Mumbai: Maharashtra's Vidarbha region has seen 168 farmer suicides in the first three months of this 2013. Made up of 11 districts, Vidarbha is home to two-thirds of the state's mineral resources and three-quarters of its forest resources. But poverty and malnutrition and endemic.
"According to police reports, 168 farmer suicides have been registered till March 31 this year," said Kishor Tiwari, president of the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti, a farmer advoacy group. "This averages to 56 deaths a month, defining the many years of agrarian crisis of the region, not to mention the apathy of the administration," he added.
Tiwari said that while rising costs of cultivation and falling returns were the core reasons pushing farmers to suicide, there were other factors too. There is also an ecological crisis as farming practices have tended towards maximising output of a narrow range, leading to monoculture of crops.
"The deep economic crisis has reduced income of farmers, resulted in stagnant yield and increased cultivation cost. And reduced institutional credit adds to the misery," Tiwari said. "All policy support, be it from the government of from institutes, are skewed towards large farmers, large farms, few cash crops and high external input-based production systems," he said. ...
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05:35 AM, Apr 22, 2013
Nagpur: A farmer's advocacy group in Vidarbha has objected to the content of the just-released Hindi film
Peepli Live, saying it is a wrong representation of the misery of the family members of farmers who committed suicide. "The farmers in any region of India commit suicide due to the wrong policies of the government, not because family members can live off the compensation they would get," Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti...
07:04 PM, Aug 14, 2010
