As many as 5,763 farmers committed suicide in 2018, with Maharashtra accounting for close to 40 per cent of the deaths, as per the records available with the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar told the Rajya Sabha on Friday.
Karnataka with 1,365 suicides and Telangana with 900 were the other two major Indian States where farmers resorted to the drastic measure, Tomar said while answering a question from Samajwadi Party MP Ravi Prakash Verma in the Upper House.
In Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, 365 and 303 farmers ended their lives in the year.
Tomar said the government is taking a number of steps to reduce the indebtedness of farmers. Schemes such as PM Kisan Samman Nidhi, social security for small and marginal farmers and price support schemes such as PM-Ashaa to give remunerative prices to farmers are some of the measures taken by the government to make farming viable.
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