No farmer committed suicide in Bengal in 2018-19, says report

Kolkata: With a series of steps taken up by the Mamata Banerjee government in the past nine years for welfare of farmers, the state has not registered a single case of death due to suicide by any farmer in 2018 and 2019.

According to the report published by the National Crime Records Bureau, neither any of the farmers in Bengal who cultivate their own land nor who cultivate lease land have committed suicide in the same time period.

The data also shows that there was no report of suicide even by any agricultural labourers those are engaged in farming sector.

However the six states those recorded the highest cases of suicident by farmers are Maharashtra with 3,927 cases of suicides, Karnataka with 1,992 cases, Andhra Pradesh with 1,029 cases of suicides, Madhya Pradesh with 541 cases of suicides and both Chhattisgarh and Telangana each recorded suicides of 499 people involved in the farm sector.

The deaths in these six states account for 83 per cent of suicides committed by persons involved in the farm sector in the country.

This comes when at least 10,281 persons involved in the farm sector committed suicide in 2019.

It is 7.4 per cent of the total number of suicides in India that was 139,516.

In Bengal average income of farmers went up by 3.2 times as it was Rs 91,000 for a farmer in 2010-11 and it increased to Rs 2.91 lakh in 2017-18.

Most importantly, farmers get financial assistance from the state government under Krishak Bandhu Scheme.

Under the scheme, the state government provides Rs 2 lakh compensation to family members in case of death of a farmer between 18-60 age groups and another component of the scheme is that farmers also receive annual financial assistance of Rs 5,000.

At present each of more than 43 lakh farmers are also receiving the annual financial assistance.