New Delhi: A report from the Marathwada divisional commissioner’s office has revealed that 1,088 farmers died by suicide in eight districts of the region in Maharashtra in 2023, PTI reported. This is 65 more such deaths than were reported in 2022.“Of the 1,088 suicides in 2023, Beed recorded the highest 269 such deaths, followed by 182 in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, 175 in Nanded, 171 in Dharashiv and 103 in Parbhani,” according to the report.An official told the news agency that the kin of those who died have been promised Rs 1 lakh each as compensation. “Out of 1,088 cases, 777 were eligible for ex-gratia, which has been disbursed, and 151 cases are currently under inquiry,” PTI stated.Since the Narendra Modi government came to power in the Centre in 2014, an average of 30 farmers have died by suicide per day across the country, according to the National Crime Records Bureau.“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,” Anirban Bhattacharya, Pranay Raj and Nancy Pathak wrote in The Wire.The response to such suicides, the writers noted, has left experts concerned as it did not address the root causes of agrarian distress. There was instead an “attempt by neoliberal governance has been to steadily depoliticise farmers’ suicides and strip them of any deeper messaging. They have done this by either individualising or pathologising suicides as a psychological or mental health problem rather than an economic issue. So, the response is often in the shape of mental health support that effectively blames the farmers, and thereby teaches them “self-reliance” and “self-respect”. Or we see corporate social responsibility programmes (run by the same corporate giants like Monsanto that have led to the crisis) who stress upon the need to educate the farmers on how to embrace a “neoliberal entrepreneurial mentality”.”
