Farmers' suicides: four CMs' meet on April 10

Andhra Pradesh is hosting yet another high-profile meeting. The meeting to be attended by chief ministers of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra, where the rate of suicides by farmers is very high, is being convened by Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar on April 10 to address the problem in a more focused manner.

Disclosing this here today, state agriculture minister N Raghuveera Reddy said the state government would request the Union minister to formulate a special package of relief and incentives for dryland agriculture which has been the main source of distress among the farming community.

During the meeting, the state government would also seek assistance for farmers engaged in dairy activity, godown facilities in rural areas, sharing the burden of premium of the proposed health insurance scheme for farmers, and passing of the state seed bill, according to Raghuveera Reddy.

Acknowledging that much more was needed to be done to completely stop farmers' suicides, the minister, however, claimed that owing to several measures undertaken by the state government in the past 22 months, the number of suicides came down considerably.

According to the figures provided by the government, the number of suicides in a week are now down to 2-3 from a staggering 58 a week during the first 30 weeks of the Congress government.

In all, over 1,261 suicides have been registered after the Congress came to power in the state as compared to 1,490 suicides during the previous government.

"We made it a point to verify and register each suicide case after we came to power, but the previous government tried to suppress the facts by not filing any FIR in case of farmers' suicides, he said.