More to farmer suicides than debt & crop loss, is TRS netas’ excuse
HYDERABAD: For the grieving families of the farmers who committed suicide in last few months in Telangana, the remarks of Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) ministers do not provide any solace.
In the last two days, two ministers related to farming — agriculture minister Pocharam Srinivasa Reddy and irrigation, marketing minister Harish Rao — said that all suicides cannot be counted as farmer suicides and that the issue was being blown out of proportion by the opposition.
“Crop loss, debt is not the cause of every farmer death… there are suicides due to family conflicts, etc,” Reddy said, quoting a suicide from his assembly constituency.
Remarkably, the minister, at the same time, also stated that the government has no count of the suicides and the reasons behind them as official teams comprising revenue, police and agriculture departments are yet to probe and submit their report on such cases.
Rao also made similar remarks and said that they would refute the opposition propaganda in the assembly.
NGOs have put the number of farmer suicides since the state and TRS government formation at 375, as on Saturday.
Rights activists also question the criteria of classifying a suicide. “Many times, officials also say the loan was taken for some other purpose. Yes, like an employee, the ryot also takes loans for various purposes to repay from his income, but if that only source – farming – fails him year after year, what can he do but take his life?” asked Beeram Ramulu, an activist working on farmer suicides in the Warangal district.
A government order of 2004 brought by then CM Rajasekhara Reddy mandates a relief of up to ` 1.5 lakh to the victim’s family within two months of the suicide after an official probe. However, in none of the cases that HT probed in Nalgonda and Warangal last week, was there such a visit.