CHENNAI: In what has come as a shocking revelation, the Tamil Nadu government has suppressed the suicides of over 3,000 farmers in the State over the last five years.
While National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) statistics reveal that 3,737 farmers committed suicides in Tamil Nadu over the last five years, the TN government’s agriculture department claims that only three farmers committed suicide during that period.
Also, the number of farmer suicides in 2009 given by the NCRB doesn’t match the government’s claim. Against 1,060 farmer suicides as per NCRB records, the government’s tally is zero.
State agriculture minister Veerapandi S Arumugam categorically denied NCRB’s statistics. Going a step further, the minister claimed the central agency’s figures were incorrect.
This information was obtained through a Right to Information petition from the agriculture department. The suicide figures given by the central and state agency include both personal and occupational.
“Since DMK came to power, the government has been giving loans at subsidised rates and also compensating farmers for any crop loss,” the minister said. He further said the agriculture department was monitoring farmer suicides by collecting data from the Director General of Police’s office every six months.
The NCRB’s report is compiled and collated based on data obtained from the State government police. K Nagaraj of the Madras Institute of Development Studies, who has done extensive studies on farmer suicides in the country and has studied farmer suicides between 1997 and 2005 based on NCRB data, said the figures given by NCRB were reliable and authentic, as the data was collected from the local police, who maintain records of suicides.
Farmer suicides: Damned lies and statistics
CHENNAI: While the State government and the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) have come out with contradictory figures on farmers’ suicide, experts in the field stand by the NCRB figures, alleging that the government was manipulating the data.
K Nagaraj of the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) said, “I have worked at the grass-root level. There is more number of suicide cases in Tamil Nadu than the number reported by the government. Government statistics is completely off the mark. It is disputable that only three farmers have committed suicide in the past five years.” The government should put a system in place to track suicide cases and provide compensation to the victims’ families accordingly, he added.
It is alarming to note that the number of farmers who committed suicide in the State had doubled, when compared to the figure of 512 in 2008. This was the highest jump recorded in the country.
A Right to Information (RTI) query further revealed that no compensation had been accorded the victims since the reason for all the three suicides had reportedly been purely personal.
It further stated that ‘farmer-friendly schemes like the National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (NAIS) and free electricity to pump sets had helped in preventing suicide by farmers due to agriculture reasons.”
Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) professor S Janakarajan was of the view that ‘indebtedness’ was the major reason for farmers’ suicides in the State.
“Farmers who borrow from local moneylenders at high interest rate will not be able to repay when there is a situation of crop failure,” he added.
P Sainath comments:
Dear Gangadhar.,
I have seen your story and it is factually quite correct. A lot of people react with that disbelief. That is how it was for me, too.
Your point should simply be
a) These are the figures of the National Crime Records Bureau, the only competent authority on suicide numbers of anybody, farmers, students, etc.
b) The NCRB data originate from every police station in the country so these are not your numbers or data - let the critics fight the NCRB.
Secondly, governments simply try to either ignore the NCRB data or dispute it by saying only a handful of these suicides were due to distress, the rest were for other reasons.
That is not your ground to get into and we can all endlessly debate this. The point is that they have doubled. Let the critics explain why 512 in 2008 became 1260 in 2009.
After all, the NCRB data are official. NCRB is a wing of the union home ministry.
Regards
Sainath
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