NCRB Report On Farmers' Suicides Exposed TRS Govt: Uttam
Hyderabad: Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy on Tuesday said that the latest report of National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has exposed the failure of TRS Government in preventing farmers’ suicides and also proved that it was responsible agrarian crisis in the State.
"For the second consecutive year, the NCRB has placed Telangana in second position in the country in suicides by persons engaged in farming sector. This clearly shows that the State Government tried to downplay farmers’ suicides," Uttam Kumar Reddy said. Quoting the statistics from Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India 2015, which was released by the NCRB on Monday, he said as many as 1400 farmers, including 42 agricultural workers, in Telangana committed suicide in the year 2015. The figure was 1347 (including 449 agricultural workers) in 2014. There has been a 33% increase in number of farmers/cultivators who committed suicide, he said.
Uttam Kumar Reddy said of 1,358 farmers, as many as 632 or 46.5% committed suicide due to ‘Bankruptcy or Indebtedness’. Telangana is also on top in highest number of female farmers/cultivators suicides accounting for 34.7% of total cases in the country. "Congress party has been warning of this situation since long. These suicides could have been prevented if the TRS Government would have honoured its election promise of waiving off crop loans in single take. The debt-ridden farmers, who voted for TRS in last elections expecting complete waiver of their crop loans, lost their hopes after TRS Government split the loan waiver amount into several instalments. On behalf of farmers, the Congress party made repeated appeals to the State Government seeking total clearance of crop loan waiver dues. However, Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao ignored our appeals and allowed the situation to deteriorate further. Consequently, in every 6-8 hours, one farmer committed suicide throughout 2014 and 2015," he said while fearing that the figures pertaining to the year 2016 might be more shocking.
The TPCC chief said that the causes that drove farmers of Telangana to suicides expose the tall and hollow claims of TRS Government on development. While 'Bankruptcy or Indebtedness' drove 384 farmers to suicide, 395 others took their lives due to other farming related issues which includes reasons like failure of crop due to natural calamities. "TRS Government mishandled drought situation. It failed to enumerate the losses and both State and Central Governments failed to extend needed help to the affected farmers. Same negligent attitude was adopted towards the farmers who lost their crops due to heavy rains. As many as 20 other farmers committed suicide due to poverty," he said.
He also expressed deep concern over Telangana witnessing maximum female farmers/cultivators’ suicides, accounting for 34.7% of total such suicides in the country.