The Human Rights Forum general secretary V.S. Krishna has attributed the implementation of new economic reforms since 1991 to the increasing suicides by the farmers across the country.
Addressing the seminar on the topic of “Suicides by Farmers and Solutions”, conducted by the HRF district unit, here on Monday, he said that with the reforms in banking sector, banks reduced the scale of finance to farm sector forcing them to depend on moneylenders and private financiers for farm credit.
Disclosing the findings of the HRF fact finding committee survey, he said tenant farmers were more among the farmers committing suicides and therefore there was an imperative need of enlisting the rights of tenant farmers. Enacting the drought relief Act the responsibilities of officials concerned and penalties for their failures to implement the Act must be defined, he said.
Presiding over the meeting the HRF State vice-president Gorrepati Madhava Rao demanded that the compensation of Rs.1.50 lakh presently being given to the bereaved families of farmers be increased to Rs.5 lakh. He also suggested that the compensation should immediately be paid in accordance with the report given jointly by the RDO, DSP and Assistant Director, Agriculture.
The AIKMS leader Akula Papaiah felt that crop failures and absence of minimum support price to farm produce were provoking the farmers to take the extreme step. He appealed to the Government to set up food processing industries to benefit farmers and also the unemployed youth.
The NDCCB former chairman Yedla Raji Reddy pooh-poohed the policies of the Governments saying that they were extending sops to the tune of thousands of crores to industries but showing empty hand to primary sector. The sugarcane farmers’ leader Kopparthi Subba Rao urged the Government to take over the Nizam Sugar Factory and run it under its management.
Lok Satta leader Ramesh Babu felt that there was need to constitute a forum against farmers’ suicides. A freelance journalist Lachaiah observed that farmers were borrowing debts above their repaying capacities and taking the extreme steps to end lives when the pressure was built up.
Farmers and PoW city president V. Ramadevi also spoke.
Banks reduced the scale of finance to farm sector forcing them to depend on moneylenders and private financiers for farm credit
