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Parties may focus on farmers’ problems in poll manifestos

BANGALORE: In an attempt to win over the dominant farming community in the coming elections to the Legislative Assembly, political parties are likely to frame their poll strategies focussing on the plethora of problems haunting the agricultural sector, including the continuing suicides by farmers.

This is an issue that has been of pressing concern for all political parties for the past few years. With suicide cases being reported almost every day from across the State, all major political parties — the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Janata Dal (Secular) — are likely to come out with strategies and formulas in their election manifestos to address this issue and thereby attract the rural vote.

While in power, however, the same parties have not been able to prevent this phenomenon. All parties “chase” farmers for votes and promise them everything, R.S. Deshpande, Professor of Agriculture, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore, told The Hindu.

Despite a good monsoon last year, suicides by farmers continued. As many as 257 farmers’ suicide cases were reported from 29 districts between April 2007 and February 2008. Of these, 194 cases have been placed before a committee set up to sanction compensation to the next of the kin of the farmers. The committee rejected the claims in 65 cases and awarded compensation of Rs. 1 lakh to the families concerned in 53 cases. The remaining cases are pending before the committee, according to sources in the Agriculture Department.

Various factors caused these suicides. Besides the steep fall in prices of commodities in the recent past, the farmers have been adversely affected by the recent untimely showers that destroyed paddy, coffee, jowar, cotton and other crops. They are also unhappy with the procurement prices, particularly for sugarcane, offered by the Government.

The number of farmers committing suicide has seen a decline from 2000-01, when 2,360 farmers ended their lives. As many as 708 suicide cases were reported in 2003-04, 271 in 2004-05, 163 in 2005-06 and 343 cases in 2006-07. As many as 1,742 cases have been reported from 2003-04.

In 2007-08, highest number of suicides have been reported from the districts of Bidar and Chikmagalur (27 each), followed by Hassan (24), Chitradurga (19), Belgaum (18), Mandya (16), Tumkur (12), Shimoga and Kogadu (11 each) and Gulbarga, Gadag and Bellary (10 each). No suicide cases have been reported from Bangalore Rural, Bangalore Urban, Ramanagara and Chickaballapur districts, official sources said.

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