Some media reports say the Maharashtra police have alerted its personnel to be ready
to handle a possible water riots in the drought-hit regions of the state.
Reportedly, the state is facing the worst drought in 60 years.
Headlines like ‘In drought-hit
Maharashtra, young ‘brides’ have good resale value’, ‘Opposition geared up to
grill government on mishandling of drought relief works, deteriorating
finances’, ‘Maharashtra drought is man-made: Athavale’, ‘Maharashtra set to
face worst drought ever’, ‘Maharashtra gets Rs 5.47 billion as drought relief’
are making in-roads in the newsrooms.
But given the response, it is clear
that the voices continue to remain on the periphery.
Voices forced to remain at the
periphery - it is indeed equally outrageous as the issue of continued farm
suicides in India.
Vidarbha of Maharashtra has had a history of crisis and it is one of the regions
claiming high number of farmer suicides.
The Indian Parliament was
informed by Mr. Sharad Pawar, the Agriculture Minister, on February 22, 2013
that during the period from April 2012 to January 2013, 228 Vidarbha farmers
committed suicide due to ‘agrarian distress’. Though the minister went on to
add that the state and the region had seen decline in suicide cases since 2006,
the reported number of farmer suicides from the Vidarbha region since 2001,
over 8400 cases, shadow it. These reported figures say the crisis is much
deeper if we (and we must) take into account the unreported cases (or the cases
which the administration has been successful in suppressing from being reported
as farm suicides).
Farm suicides are a continued
shame in and with them flows in tandem the meekness and insensitivity of the
governments and the societies that include different categories of the pro-
claimants.
A prime minister from Pakistan
comes on a personal visit, or a US based institution cancels Narendra Modi’s
keynote address or Vijender Singh, a boxer’s name figures in a drug-haul
controversy, we all go in hyperbole (it doesn’t matter if with positive or
negative intonations).
Everybody, who somehow, directly
or indirectly, formulates or opinionates about policymaking (that affects the
lives of the common men including the farmers, many of whom have committed
suicides over the years), indulges in an intense chatter, that not even
remotely asks for the weightage given.
See this. Mr. Pawar’s statement
to the Parliament came on February 22. The present Vidarbha drought story goes
many months back. But have we heard any intense activity on advocacy platforms
(including the media) in the recent months that pressurises the governments and
the other stakeholders involved to take war measures? NO!
Have we seen series of campaigns
running across the cities and the regions to force the governments to do a
policy-rethink on why the farm suicides still continue? NO!
Farmer suicides are the inhuman
face of the Indian Democracy with many big states like Madhya Pradesh,
Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and
Andhra Pradesh continue to claim over 60 per cent of the reported cases. There
have been over a quarter-million farmer suicides in India since 1995. If any study can
collate the figures since the Independence,
we are bound to get more shocking and sickening set of data. What is happening
in Vidarbha has been happening in India for decades, yet, no decisive
(that should have been taken decades ago) action has been taken by the
successive governments.
There are activists who are
fighting hard. They regularly come up with campaigns and studies but their
voices remain at the periphery. The absence of concern in media over the mounting
cases of farm suicides in Vidarbha is just the repetition of the irresponsible
social responsibility of the larger cross-section of the Indian media.
Except few names in media like P
Sainath, The Hindu or NDTV, no one else bothers much about this man-made
atrocity on human lives.