Probe sought into farmers suicide

BHUBANESWAR: Blaming the Centre and the State Government for increasing number of farmers’ suicide, the BJP Kishan Morcha on Saturday demanded that a commission of inquiry should probe the matter and suggest remedial measures. ‘The number of farmers who committed suicide under distress condition is far more than the jawans who lost their lives in the Kargil war, National president of the Kishan Morcha OP Dhankar told a media conference. The wrong policy of the Centre has driven about 2.25 lakh farmers to commit suicide during the last decade. The vicious circle of crop failure, debt trap and market forces has proved to be deadly concoction for the farmers. More than 1,000 farmers of Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Maharashtra committed suicide due to crop loss last year. The agricultural insurance scheme has practically failed to give any relief to the farmers. Only the loanee farmers are insured and if the crop fails the farmers get nothing as the loans taken by them from banks are taken care of first. The compensation award of ` 2,000 per hectare to natural calamity-hit farmers is too meagre, he said and demanded  compensation should be increased to at least ` 25,000 per hectare. Alleging that the Government has purportedly kept the prices of agricultural products low, Dhankar said the salary of Government employees has been increased 18 times during the last two decades while the minimum support price of agri-products has been hiked only five times. While the input cost for agriculture has increased substantially, the minimum support price announced by the Government for paddy is not enough to recover cost. The cost of production of paddy per hectare has been estimated at ` 1,185 while the MSP declared by the Centre for quintal of rice is ` 1,080. ENS