Six more Vidarbha farmers end lives

Despite all the major political parties raking up the issue of farm suicide in Vidarbha on eve of Lok Sabha elections, six more farmers have ended their lives in last four days, reports Pradip Kumar Maitra.

Despite all the major political parties raking up the issue of farm suicide in Vidarbha on eve of Lok Sabha elections, six more farmers have ended their lives in last four days. This has put a question mark on the seriousness in tackling the issue.

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As per the reports submitted on Wednesday, two farmers from Yavatmal and one each from Buldhana, Wardha, Amravati and Washim, committed suicide because of agrarian crisis since March 22. With the deaths of these farmers, the toll has risen to 49 this month, while the figure was 52 in February.

Kishor Tiwari, president of Vidarbha Jana Andolan Samiti, an NGO fighting for farmers’ rights, released the statistics. He said that most of the farmers ended their lives due to mounting debts and crop failure. Despite the multi-crore-relief package offered by the state and union governments, farmer suicides have continued because the aid failed to reach them, he said.

However, there is a decreasing trend of farm suicide since the government had announced packages and loans waivers. 1,246 farmers had killed themselves last year.