According to a report presented at a press conference organised by the Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture (ASHA) in New Delhi, 95 farmers committed suicide in six districts in Andhra Pradesh between Oct 7 and Nov 8. ASHA found that all the suicides were connected to agriculture-related issues. “They were driven by factors like debt, crop failure and other agrarian reasons,” Kiran Vissa, of Association for India Development, said.
Blaming official policies for the increasing number of farmer suicides across the country, farm activists have demanded immediate government intervention to support farmers. State policies on agriculture are often equally absurd forcing farmers to commit suicide. “The policies promote wrong cultivation practices in rain-fed areas such as encouraging crops dependant on rain,” Kishor Tiwari, of Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti, pointed out. “We can’t term them suicides; they’re policy-driven victims of the state. We want policies which let the farmers live,” he added. GV Ramanjaneyulu, of the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture, said that there was currently no mechanism to compensate farmers hit by drought. High cost of cultivation and price collapse triggers suicides as well. According to advocate Pradeep Kumar, of Haritha Sena, “Eleven farmers committed suicide in Kerala in the last 25 days alone due to the collapse in prices of ginger and banana.”