Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Friday, June 27, 2008
vidarbha farmers find it hard to cope with rising inflation, dwindling income
| Farmers find it hard to cope with rising inflation, dwindling income |
Full Story can be found at
http://www.dnaindia.com/report
*This has already begun to affect the food intake of farmers, particularly the tribal, said Kishor Tiwari of the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti. The farmers, he said, depend on open markets for domestic needs since they grow cash crops like cotton and soybean. With transport prices going up, food and fuel are becoming unaffordable, Tiwari added.
**Lost dreams: Even education has become unaffordable for farmers. Saraswati Amberwar, 48, from Yavatmal said her daughter passed HSC with 70% marks. "She needs Rs36,000 to
get admission in a private college for a diploma in education; how will
I arrange so much money?" Manjusha, her youngest daughter, is a
diligent student, but rising costs mean higher education could be a distant dream for her.
NAGPUR: Vasant Futane's immediate priority is to barbwire his farm to protect the crop from wild animals and thugs. But the steep rise in raw material costs this year has made this unaffordable for the 65-year-old farmer from Amravati's Ravala village.
"The costs have risen two-fold in the past three months. I'll suffer crop losses on two counts; one, due to spiralling production costs, and two, due to a drop in income. It will hit our domestic consumption patterns in a major way," Futane said.
Many farmers from his area, he says, are stuck. Inflation woes have begun to hit rural population in more ways than one. First, the cost of agriculture inputs - from seeds, fertilisers, and pesticides to labour - has gone up by at least 30%. Added to it is the rise in the prices of food and essential commodities, transportation, education, and health services. This, at a time when the fresh credit is hard to come by and farm income is dropping.
Many farmers who hire a tractor to till their land are paying twice the rent this year than they did last year. "One acre of land tilling cost Rs250 last year; this year it stands at Rs500," said Futane. Those who have generator sets are sorry they bought them. "Diesel prices have made running them unaffordable." What is even more ironic is that they are paying Rs200 a day to hire a pair of bullocks to till their land, even as the human wages remain between Rs30 and Rs75 a day.
This has already begun to affect the food intake of farmers, particularly the tribal, said Kishor Tiwari of the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti. The farmers, he said, depend on open markets for domestic needs since they grow cash crops like cotton and soybean. With transport prices going up, food and fuel are becoming unaffordable, Tiwari added.
In Wasri village of Ghatanji tehsil in Yavatmal, farmers could not even buy kerosene for their domestic needs. Last week, Kannu Rathod, a marginal farmer, committed suicide when he could not procure a loan from formal or private sources. Even those farmers that were better-off are feeling the pinch. "Everything but our income is going up," said Padmakar Argude, 40, one of the big farmers of Lonsavali village, 30 km off Wardha.
Argude's worries are compounded by a long gap in rains. If seeds do not germinate, he would have to buy them again. By that time, seed prices would have shot by over 30%. "The centre is raising its employees' salaries through the sixth pay commission, but is refusing to hike support prices of commodities for farmers. Is farming a crime?" said farm leader Vijay Jawandhia.
Lost dreams: Even education has become unaffordable for farmers. Saraswati Amberwar, 48, from Yavatmal said her daughter passed HSC with 70% marks. "She needs Rs36,000 to
get admission in a private college for a diploma in education; how will
I arrange so much money?" Manjusha, her youngest daughter, is a
diligent student, but rising costs mean higher education could be a distant dream for her.
For news updates throughout the day, visit dnaindia.com
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Saturday, June 14, 2008
Will the World Survive GM Cultures and the Damage to the Earth's Eco-Systems?
Featured
Will the World Survive GM Cultures and the Damage to the Earth's Eco-Systems?
By Siv O'Neall
Jun 13, 2008, 04:49
Monsanto and the other major biotech companies – Syngenta, Bunge, Cargill, etc. – are all set on owning the world's food supply. Monsanto is by far the leader in this nightmare of destroying organic agriculture and millennia-old biodiversity.
***
The Mealy Bug, the deadly gift from Monsanto
The latest horror news on GMOs is the Mealy Bug that has been said to be "the deadly gift from Monsanto to Vidarbha, set to destroy all crops and plants". Vidarbha is the eastern part of Maharashtra state, in western India. It is India's most developed and urbanized state.
In a press note Kishor Tiwari, President of 'Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti' – a farmers advocacy group – writes that the Mealy Bug is a virus that is imported with the Bt Cotton sold by multinational corporation Monsanto. In the coming summer season it will have an effect on a larger area covering almost all crops and next year it will be set to destroy not only cotton crops but all other food crops as well.
Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS) has urged the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, to ban Monsanto Bt. Cotton seeds in the agrarian crisis that has hit West Vidarbha. This is of the most urgent importance in order to save more than 3 million distressed and debt-trapped Vidarbha cotton farmers.
**********
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They have no respect whatsoever for the lives and the livelihood of farmers or, for that matter, any concern for the people who are exposed to severe health hazards from eating genetically modified foods. Corporate profit is all that counts.
The greatest long-lasting danger from GMOs is the destruction of the earth's eco-systems – the degradation of the soil, the depletion of water resources and the proliferation of pests that were until now barely known, since they were kept under control by the natural balance of predatory insects keeping those that are harmful to the crops from having their potentially damaging effect. More later about this natural equilibrium.
The bio-tech industries have taken a big and dangerous step towards destroying the earth as it has been known for thousands of years. Organic agriculture, biodiversity and natural pest control have made the earth a place for sustainable farming for millennia. However, at this point of delicate balance for the earth's survival, bio-tech corporations want to put an end to everything that is natural in order to make short-term profit from huge monocultures of the genetically modified products that they are falsely marketing as our saviors from world hunger and poverty. [1]
India is one country that has been severely hit by the bio-tech industry with accompanying disasters.
What follows after the farmers change over to GMO seeds after millennia of planting and making a livelihood in organic farming is a horror story of bad harvests, huge debts, increased costs for herbicides and fertilizers (in spite of the companies' promises of lower costs), and the suicides of thousands of farmers in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala – among the Indian states that are hit the worst.
This has been going on for decades and if it were not for a lot of activism being focused on this problem, there is no chance that anything would change, since the corporations are tied in firmly with the governments in the heavy-handed corporatism that rules the world today. The farmers are lured into buying the GM seeds because of low-interest loans and obscene propaganda about giant harvests, less work and lower costs. Bio-tech PR claims there is no need for pesticides and less need for fertilizers, all of which has proved to be inaccurate. Added to this, these seeds are not adjusted to the eco-systems where they are being planted. They frequently need more water than is available and the results are disastrous.
One woman is in the forefront of the fight against the bio-tech industry. Her name is Vandana Shiva and she is based in Delhi.
Dr. Vandana Shiva, a former particle physicist, has for the past three decades done more than anyone else as an activist to attract the attention of the world to the deadly corporate horror story of genetically modified products. She attacks the problem from all angles, educating and organizing protest demonstrations through her organization Navdanya.
Navdanya means "nine seeds", and is a movement promoting diversity – fighting against the privatization of water, campaigning against Basmati biopiracy and generally leading a fight for the rights of rural farmers to a decent livelihood, uncompromised through biopiracy such as is taking place in India and all over the world. Biodiversity, the way farmers have been cultivating the land for millennia is her central argument and monocultures at the giant industrial farms are her principal enemy. She talks about food fascism and the bio-tech industry see her as their most prominent enemy in their vicious attempt of controlling the world's food supply.
Vandana Shiva says on her Navdanya website:
"When I found that dominant science and technology served the interests of [the] powerful, I left
academics to found the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology (RFSTE), a
participatory, public interest research organisation."When I found global corporations wanted to patent seeds, crops or life forms, I started Navdanya to protect biodiversity, defend farmers' rights and promote organic farming.
"Navdanya/RFSTE's journey over the past two decades has taken us into creating markets for farmers
and promoting tasty, healthy, high quality food for consumers. We have connected the seed to the
kitchen, biodiversity to gastronomy. And now we have joined hands with Slow Food to celebrate the
quality and cultural diversity of our food."
SIU [2] magazine writes about Vandana Shiva:
"In fact, listening to her may make you rethink many of the world's established social and political paradigms.
"For example, the generally acknowledged argument that the Green Revolution, at the very least, led to an increase in food production is one of them. 'No, it did not increase production. Wheat and rice production increased, not the overall food production,' argues Shiva, and launches into a lecture that concludes that whatever increase there was had nothing whatsoever to do with the Green Revolution, and that overall it has been a disaster for agriculture and food security in India."
The Mealy Bug, the deadly gift from Monsanto
The latest horror news on GMOs is the Mealy Bug that has been said to be "the deadly gift from Monsanto to Vidarbha, set to destroy all crops and plants". Vidarbha is the eastern part of Maharashtra state, in western India. It is India's most developed and urbanized state.
