Agrarian crisis: NHRC seeks data of farmers’ suicides

The NHRC is in the process of examination of certain issues relating to the agrarian crisis, which the country is faced with, said NHRC Secretary General Satya N Mohanty. On two points, the NHRC has sought information from the states and that has again been divided into two segments segregating different year groups, top official sources told Millennium Post.

The NHRC Secretary General has, in a letter to all the state governments, asked them to provide data on farmers' suicide in their respective states during the period of four years from 2008 to 2011.

In the second table, the information of suicides of farmers has also been asked from the period between 2012 and 2015.

The rights body has also asked for data on starvation deaths during the year 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 in one column and in a separate column the information may be provided for the year 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015.

Many policy makers and government secretaries attached significance to the current step of the NHRC as it was previously asking for reports from individual states, where ever there was media report of starvation death or suicide of farmers.

"No government organization had ever studied both the issues, farmers’ suicide and starvation deaths, in such a large scale,” said Chhattisgarh Revenue Secretary Krishna Ram Pisda adding that perhaps for the first time such an attempt is being made to compile the data of starvation and farmers’ suicides to understand the crisis and find a solution to that.

The National Crime Record Bureau has been releasing time to time the data on suicide of farmers, but that has never been accepted by any state government as no regime is ready to accept that his or her state was facing an agrarian crisis, said a senior Secretary of Chhattisgarh.

A district collector, when contacted, said it has been the job of the local police to send such reports to the authorities. Sometimes, state administration also sought report of any such incidents due to political upheaval or adverse media reports. “But that was never in a fixed format,” he added.

Many parts of the country had faced dry spell last year,  and including Vidharbha, suicide cases of farmers had been reported from many parts of the country, including Central, Western and Eastern India. 

Like Janjgir district in Chhattisgarh or Bargarh of Odisha, in many parts of the country, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi held rallies and long padyatras last year to highlight the plight of the farmers.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had also organised farmers rallies in many states to assure that the Government was with them. To give solace to the farmers, even some states have written off interest on agriculture loans.

This year also scattered rainfall or delayed monsoon in many states have started damaging crops and experts have already expressed their apprehension of a shortage of drinking water among 

others. 

“On September 14 (Wednesday), the average storage in all the dams of Chhattisgarh is just 71.61 per cent and there are reservoirs which are not even half filled,” a state Revenue and Rehabilitation Department official told Millennium Post.