State should learn from AP, K’taka

NEW DELHI: Inept handling of the farmers’ travails by the Maharashtra government has meant that suicides continue unabated in Vidarbha region, whereas Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala have been able to partly stem the tide.

Latest figures available with the union agriculture ministry have brought some encouraging news on the agrarian front from Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala, which have witnessed suicides by farmers in the past few years.

There are 16 districts with high suicide rates in Andhra Pradesh (Prakasam, Guntur, Nellore, Chittoor, Ananthpur, Kurnool, Adilabad, Karimnagar, Khammam, Mahboobnagar, Medak, Nalgonda, Nizamabad, Rangareddy, Warangal and Cuddapah). Karnataka has six such districts (Belgaum, Hasan, Chitradurga, Chikmagalur, Kodagu and Shimoga) and Kerala accounts for three (Wayanad, Palakkad and Kasargod).

It is, however, the gloomy news from Vidarbha in Maharashtra that’s giving nightmares to the babus at Krishi Bhawan. The region has seen as many as 369 suicides since July 1, when prime minister Manmohan Singh announced a relief package worth over Rs 3,000 crore for the six districts prone to farmers’ suicides, including Akola, Wardha, Amravati, Buldhana, Wasim and Yavatmal.

“The situation in Vidarbha has remained unchanged, thanks to some inefficient handling by the state government. While the governments of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala have taken the problem seriously, using it to bring about some systemic changes, the Vilasrao Deshmukh government has treated it as a problem which can be addressed only though financial packages,” a senior agriculture ministry official told ET.

In particular, he cited three steps taken by the three southern states to alleviate the farmers’ woes — more and easier availability of credit, better irrigation facilities and better access to inputs such as fertilisers and insecticides.

The Maharashtra government, the official claimed, had lagged behind in all the three indices, relying more on distributing financial largesse than sorting out things at the ground level.

Notwithstanding the announcement of the relief package, the situation in the six districts continues to be grim. There have been 475 suicides reported from Vidarbha since June this year. And since June last year, the number of suicides reported from the six districts has been a whopping 950.