Agriculture
Lakhimpur massacre: Even after two years, families of martyred farmers are suffocating under police guard
https://followupstories.com/politics/two-years-of-lakhimpur-kheri-farmers-killing-and-justice-out-of-sight/ by Imtiaz Ahmed
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Two years is a long time to change a small town; To remember some and to forget some; To acquit some and to punish others. Even in Lakhimpur Kheri, Uttar Pradesh, after October 3, 2021, everything is not the same as it was that day – when four farmers and a journalist protesting against a Union Minister were brutally crushed to death by a jeep, in which The minister's son was riding. In retaliation, the farmers beat the driver of the vehicle and two political workers to death. There were a total of eight deaths and the paths of dozens of lives were forever changed.
“We have no money, moneylenders are not ready to wait. What should we do? We can’t even afford to take onions to the market. You are just thinking about yourself, Modi saheb. You must provide the guaranteed price for the produce… The finance guys threaten, and the patpedhi (cooperative society) officers abuse. Who should we go for justice?… Today, I am forced to commit suicide because of your inaction.”
Those were the words of Dashrath Lakshman Kedari before he died by suicide last year in Pune district of Maharashtra. His is one among the 1,00,474 suicides in the farming sector in the Narendra Modi years (2014-2022), as per the recently released National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report. This amounts to nearly 30 suicides per day in these nine years. And yet we heard BJP MP Nishikant Dubey claiming that no farmer has died under Modi by suicide. “Did the opposition ever have a single discussion about farmers’ suicides in the last eight years?” he asked, “If they didn’t, it means farmers are not dying by suicide.” https://thewire.in/agriculture/average-30-farmer-suicides-per-day-in-modi-govt-years-points-to-a-systemic-apathy
Declining public investments, privatisation of key industries, opening up to external trade, decline in state subsidies and shrinking formal agricultural credit all contributed to the long winter for farmers in India who found it increasingly difficult to compete with the heavily subsidised imports. Add to this the monopolistic practices of agro-business giants like Monsanto, the expensive, out of reach genetically modified seeds, fertilisers and insecticides that raised inputs cost by leaps.
by Anirban Bhattacharya, Pranay Raj and Nancy Pathak
18/12/2023
Maharashtra BJP MP Gopal Shetty compares farmers' suicide to 'fashion trend', sparks row https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/maharashtra-bjp-mp-gopal-shetty-compares-farmers-suicide-to-fashion-trend-sparks-row-309345-2016-02-18
BJP MP Gopal Shetty said "Not all farmers' suicides happen due to unemployment and starvation. A fashion is going on. A trend is on," "If Maharashtra government is giving Rs 5 Lakh rupees as compensation, then some other government in neighbouring state is giving Rs 7 Lakh," he said. "There's a competition in these people in giving money (compensation) to farmers,"