5. The national shortfall was 19%.

No significant progress has been made on loan waivers in a state where some 50 lakh farmers owe at least Rs 50,000 crore in crop loans to banks. Last fortnight the TRS government announced it would write off up to Rs 1 lakh per farmer, aggregating Rs 19,000 crore.

The distress situation appears more alarming in Telangana as agriculture is largely borewell-dependent in the state where power shortage is severe. Banks have stepped up pressure on farmers to repay loans, apart from declining new loans and threatening to declare them defaulters to initiate recovery of money.

Thousands of irate farmers across Telangana took to the streets protesting erratic power supply to agriculture pumpsets and threatening to attempt suicide. In some cases, the protests turned violent and the police used batons to disperse crowds of farmers.

"The most affected in rural India are tenant farmers who do not have access to the formal banking system and are left at the mercy of private moneylenders," said All India Kisan Sabha vicepresident Sarampally Malla Reddy.

Reddy accused the public sector research organisations of failing to bring out quality seeds to help farmers attain high yields at affordable prices. "The farming community is forced to depend on private seed producers and in the process fall prey to sellers of spurious seeds."

Accusing the Telangana government of displaying "reckless apathy," Donthi Narasimha Reddy, a member of the consultative committee of the Cotton Advisory Board, said that cotton growers have been worst affected but farmers growing other commercial crops are starting to also take their lives.

Kisan Sabha's Malla Reddy said out of the more than 2,000 suicides reported last year in undivided Andhra Pradesh, nearly 1,400 deaths were in Telangana region and the rest in coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema.

Telangana agriculture minister Pocharam Srinivas Reddy refused to acknowledge the rise in suicides and accused opposition parties of instigating farmers. Congress Legislature Party leader K Jana Reddy demanded that the government must "act responsibly" by releasing new loans and subsidising interest on loans over Rs 1 lakh availed.