SUICIDE DEATHS OF FARMERS

SUICIDE DEATHS OF FARMERS

15,000 farmers have committed suicide in Maharashtra over the last six years of which 2,500 have done so in the first eleven months of 2021. An average rate of 2,500 deaths per year in Maharashtra alone due to inability to repay bank loans. One farmer took his life after being repeatedly urged by the bank to repay a debt of INR 55,000. In another family two brothers took poison to end the torture of indebtedness to the bank. Two of the school-going daughters of the family have left school now to tend the farms and feed the family.

This is the precarious state of our farmers and this has been the case for at least three decades now. P. Sainath was the first to bring it to public notice through his investigative journalism done in Maharashtra. Elsewhere in the country also the farmers face a pitiable debt ordeal. Now the question arises, if the makers of food for the nation cannot stay alive and must perish due to poverty, where are we headed as a nation? It becomes our duty then to keep raising this issue for greater awareness and for its rightful redress in the immediate future. The government and the capitalists who are responsible for this situation cannot sleep over it anymore. They must act and they must do so now without any further delay.

Written by Sugata Bose