Karnataka   

‘A ryot suicide every 30 minutes’

HASSAN: Although India is agriculture-oriented, yet one farmer commits suicide at every half an hour, said principal of PES ITI Arakalagudu H.T. Gururaje.

Mr. Gururaje was addressing a National Social Service programme organised by Siddeswara Industrial Training Institute Hassan at Nittoor in Hassan taluk on Monday.

Delivering lecture on “crisis in agriculture and farmer’s suicides,” Mr. Gururaje said that earlier 80 per cent of the population depended on agriculture.

Now, it was reduced to 40 per cent. About 32 per cent of the farmers were landless and were workers who had switched over to building construction work.

Successive governments at the State and the Centre failed to come out with clear agriculture policy.

Lack of supportive prices for agriculture produce led to farmers committing suicide.

Farmers borrowed from private banks and handed over their produce to middlemen, he said.

Mr. Gururaje regretted that when there was crisis in cricket (Harbajan Singh episode in Australia), it was solved within a day by Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, who heads the cricket board. But Mr. Pawar failed to solve the problems of farmers.

Merely announcing packages to farmers would not solve their problems.

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