In a press note Kishor Tiwari, President of 'Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti' – a farmers advocacy group – writes that the Mealy Bug is a virus that is imported with the Bt Cotton sold by multinational corporation Monsanto. In the coming summer season it will have an effect on a larger area covering almost all crops and next year it will be set to destroy not only cotton crops but all other food crops as well.
Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS) has urged the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, to ban Monsanto Bt. Cotton seeds in the agrarian crisis that has hit West Vidarbha. This is of the most urgent importance in order to save more than 3 million distressed and debt-trapped Vidarbha cotton farmers.
The London based Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) posts the following from Ram Kalaspurkar, organic farmer, Vidarbha Organic Farmers Association, Yavatmal, Maharashtra, India
"I am an organic farmer residing at Yavatmal in the state of Maharashtra. Our organisation, Vidarbha Organic Farmers Association, has been propagating organic farming since 1994. We have been helped a lot by Dr Vandana Shiva. She was the first person to tell us about terminators. Right now, we are working for her organisation Navdanya."
ISIS on their web site has published a letter from Ram Kalaspurkar who refers to a study where they have found that 'Organic Cotton Beats Bt Cotton in India'. They firmly recommend a return to organic cotton, saying that Bt cotton is a trap that has to be avoided. In the article published by ISIS there are photos of plants infested by mealy bugs.
All the infested plots had the Bollgard label, which is supposed to control pests. It is made clear that the mealy bugs have never been found in the region before BT cotton seeds were introduced. (The mealy bug had, however, been found in China two years earlier.)
After the death of the cotton plants, the bug goes over to nearby plants and it has already shifted to Congress weed and many other weeds and plants in fields close by.
The Monsanto website claims:
"Bollgard II technology offers cotton growers efficient, effective pest control with fewer pesticide applications than in conventional cotton crops."
This is just one example of what has proved to be the totally false propaganda pumped out from Monsanto.
Rhea Gala reports from Andhra Pradesh – from VIDARBHA JAN ANDOLAN SAMITI (the following quoted passages are excerpted from the same VJAS source)
"In the fertile regions of Andhra Pradesh 'white gold' monocultures of the high-yielding hybrids of 'Green Revolution' cotton had turned the state into the pesticide capital of the world even before the advent of genetically modified (GM) Bt cotton. Now, however, the revolution is turning full circle as more and more farmers are opting for low input organic methods that are healthier and economically far more rewarding."
The message is now
"Return to Organic Cotton and Avoid the Bt Cotton Trap
No more debt, pesticides and suicides for Indian cotton farmers who avoid Bt-cotton and regain livelihood, health, independence and peace of mind with organic methods."
Several Non-Governmental Organizations are working in many villages promoting non-pesticide management (NPM). The government has until now supported high-chemical-input cotton production at national and state level and this has sent the wrong messages to farmers. GM cotton is falsely promoted as the answer to reducing pesticide use, and it is one of many reasons why farmers are giving in to the pressure to grow GM cotton.
"Farmers initially saw the system of industrial production as timesaving and requiring far less knowledge of soils and pests; however it soon proved to be a relentless treadmill. It degraded the soil, depleted scarce water resources and proliferated cotton pests beyond the farmers' worst nightmares, as both yield and profit progressively diminished."
Research backs up the case for NPM and organic cotton.
A report entitled "Bt cotton vs. Non Pesticidal Management of cotton: Findings of a study by the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture 2004-05 compares Bt and NPM cotton in Andhra Pradesh."
The findings are unequivocally in favor of organic cotton. There are vast numbers of beneficial insects that get killed off from GM Bt cotton. Those insects are predators that attack and kill off most of the harmful insects and pests.
"It reports conclusively that Bt cotton is more prone to pests and diseases and that beneficial insects are more prevalent on NPM cotton. It also reports that the cost of pest management of Bt cotton is 690 percent higher than in NPM farming systems and that seed cost of Bt cotton is 355 percent higher than conventional varieties ('Organic cotton beats Bt Cotton in India' SiS 27)".
Recreating the natural balance of predators and pests
"The skill of managing pests without recourse to synthetic pesticide requires knowledge of life cycle and behaviour, vigilance, an armoury of pest specific deterrents, and a healthy community of natural predators of pests. To control pests such as the spotted bollworm, American bollworm, tobacco caterpillar, pink bollworm, aphids, jassids, thrips, white fly and mites, each of which is capable of causing between 30 and 50 percent damage to a crop, natural predators are the most effective year after year."
