HYDERABAD: In an effort to mitigate the sufferings of farmers in different parts of India, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar has convened a meeting of chief ministers of four states to discuss the problem of suicides by bankrupt farmers.

Pawar will meet the chief ministers of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala here April 10 in the backdrop of continuing suicides by farmers, especially in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy yesterday said the meeting would discuss a package to help the distressed farmers and prevent suicides.

Senior officials of the four states and the central government will participate in the meeting.

Reddy told a news conference here that the central government wanted to make extra efforts in the districts affected by the suicide of farmers.

“Taking into account the experience of Andhra Pradesh and other states, the central government will give some sort of package for the farmers,” he said.

According to official statistics, 1,261 farmers committed suicide in Andhra Pradesh since the current Congress government came to power in May 2004. The earlier Telugu Desam Party (TDP) government had recorded 1,490 suicides by farmers.

Reddy said the number of suicides had come down significantly during the past one year.

“The suicides by farmers have come down in Andhra Pradesh. In the first year when we assumed office, the rate of suicide was quiet high. But now it has come down phenomenally and in some weeks, there have been no suicides.”

Expressing deep concern at the incidents of dejected farmers dumping tonnes of vegetables, including tomatoes and brinjals in Hyderabad and other places, due to a glut, Reddy called for evolving a policy to set crop patterns in advance based on projections of future needs.

He said it was time India had a policy on the lines of other countries to help farmers in growing crops that were needed and would fetch them good prices.

State government officials said the farmers, helped by the good rains this year, had grown vegetables over a larger area.

“The area under cultivation of vegetables is 15,000 hectares more than last year,” said a senior official in the state agriculture department, referring to the glut in vegetables.

The chief minister said his government had a very small role to play in this matter because vegetables did not have any system of minimum support prices, as in the case of paddy, cotton, maize and soya beans.

“There is no storage capacity to preserve vegetables for future needs because it is not feasible,” Reddy said.

Meanwhile, even as 423 farmer suicides have been reported from the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra in the past few months, the authorities are preparing for a mega show and forcing farmers to buy costly tickets, a social activist group claimed.

Of the 423 suicides by debt-ridden cotton farmers, 52 had been reported in the last 20 days, the Nagpur-based Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS) said in a statement.

“The Vidarbha agrarian crisis has worsened as 52 farmers have committed suicide in last 20 days taking total deaths to 423,” Kishore Tiwari of the VJAS said.

The last case was of Raju Nathuji Tagade of Narkhed district in Nagpur who is reported to have committed suicide Wednesday night, the group said.

Tiwari alleged that the administration was forcing the farmers to buy tickets priced at Rs1,000 and Rs5,000 for a mega event to be held onSaturday in Yavatmal district, one of the worst hit areas, to honour the winner of the TV talent hunt show “Indian Idol”.

“Though a private function, the local administration is in full swing to sell tickets of the show,” Tiwari alleged.

Vjas has already filed a petition in the Nagpur Bench of the Mumbai High Court and with the Maharashtra Human Rights Commission against the government and over a dozen bureaucrats seeking compensation of Rs500,000 to the next of kin of all farmers who have committed suicide due to lack of timely government action.

The Maharashtra Human Rights Commission has posted the case for hearing on April 10.

The activist group has claimed that these farmers were innocent victims of continuous negligence on the part of administration.

The government had failed to implement the “recommendations of the National Commission for Farmers headed by agronomist M S Swaminathan.

The expert had urged the government to ensure a price of Rs3,000 per quintal for cotton besides curtailing the import of cotton by imposing higher duty on it”, Vjas said.

It also attributed the suicides in Vidarbha to the Maharashtra government’s failure to disburse the Rs10.7bn-relief package for farmers announced in December 2005.

Tiwari pointed out that “as many as 274 suicides have been reported after the announcement of the state government’s relief package”. – Indo-Asian News Service