Modi govt has released farmers’ suicide data after a delay of 3 years
ANN | New Delhi | 10 Nov 2019
The National Crime Records Bureau’s (NCRB) accidental deaths and suicides in India report released on Friday said, 31 farmers committed suicide per day in 2016. The report has come almost at the end of 2019.
The report says “11,379 farmers committed suicide in India in 2016 or there were 948 farmer suicides every month”.
Majority of farmers who committed suicide were men while women accounted for only 8.6% of farmer suicides in the country.
It also said, “The number of farmer suicides has declined from 12602 in 2015 to 11 379 in 2016. It was 12360 in 2014.”
However, NCRB has not released information on the cause of farmer suicides in this report. On the contrary in its previous report it had given reasons behind the farmers’ suicides classifying them under categories such as crop failure, illness, family problems and loans etc.
The last report was released in 2015. NCRB had started publishing farmer suicide data in 1995. Since then 3,33,407 farmers have committed suicide in India.
As per 2016 report, Maharashtra continues to account for the highest number of farmer suicides in the country with 3,661 in 2016.
Over 15,000 farmers committed suicide in Maharashtra between 2013 and 2018, an RTI filed in the state by Shakeel Ahmed had recently revealed
Karnataka saw the second highest number of farmer suicides in 2016 at 2,079 and an increase from 1569 suicides in 2015.
Farmer suicides in Telangana have more than halved. In 2014 and 2015 the number of farmer suicides in the state stood at 1,347 and 1,400 respectively. For 2016 the number was 645 as per the NCRB data.
As per data provided to NCRB by West Bengal for 2015 and 2016, no farmer committed suicide in 2015 and 2016. In 2014, the state reported 230 suicides. The state of Bihar also reported zero farmer suicides in 2016.
But, several news reports of farmer suicides have also emerged both from Bihar and West Bengal.
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