India Grows; Its Farmers Die; While Politicians/officials Fight Semantics!

Last updated on: February 2, 2007 at 5:41 am by Desh Kapoor

India Grows; Its Farmers Die; While Politicians/officials Fight Semantics! 2007-02-02T05:41:23-06:00 Desh Kapoor

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While India’s businesses grow by leaps and bounds.. somewhere in India the progress is not reaching the common.. poor man! Farmers are committing suicides by the hundreds!

He sold a door of his house to pay for his trips to Govt. office and they turned him back!

This was one of the main battle-cries of the Congress politicians.. that they will bring about an egalatarian growth and progress.

The best bet could have been a team consisting of Dr. Singh and Chidambaran. Well, as it turns out… the very crime for which Dr. Singh pulled up the “India Shining” architects from BJP.. is exactly what HE and His people are guilty of now! Except for the change in semantics.. has anyone seen ANY change in the economic policies of Congress versus the BJP? Maybe I am missing something here.

The imperatives are clear. The solutions are not. But at the very least the intentions and honesty of the Government officials.. heck… even BASIC human decency is something that one can ask for!! Or is that even too much? (Story Credit: VK)

Rameshwar Kuchankar decided that the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee was where he would take his own life. He did, on November 28 in Panderkauda, Yavatmal. Ten days later, Dinesh Ghughul was shot dead by the police at the Wani cotton market in the same district. And Pundalik Girsawle walked into the premises of the agricultural officer, Wani, and killed himself there 12 days after Ghughul’s death.

Kuchankar was 27, Ghughul was 38, and Girsawle 45. Different people in several ways. Yet they represent the same new – and growing – trend in Vidharbha’s farm deaths. More and more such farmers are directly blaming state policy – not drought or floods – for their misery. Some confront the Government in tragic ways. Where Girsawle and Kuchankar chose to commit suicide was in itself a statement. And for some months now, the suicide notes of farmers are talking directly to Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and even to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

“Don’t blame my family for my action,” says the suicide note of young Kuchankar. “I will never forgive anybody who does.” He perhaps foresaw a standard government explanation of farm suicides: “family dispute.” And in one poignant sentence, addresses the 19-year-old girl he had wed just six months ago: “Pratibha, I am sorry. Please get remarried.” He blames the procurement price for cotton as the source of farmers’ distress. “We are fed up with the delay in procurement and crashing prices. This will further aggravate the situation.”

His message to Mr. Deshmukh: “Mr. Chief Minister give us the price.” And to Home Minister R.R. Patil “if you do not give us a price of Rs.3,000 per quintal, suicides will surge.” Kuchankar wrote: “The cotton price has fallen to Rs.1,990 a quintal. We cannot manage with that. Which is why I am giving up my life.” The suicide note is a bunch of anguished scribbles across a sheet of paper.

Pundalik Girsawle chose the Agricultural Office in Wani to make his point. He was seeking Rs.4,800 to buy a bullock cart under the Prime Minister’s relief package. He had seen four years of crop failure. His home being close to the Tejapur forest, wild animals devastated his fields. Household health expenses were rising. He sought the agricultural officer’s aid.

“He went to that office 15 times,” his mother Parvatabai told us in Tejapur. “Look, he even sold one of the doors he had bought for this house. Why? To pay for his frequent bus tickets to Wani. But someone there demanded a bribe. When he threatened to commit suicide, they told him `you do what you like.’ He was shattered.” He chose that very office as the site of his suicide.

As if the death of the farmer was not enough… the bureaucracy of India has fallen to SUCH low INHUMAN levels that these bastards made a complete mockery of the suicide by tampering with the deceased’s dead body… and how..

Neighbours allege that the cheque for some Rs.4,400 found on his body “was planted there to cover up the racket his suicide exposed.” His five-member family now depends on the Rs.30 his widow Sunita brings in on those days she can find work. “What happens to Pundalik’s three daughters,” asks Parvatabai. They are aged 14, 12, and 10. Meanwhile, officials declared it a “non-distress” suicide. A view echoed in sections of the media that had never been to the village or met his family.

Story Link

India

Poverty

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