Despite Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s repeated assertions regarding the “prosperity” of farmers in his regime, yet another incident of a farmer committing suicide due to crop failure and increasing debts has been reported from the State.
Crop failure
Police sources admitted that Jilubha Jethwa, a farmer in Raheja village in Mangrol taluka of Junagadh district in the Saurashtra region, committed suicide on Friday because of crop failure due to inadequate rainfall this year.
Jilubha had sown groundnut in his four ‘bighas’ of land, but due to insufficient rainfall, the crop failed. Getting no assistance from the State government and being neck-deep in debt, the farmer committed suicide by hanging himself from a tree in his farm.
According to official records, this is the 39th suicide due to crop failure in the Saurashtra region alone this year.
Mr. Modi, however, has claimed that with more than 11 per cent “growth rate” in agriculture, most of the farmers had earned the ability to own four-wheelers.
