by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group
Govt Draws 20-point plan after Farmers suicides rise
Maharashtra tops the ladder
Harish Gupta
New Delhi, June 28
The government admitted in the Lok Sabha today that Maharashtra tops the list of states in the country where maximum number of farmers' suicides have taken place followed by Telangana and Karnataka. Maharashtra witnessed 3030 suicides out of 8007 suicides in the country during 2015 which is higher than 2014 when 2568 suicides took place. In fact, during 2015 the suicides as a whole rose in the country compared to 2014.
The government also informed the Rajya Sabha that data for the subsequent years of 2016, 2017 & 2018 is not available so far. However, there were no farmers' suicides in as many as 16 states out of 36 including in Bihar, Jharkhand, Jammu & Kashmir and Goa.
The Agriculture & Rural Development Minister Narendra Singh Tomar, however, claimed that these would come down as an action plan chalked out by the states is backed by 20-point aggressive support by the Centre. He said that agriculture is a a State subject and State Governments undertake development of perspective plans and ensure effective implementation of the programmes/ schemes.
The Government had constituted an Inter-Ministerial Committee in 2016 to recommend a strategy for Doubling of Farmers’ Income (DFI) by the year 2022 following which an Empowered committee has been constituted on January 23 this year for monitoring the implementation of the recommendations.
The government initiated market reforms including e-NAM, Soil Health Cards, drip irrigation, PM Fasal BIMA, PM-Kisan, higher MSP and other steps to boost income and bring down input costs.
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