The growing agrarian crisis is forcing women farmers into suicide. The number of women committing suicide in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra is going up.
From the 400 farm suicides in western Vidarbha in Maharashtra, according to Kishore Tiwary, who runs the NGO Jan Andolan Samiti, 52 were women between the ages of 32-36.
The tally was 42 women out of 1058 suicides in 2009 and 32 out of 1200 suicides in 2008, Mr Kishore Tiwary said.
“The situation is alarming but the government is sleeping over it. The cases of suicides by women due to farm stress is steadily rising,” said Mr Tiwary.
Charging that a callous government usually refrains from registering suicide by a woman due to agricultural reasons, CPI(M) Rajya Sabha member Brinda Karat said, “The government’s relief package does not factor in this harsh reality and makes no provision for livelihood requirement of the suffering families.”
She further said in case of women committing suicide due to farm stress, her family becomes more vulnerable as there is no social system to take care of the children. This, said Ms Karat, leads to a situation where the dependent family gets further entrapped into more debt as it borrows money in order to meet the basic needs.
“What the farmers need is a sustained package and not a one-time relief measure,” said Brinda Karat.
Farmers of the region said both the Prime Minister’s package worth Rs 3750 crore and the chief minister’s package worth Rs 1075 crore have failed to address the farmers’ crisis in western Vidarbha.
Describing the ground situation in western Vidarbha, Mr Tiwary said that the second consecutive year of drought coupled with corruption in the implementation of the relief package has induced a lot of stress on the young farmers, including women.
Another farmer Vijay Jawandhia said, “The farm suicides are just the tip of the iceberg.”
He added, “The Prime Minister’s package meant to generate irrigation facilities has failed. The government’s plan to use Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in the region too has not helped contain the agrarian crisis.”