Vidarbha rocked by 10 suicides in 24 hours

NAGPUR: Two days before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Mumbai on August 31 to review the implementation of special packages to farmers in Vidarbha, ten farmers committed suicide within 24 hours.

The suicides occurred across the region, according to the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS), a farm movement that has been tracking farmer suicides for six years now.

Notwithstanding the state government’s claims that the suicides had declined sharply in the region, the month of August has seen close to a hundred farmers take their lives; or a suicide every eight hours.

The ten farmers, who committed suicide on Monday have taken this year’s tally to 624, and 1,354 since last July, when Singh had declared a relief package of Rs3,750 crore.

"This is spraying time, when farmers have pesticide in their hand. This is the season of suicides in the cotton belt — the time when the expenditure shoots up but income level tanks," warned Mohan Jadhav, a farmer and VJAS activist. 

Moreover, these farmers won’t even be able to give anything to their sisters on the auspicious day of Raksha Bandhan, he added. “Naturally, such disappointments trigger more suicides.”