On the farmers suicides!
The 2011 population census will give the number of farmers correctly?
Or, we will resort to fudge figures like BPL and APL?
And also hide figures for the farmers’ suicides?
Farmer’s suicides: the eligibility criteria are a great insult to our sense humanity!
Farmers’ suicides? A boring news? Yes, it has now become
More so, in the hands of Sharad Pawar and his deputy!
Do these gentlemen deserve to be ministers?
On May 7th this year there was a written reply to a question in Parliament. Pawar, as usual to his self-confidence, said, no asserted there were only six farmers suicides since January. Only six? Yes, said Pawar. The tone gave away his confidence and cock-sureness!
Unfortunate for Pawar the very same day, his near counterpart, this time the Maharashtra Chief Minister, Ashok Chavan said in Vidarbha, the hotbed of the framers’ miseries, there were 343,that is 57 times more suicides! Yes, we are talking here about suicides. And when we talk about farmers suicides, and that too when our leaders who are supposed to champion the farmers they talk this topic, as if it is something like crop production, this much of tones or that!
So for suicides too, there are three versions, this time, by the three ministers. The other minister is none other than K.V.Thomas who became a hero of sorts when he defeated the Ernakulam CPI (M) candidate and so he became a minister from a teacher! He just five days earlier asserted that there were only 23 farmers’ suicides!
So, what all these things convey to the average Indian reader who might not be an expert in agriculture nor in the stories of human tragedies or farmers suicides.
Any new reader to this subject would be really being bored! Yes, bored are no less our own ministers. Not to speak of our higher ups, the Prime Minister or his counterpart, we mean the Planning Commission deputy, both of them are World Bank experts and they enjoy the protection and comforts of a hefty World Bank pension and benefits.
They both never take interest in farming, more so the actual farm travails and so they don’t for once speak of these on-going tragedies.
So farmers’ suicides continue! This is news!
News doesn’t stop here. This is not the only news. There are other numbers, the numbers keep coming and one contradicts the other.
There is one more news source. This is government’s Vasanth Rao Naick Farmers Self-Reliance Mission which puts the number at 62 for January alone!
There is the Revenue Minister Narayan Rane who informed the state Assembly in April that there have been 5,574 suicides in Vidarbha since 2006.But Parliament knows “only six” suicides! Rane’s figures for the whole of Maharashtra since 2006 7,786 farm suicides. That is more than double Mr. Pawar’s new count of 3,450 for the whole of the country in the last three years.
That sounds a bit odd. The National Crime Records Bureau puts the total tragedies for the whole country in the last three years is 50,000.Even figure? Not likely, we should guess. NCRB is the only source of reliable information for the farmers’ suicides at the national level. The NCRB also shows that for the whole country for nearly 2 lakh farmers suicides had taken place.
Why there are so many variations, variations given out by men in weighty positions and yet they don’t for a moment do any introspection before they come before Parliament and the Assembly and give so much contradictory information of a serious tragedy like farmers killing themselves, in this day and time of so much talk about so much of economic growth rate.
Our Prime Minister in fact doesn’t talk anything else.
He seems to imagine that this talk of rate of growth would keep everybody in humour and yet he doesn’t realise how much damage he is doing for himself. Nor leaders like Sonia Gandhi. Why blame only one person. Is it not the burden for others like Lalu Prasad or Mulayam Yadav or the BJP or even the cheeky theoreticians like Prakash Karat?
These middle class heroes, nay, even the heroines who adorn our Parliament benches have no compunction whatever and the country silently watches the tragedy that is Indian countryside, the country’s miserable poor who are progressively left out of the scheme of things, call it capitalism or liberalised economy or sheer liberation, the liberal democracy that we are promising. Are we really promising a liberal democracy?
Where is the news reporting agencies of the government? The very same PTI puts out the contradictory data on farmers suicides.
The newspapers, the print and visual media have all lately become a bit crazy and even cynical. They find some joys in reporting scandals. A scandal a day is good business for them. Even otherwise who reads the farm news, even the self-professed leftist newspapers cheerily report the IPL scandals, a more provocative pose of a female face carries more readership than a miserable, sad looking farming family.
Yes, we are all leaders from the land of Gandhi and then who cares so much for the Mahatma.
This is the time of money, IPL, Raja tapes make for good TRP ratings and why not?
Yes, in the good old days in 2006 the PM came to Vidarbha and since then no ministers, certainly not Pawar or his deputy, cared to visit this distress spot nor the state ministers we are told.
You know the greatest tragedy about the farmer’s suicides?
It is the eligibility criteria for farmer’s suicides!
Family members’ suicides, goes one criteria.
So many ineligible suicides go unaccounted!
Then, there are the non-genuine suicides!
Mr.Rane’s reply in the Assembly cites so many ineligible suicides!
The NCRB figures are ignored by the ministers for the sheer political tactics. The figures are simply ignored! The reply is given. And that is it!
Image Source : vidarbhacrisis.blogspot.com