Govt Finally Releases Data: 11,379 Farmers Committed Suicide In 2016, What's The Priority Now?

While most of the nation is discussing Supreme Court’s verdict on Babri Masjid-Ram Janmbhoomi, there’s an equally, or perhaps more important thing to be talked about. We may have forgotten, but farmer suicides is one of the biggest blots on this country. Every year thousands of farmers commit suicide due to the debt they have and successive governments have failed to relieve them so far. ?

Now, the latest report by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has revealed that at least 11,379 farmers committed suicide in the country in 2016.

The latest report by the board on Accidental Death and Suicide for 2016 confirms that there were 948 farmer suicides every month, or 31 suicides every day.

AFP

In the previous (2015) report 12, 602 farmers were said to have committed suicide. While 12,360 suicide cases were registered in 2014. It can be said that the number has slightly fallen from previous years, however, the current number is also quite worrisome.

According to the report, there has been 20 per cent less suicides in Maharashtra, but the state continues to lead in terms of cases reported.

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It is important to note that farmer suicides may have come down, but the number of farme labourers committing suicide has risen by 10 per cent.

In terms of gender, the report mentions that the overwhelming number of people killed in suicide were men. Women only accounted for 8.6 per cent of total number of deaths.

AFP

The report, this time, reveals little on the possible reasons of these many farmer suicides. In previous years, the report used to mention the reasons for the said farmer suicides. They used to be put under categories including crop failure, illness, family problems and loans etc.

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"Not only were the old categories retained but more sub-categorisation had been done to further diversify the data this time. But it's interesting to note that this data has not been published," a former NCRB official involved in the exercise told?The Indian Express.

Maharashtra was followed by Karnataka that recorded 2,079 farmer suicides in 2016 as against 1,569 in 2015. Telangana showed a remarkable improvement with only half of the reported incidents.

BCCL

The state of West Bengal did not provide data on farmer suicides for 2016.

There may be many religious building and monuments in the country, but unless we take care of the farmers, India can’t claimed to be developed. The government, simply can’t ignore their plight. This report in itself should have come in 2017, but the government, for some reasons had held it.