Can PM Narendra Modi end farmer suicides?
The very people who provide us food have been on a suicide spree. That too, not in the hinterland, but in some of the most developed states of our country - be it Maharashtra, or our very own "model state", Gujarat.
According to a release on the Press Information Bureau website, the agriculture ministry has informed the Lok Sabha that the recent incidents of suicide by farmers due to agrarian distress in 2014 have been mainly reported in Maharashtra (204 - up until April), Telangana (69- up until October), Karnataka (19 - up until October), Gujarat (three - up until October), Kerala (three - up until October) and Andhra Pradesh (three - up until June).
Yavatmal district in Vidarbha region of Maharashtra has even earned a dubious distinction of being known as the "suicide" district, despite the fact that it is the biggest producer of cotton. Now the state regime has changed. Today the BJP is in power in the most developed state. It has also been in power for more than a decade in Gujarat. Yet, it hasn't been able to eradicate farmers suicides.
Can our Prime Minister Narendra Modi find a way out of this death-trap? In almost six months of his rule at the Centre, Modi has spoken and spelled out various policies, announced several schemes and won many a heart by giving a clarion call for a Swachh Bharat. He has even engineered a few diplomatic coups. The president of the most powerful state, Barack Obama, has even hailed him as the man of action. However, Modi is yet to speak on a subject as serious as this.
While, he blamed the Congress-NCP ten year rule in Maharasthra during the run-up to the Assembly elections, the fact of the matter is that Gujarat too has had farmer suicides, and Modi's silence on this is deafening. As statistics from the National Crime Records Bureau go, 564 farmers committed suicides in 2012 in Gujarat. Just before the Lok Sabha elections 2014 that gave Modi an absolute mandate to rule the country, his bête noire AAP founder Arvind Kejriwal had alleged that 5,874 farmers had committed suicides in the ten years due to crop failures in Gujarat. Though, BJP disputed the claim, many believed the former Delhi chief minister was not very far from the truth.
India is looking towards our prime minister as a panacea of all ailments. It is all the more important for Modi to address this issue now more than ever. The man who is the final word on all policy matters needs to kill the practice of self-killing by effective policy measures. Let's hope the much-hyped slogan of "Achche Din" becomes a reality for the distressed farmers.