Conclusion
Vandana Shiva [3] by no means limits her activism to Bt cotton. She sets as her goal to recreate natural biodiversity in rice and all the other crops that the bio-tech companies are trying to take over with their GM seeds and products. There exist 100,000 varieties of rice evolved by Indian farmers and the diversity and the 'perenniality' have to be kept alive if we want to save our environment. Genetically modified seeds will lead to increased use of agri-chemicals and will thus increase environmental problems as well as human health problems.
Vandana Shiva addresses principally the dangers of GM farming in India, but the danger to the environment and to the livelihood of millions of people is obviously world-wide. Biodiversity represents the sustenance and livelihood base of small farmers all over the world and a sane environment is naturally the key to the continuation of healthy lives for the billions of people in the world.
Footnotes:
[1] The problem is global, but strong resistance to GMO seeds and foods contaminated by GMOs is taking place in Europe. Corporate-friendly governments are trying to follow in the steps of U.S. pro-GM policies. The European Commission is ambivalent on the issue, but the people of Europe represented by numerous NGOs are leading the fight against this scourge of industrial GM farming in order to save the world from the dangers to people's health and from the destruction of the earth's eco-systems.
See report from ISIS – "Dr. Mae-Wan Ho warns that further indulgence in GMOs will severely damage our chances of surviving the food crisis and global warming; organic agriculture and localised food systems are the way forward"
[2] The Norwegian Centre for International Cooperation in Higher Education (SIU) is a Norwegian agency that promotes international cooperation in education and research.
[3] For more information on Vandana Shiva and her activism, see 'Monocultures, Monopolies, Myths and the Masculinisation of Agriculture'
Saturday, May 24, 2008
The seed struggle-root of vidarbha agrarian crisis
  | Saturday » May 24 » 2008 | ||||||
| The seed struggle Small farmers fight multinational business for control of the planet's food supply
Saturday, May 24, 2008
SAINT ANDRE D'ARGENTEUIL, Que. - Heather Meek leafs through the seed catalogue she wrote on the family computer on winter nights after the kids went to bed. There are Kahnawake Mohawk beans and Painted Mountain corn, Tante Alice cucumber and 40 varieties of heritage tomatoes. Selling seeds is more than just an extra source of income on this organic farm an hour northwest of Montreal. For Meek and partner Frederic Sauriol, propagating local varieties is part of a David and Goliath struggle by small farmers against big seed companies. At stake, they believe, is no less than control of the world's food supply. Since the dawn of civilization, farmers have saved seeds from the harvest and replanted them the following year. But makers of genetically modified (GM) seeds -- introduced in 1996 and now grown by some 70,000 Canadian farmers, according to Monsanto -- have been putting a stop to that practice. == The 12 million farmers worldwide who will plant GM seeds this year sign contracts agreeing not to save or replant seeds. That means they must buy new seeds every year. Critics charge such contracts confer almost unlimited power over farmers' lives to multinational companies whose priority is profit. From India, where thousands of debt-ridden farmers have committed suicide, to Latin America, where monoculture crops have destroyed forest and evicted small growers, they say GM seeds are sowing a humanitarian and ecological disaster. But Trish Jordan, a Canadian spokesman for Monsanto, the world's largest seed company, explains that requiring farmers to sign "technology-use agreements" allows companies to recoup the cost of developing new products. "Farmers choose these products because of benefits they provide," Jordan says. "That's why we're successful as a company." The debate over GM seeds has come into sharp focus as the world faces a food-price crisis that threatens to push millions into starvation. In recent months, riots have erupted from Haiti to Bangladesh in the wake of soaring costs for staples like bread, rice and corn. The crisis has prompted calls to step up investment in biotechnology to improve crop yields in developing countries. "At a global level, it's a problem that's not going to be solved by organics or focusing on local food," says Douglas Southgate, a professor of agricultural economics at Ohio State University. "Dealing with the problem on a global scale involves using biotechnology." But Ottawa author Brewster Kneen, a fierce opponent of GM seeds, counters that biotechnology, as practised by companies like Monsanto, is not the answer. "The point was never feeding the world or saving the environment," says Kneen, author of several books about agriculture and biotechnology, including Farmageddon: Food and the Future of Biotechnology (www.ramshorn.ca/Books.html). "It's about wealth, not about health." Seeds changed history Seeds look so harmless -- like a handful of dried beans you'd toss in the soup pot. But the small kernels that produce the food we eat have changed the course of history. By domesticating maize thousands of years ago, the Mayans