A suicide in front of scribes

PANDHARKAWDA: A young farmer committed suicide in a village in the Vidarbha region — in front of some foreign journalists — when his wife told him there was not a grain left in the house to cook food.

The grim tragedy struck Anil Shende's four-member family of Bhad-Umri village on Wednesday, the day of 'Pola' — the year's biggest festival in rural Vidarbha.

Shende guzzled a litre of the pesticide Indo-sulphan right in front of a team of reporters from the New York Times. The reporters were interviewing the widow of a farmer Dnyaneshwar Bhandare of the same village who had committed suicide 10 months ago.

The hugely indebted marginal farmer happens to be the 767th victim of the ongoing agrarian crisis in this region since June last year and the 15th in the last 72 hours, Vidarbha Jan Andolan leader Kishore Tiwari said.

The 15 suicides include that of another young man who consumed poison in front of a cooperative bank in Kangaon tehsil in Wardha district and those of a family of three who jumped in a well in Parambi village of Jalgaon.

Naresh Fartade had gone to the bank to withdraw a loan sanctioned by a cooperative society after a long drawn, hassle-filled process. After a tiff with the counter clerk while submitting his withdrawal slip, Naresh came out of the bank and consumed pesticide.

The 72 hours in which the 15 suicides took place were also marked by Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh's whirlwind tour of the region during which he admitted that the combination of his and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's relief package has not worked to stop distressed farmers' suicides.