[Reader-list] Reg: Set - 10

[Rakesh Iyer]

Hi all

In a change from the other mails, here's a set of mails on issues on social
and economic front.

Rakesh

Article Theme: Farmer's suicides

Source: India Together

Date: 25 January 2010

Link: http://www.indiatogether.org/2010/jan/psa-suicides.htm

Article:

AGRICULTURE CRISIS
* Nearly 2 lakh farm suicides since 1997 *
 The share of the 'suicide belt' - Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka,
Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh - remains very high; these states account
for two-thirds of the total farm suicides in the country. P Sainath reports.


*25 January 2010* - There were at least 16,196 farmers' suicides in India in
2008, bringing the total since 1997 to 199,132, according to the National
Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).

The share of the Big 5 States or 'suicide belt' in 2008 - Maharashtra,
Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh - remained very
high at 10,797, or 66.6 per cent of the total farm suicides in the country.
This was marginally higher than it was in 2007 (66.2 per cent). Maharashtra
remains the worst State in the nation for farm suicides with a total of
3802. (This is just 40 short of the combined total of Andhra Pradesh and
Karnataka.) The all-India total of 16,196 represents a fall of 436 from
2007. But the broad trends of the past decade reflect no significant change.
The national average for farm suicides since 2003 stays at roughly one every
30 minutes.

Within the Big 5, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh recorded
higher numbers. The increase of 604 in these three States somewhat offset
the dip in Maharashtra (436) and Karnataka (398). But a fall in suicide
numbers in other States (for example, a decline of 412 in Kerala and 343 in
West Bengal) means that the Big 5 marginally increased their two-thirds
share of total farm suicides in 2008.

The NCRB data now cover all States for 12 years from 1997. In the first six
years (1997-2002), the Big 5 witnessed 55,769 farmers' suicides. From 2003
to 2008, they totalled 67,054, a rise of nearly 1900 a year on average.

Maharashtra has logged 41,404 farm suicides from 1997 (over a fifth of the
national total) and 44,468 from 1995, the year when this State began
recording farm data. No other State comes close. During 1997-2002,
Maharashtra saw, on average, eight farmers kill themselves daily. The
corresponding figure rose to 11 during 2003-2008. The rise was from an
average of 2,833 farm suicides a year in the first period to an average of
4067 in the next period.

Professor K Nagaraj, an economist who has worked at the Madras Institute of
Development Studies, says of the NCRB data: "There is hardly any decline in
the suicide belt, though individual States may show variations across 12
years. If this is the state for 2008, the year of the Rs. 70,000 crores loan
waiver and multiple farm packages, then 2009, a drought year, could show
very disturbing figures. The underlying agrarian problems seem as acute as
ever." *⊕*

 *P Sainath* <http://www.indiatogether.org/opinions/psainath/>
25 Jan 2010

 * P. Sainath is the 2007 winner of the Ramon Magsaysay award for
Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts. He is one of the
two recipients of the A.H. Boerma Award, 2001, granted for his contributions
in changing the nature of the development debate on food, hunger and rural
development in the Indian media. *