became the people of corn. In the mid-19th century, Red Fife wheat, developed by Peterborough farmer David Fife, sowed Canada's future as breadbasket of the world. Author Devlin Kuyek traces the history of seeds in Canada in Good Crop/Bad Crop: Seed Politics and the Future of Food in Canada (Between the Lines, 2007). Developing new seed varieties was long a congenial affair where federal government scientists shared information and distributed samples to farmers for testing, says Kuyek, a researcher for GRAIN, an international non-profit organization that promotes agricultural biodiversity. But in the 1980s, he says, the federal government began privatizing agricultural research. Corporate secrecy soon shrouded development of new seeds. Genetically modified seeds -- also known as genetically engineered -- are altered to make them resistant to pests, diseases or herbicides. Monsanto's Roundup Ready canola soybean seeds produce plants that survive when a field is sprayed with the company's Roundup herbicide, also known as glyphosate. Other seeds, such as corn and cotton, are inserted with a bacterial gene that produces an insecticide. Worldwide, GM crops have grown 67-fold in 12 years, now covering 690.9 million hectares in 23 countries, according to the industry's Council for Biotechnology Information. That's about 70 per cent of the total land area of the United States or almost 30 times the total land area of the United Kingdom. Canada is the fourth-largest grower of GM crops, which cover 7 million hectares. About half of the corn and soybeans grown in Quebec and Ontario are GM crops. In 2005, Greenpeace revealed that Monsanto had applied for an international patent on genetically engineered pigs. The company has since sold its swine breeding division. The same year, leaked documents revealed Canada tried to thwart an international moratorium on so-called "Terminator" seeds. Jointly patented by Monsanto and the U.S. government, sterile seed technology modifies plants so the seeds the produce cannot germinate, making it impossible for farmers to replant them. A global ban on the technology still stands. Seed companies have not ventured into GM vegetables yet but that is likely to change in the next few years, predicts Monsanto's Jordan. The St. Louis company acquired Seminis, the world's largest vegetable seed company, in 2005. If so, farmers Meek and Sauriol will not be lining up to buy them. "We're tampering with life when we play with genes," says Sauriol, as he transplanted leek seedlings from his greenhouse. Sauriol and Meek started their first seedlings 13 years ago in their four-room apartment on de Bullion St. Now, the Ferme de Bullion delivers fresh produce to 200 Montreal families every week. The tiny leeks, sown in February, poked up through the soil like small blades of grass. They won't be ready for harvest until November. --- Saskatchewan farmer Percy Schmeiser burst into the headlines in 1998, when Monsanto sued him for patent infringement after company investigators detected Roundup Ready canola in his fields. Schmeiser said the seeds he planted were from the previous year's crop, which must have been contaminated accidentally. In 2004, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld a lower court ruling that Schmeiser knew or should have known he was planting Roundup Ready seeds but overturned his $150,000 fine. In March, Schmeiser won a small measure of vindication when Monsanto agreed to pay him $600 for the cost of removing Roundup Ready canola from his field in 2005. Schmeiser's case made him an international folk hero for standing up to the agro giant. But another farmer sued by Monsanto says the ordeal has been the most stressful in his life. "I've never been in a court before. Now I'm sitting here in a situation where I almost feel like a criminal," says the Ontario farmer, who asked that The Gazette not print his name for fear it could jeopardize his case. The farmer says he has never bought GM seeds, which cost $80 per acre compared to $20 per acre for conventional seed. He added he unwittingly planted his field with GM seed from another farmer's field. The company has created an atmosphere of fear by setting up a snitch line for farmers to report patent infringements and hiring investigators to prowl farmers' fields, he said. "We can't fight a company that's that big," he adds. "Unless farmers get together, they're never going to stop it. "Basically, this company will get so big that you will just be a laborer for this company." Loic Dewavrin, an organic grain grower in Les Cedres, plants non-GM seeds on the 600-hectare farm he shares with his two brothers. His fear is that seed companies will stop producing conventional seeds, which have gradually been disappearing from seed catalogues. "These companies are all-powerful," he says. GM seeds have accentuated farmers' dependence on large corporations, says Laval University professor Guy Debailleul. Growers are locked into paying costs set by companies for seeds, fertilizer and herbicides regardless of what price their crop will fetch. "It's a feudal relationship," says Debailleul. "It's a takeover of the agricultural profession by these companies." Southgate, the Ohio State University professor, doesn't have a problem with requiring farmers to sign contracts. "My reaction