Agrarian crisis: Anantapur registers 150 suicides -VK Rakesh Reddy

-The Hindu

Agrarian distress has a cascading effect on all other businesses in the district

ANANTAPUR (Andhra Pradesh): The year bygone, so far, has been one of sorrow for the poor of the district, with several of them committing suicide out of desperation and hopelessness.

According to estimates of different political parties and social organisations, who have also done field level verification of the reports of suicides, no fewer than 150 suicides — farmers and weavers combined — have taken place in the district, one of the highest ever.

The suicides mirror the acute distress that hit the predominantly agrarian economy of the Anantapur district, having a cascading effect on all other businesses in the district. “Not just the suicides of farmers and weavers, every other death in the district except for those from snakebites and accidents are in one way or the other related to the agrarian distress,” says senior advocate and human rights activist Ram Kumar, speaking to The Hindu .

Many cases pertaining to husbands killing wives and vice versa besides that of mothers committing suicide along with children and husbands committing suicide have to come to the fore in the district.

“Increasingly young men who take to agriculture are not finding brides and many of those who do find suffer from not being able to reach the expectations of a better life that their spouses have from them. Consequently, many a young man in the district has committed suicide unable to bear the ignominy of being looked down upon by his wife. All this originates from the drought which had paralysed the economy of each and every farmer family — rich and poor, large and small — in the district,” says Mr Ram Kumar.

On the other hand, CPI(M) district secretary Ram Bhoopal, who says that his party has counted and verified more than 100 suicides of farmers and weavers in the district in the current year, adds that the government has least concern for their lives and that of their immediate family as not a single family of the farmers and weavers, who are promised Rs. 5 lakh as ex gratia, has been given the amount since July this year.

Ex gratia

“Even then, this government had given the amount to around 30 families as Opposition leader Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy and Congress vice–president Rahul Gandhi visited the district. Does it require an opposition or national leaders visit to give ex gratia?” questions Mr Ram Bhoopal.

Not just the suicides of farmers and weavers, every other death in the district except for those from snakebites and accidents are in one way or the other related to the agrarian distress.