The Hindu Business Line : Farmer suicides blown out of proportion: Agriculture Secy

Room for comfort
"In 2003-04, data from the National Crime Records Bureau shows there were 1,87,000 suicides in India. Of this, only 16 per cent were in rural India."

MS RADHA SINGH

New Delhi , Sept. 29

The recent spate of suicides by farmers needs to be viewed in context and not blown out of proportion, Ms Radha Singh, Secretary, Department of Agriculture and Cooperation, Ministry of Agriculture, said here on Friday.

Delivering the closing remarks at the Agri-marketing Summit-2006, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Ms Singh pointed to an analysis of suicide records of the past 10 years that suggests that the number of suicides in rural India had not exceeded 16 per cent of the total in any given year.

"In 2003-04, data from the National Crime Records Bureau shows there were 1,87,000 suicides in India. Of this, only 16 per cent were in rural India. This debunks the current perception that there has been an unprecedented rise in the number of farmers' suicides in India," Ms Singh said.

Cause for concern

The Secretary, however, added that suicides linked to indebtedness of farmers were a major cause for concern to the Government and there were plans to bring more farmers under the purview of agricultural credit schemes to ameliorate the situation.

"The target is to raise the coverage to 70 per cent from 45 per cent now. We will deal with issues of access to finance and interest rates, especially for the small and marginal farmers," she added.

Extending insurance

Ms Singh also said that insurance should be extended to horticulture as well and that insurance companies need to work out policies for perishables to increase the scope of risk management.

Commenting on the state of contract farming in the country, the Secretary said the system had to be specific to the State, region and crop as there was no single model that could be applied across the country because conditions in States and regions vary widely.

"We need to move ahead with speed and openness and dispel suspicions surrounding the entry of the corporate sector into contract farming. What will work is a framework of broad underpinnings overlaid with State-specific mechanisms that take into account ground realities based on the principles of transparency and fair play," said Ms Singh.

"The old must give way to the new. There is need for more such interactive sessions to discuss each of the issues in depth," she added.

Contract farming

In his address, Mr Gokul Patnaik, Chairman, Global AgriSystem, said, "Contract farming works best when the sponsor is an exporter, processor or when there are linkages between farmers and large retail chains. The contract farming system in India has to be rationalised, as there are 130 models of contract farming in India today. Contracts need to cover the basics such as price, quality, quantity and delivery times. Farmers need access to market information as well as critical inputs."

The Chairman of CII's National Council on Agriculture, Mr Dhruv Sawhney, said the level and number of participants in the summit demonstrated the fact that agro-processing had unmatched job creation and poverty-reduction potential.

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