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Farmers' suicides in India
Farmer suicides in India refers to the national catastrophe of farmers committing suicide since the 1970s, often by drinking pesticides, due to their inability to repay loans mostly taken from private landlords and banks.
The National Crime Records Bureau of India reported that a total of 296,438 Indian farmers had committed suicide since 1995.[1] Out of these, 60,750 farmer suicides were in the state of Maharashtra since 1995 and the remaining in Odisha, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh, all states with loose financial and entry regulations.[2][3]
Earlier, governments had reported varying figures, from 5,650 farmer suicides in 2014[4] to the highest number of farmer suicides in 2004 of 18,241.[5] The farmer's suicide rate in India had ranged between 1.4 and 1.8 per 100,000 total population, over a 10-year period through 2005, however, the figures in 2017 and 2018 showed an average of more than 10 suicides daily.[6] There are accusations of states manipulating the data on farmer suicides, hence the real figures could be even higher.[7]
India is an agrarian country with around 70% of its people depending directly or indirectly upon agriculture. Agriculture had 15.4% share in economy of India in year 2017.[8] Around 41.49% of total labor are associated with agriculture in year 2020.[9] Farmer suicides account for 11.2% of all suicides in India.[4] Activists and scholars have offered a number of conflicting reasons for farmer suicides, such as anti farmer laws, high debt burdens, poor government policies, corruption in subsidies, crop failure, mental health, personal issues and family problems.[10][11][12]
- ↑ "Maharashtra crosses 60,000 farm suicides". www.ruralindiaonline.org. Peoples archive of rural India(PARI). Retrieved 25 March 2019.
- ↑ [ncrb.gov.in "NCRB"]. Official website. Government of India. Retrieved 25 March 2019.
{{cite web}}: Check|url=value (help) - ↑ NCRB report - farmers suicides (PDF). NCRB / Government of India. Retrieved 25 March 2019.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 National Crime Reports Bureau, ADSI Report Annual – 2014 Government of India, p. 242, table 2.11
- ↑ "NDA, UPA failed to curb farmer suicides".
- ↑ Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs namedggds - ↑ "P Sainath: How states fudge the data on declining farmer suicides".
- ↑ "Agriculture sector in indian economy".
- ↑ "Agriculture labor participation rate".
- ↑ Gruère, G. & Sengupta, D. (2011), Bt cotton and farmer suicides in India: an evidence-based assessment, The Journal of Development Studies, 47(2), 316–337
- ↑ Schurman, R. (2013), Shadow space: suicides and the predicament of rural India, Journal of Peasant Studies, 40(3), 597–601
- ↑ Das, A. (2011), Farmers’ suicide in India: implications for public mental health, International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 57(1), 21–29