is, 'So what?'" Farmers have a choice as to whether to plant GM seeds, he says. "No one is holding a gun to his head to buy it." But GM crops have spread to much of Latin America despite opposition from many small farmers, according to GRAIN. In Mexico, GM corn has contaminated traditional varieties. In Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay, vast fields of GM soybeans raised for export have destroyed forests and pushed small producers off the land, according to the non-profit organization. In India, more than 1,400 cotton farmers have committed suicide in the Vidharbha region since July 2006, according to Navdanya, an organization that operates a seed bank and promotes organic farming. It attributed a large number of the deaths to debts farmers incurred to buy GM seeds. This week, Alexander Muller, assistant director of Food and Agriculture Organization, warned that loss of agricultural biodiversity threatens the world's ability to survive climate change. About three-quarters of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops have been lost over the last century and hundreds of the 7,000 known animal breeds are in danger of extinction, according to the UN organization. Just 12 crops and 14 animal species now provide most of the world's food. In February, Norway opened a "doomsday" seed vault in the Arctic to preserve millions of food crops for future generations. "The erosion of biodiversity for food and agriculture severely compromises global food security," said Muller, who heads FAO's natural resources management and environment department. Muller's words resonate with farmers Meek and Sauriol, whose four daughters help with the painstaking work of cleaning seeds over the winter. "Growing seed is a big job," says Meek. "But if you don't grow your seed, you lose your power." © The Vancouver Sun 2008 | |||||||
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| Copyright © 2008 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved. |
Monday, May 12, 2008
Loan waiver yet to trickle down to desperate farmers-Economictimes reports
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| Loan waiver yet to trickle down to desperate farmers http://economictimes.indiatimes 13 May, 2008, 0009 hrs IST,Abhiram Ghadyalpatil, TNN | ||
MUMBAI: Nearly three months after it was announced, the Rs 60,000-crore loan waiver remains on paper. With fresh agri season just a month away, banks have not yet been given instructions about the loan waiver and as a result, farmers are deprived of fresh credit. This has resulted in rising farm suicides in Vidarbha. State officials told ET that the Centre had not issued any guidelines to the state government and banks on the implementation of the debt-waiver. "We are awaiting basic guidelines on the debt-waiver. The banks and other lending institutions in the rural areas know that loans for farmers holding up to 5 acres have been written off. But the banks have to have certain guidelines on paper so that they can clear farmers' accounts of all outstanding dues and make them eligible for fresh credit," said an official associated with the exercise. The official said the Centre was expected to issue clear guidelines in a week. "In principle, the banks and farmers are aware of the decision. But physical delivery of fresh credit will take place only when the government issues specific guidelines," said a Nagpur-based official. Lack of information on the modalities of India's largest-ever farm sop has impacted Vidarbha in two majors ways. In the immediate context, failure to clear the bank account held by an eligible farmer (holding less than 5 acres) makes him an indebted farmer who is not entitled for fresh crop loan. Second, the delay in taking the benefits of the loan-waiver to the farmers would have a negative impact on the outcome of the next farm season as the farmers may not get fresh credit in time, sources said. Farmers suicides, meanwhile, continue unabated in Vidarbha and have even peaked up ahead of the next farm season which begins around mid-June, government sources and NGOs working in Vidarbha said. From January to the first week of May this year, the six districts of Vidarbha where the farm crisis has had the most debilitating effect have reported more than 320 suicides, according to NGO Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti. The other five districts of Vidarbha have seen 45 suicides during the same period. In fact, the numbers seem to have peaked up after February 29. In January, 80 farmers took their lives. Next month, the farm death toll went up to 86. But in March and April, 87 and 89 farmers committed suicides, a phenomenon which clearly underlines the far greater magnitude of this crisis than suicide numbers and populist measures like debt-waiver can address. In the first week of May itself, 22 farmers took their lives. A government spokesperson disputed this figure but acknowledged "high percentage of farmers' deaths" even after the debt-waiver has been announced. "This proves that indebtedness was never the sole reason for farm suicides nor is debt-waiver the ultimate solution," said a senior bureaucrat. |
Monday, April 28, 2008
Farmer relief package turns suicidal: CAG
Farmer relief package turns suicidal: CAG
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