Hyderabad, December 19: The TDP Chief, Mr N Chandrababu Naidu, who is on hunger strike since yesterday, on Saturday requested the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh to initiate a national debate on the recommendations of Swaminathan Commission and Working Group on agricultural production to arrive at a national consensus to make farming a remunerative enterprise and save farmers from the painful episode of suicides.
Mr Naidu has written a letter to the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh on the farmers’ issues.
In the letter, Mr Naidu brought to the notice of the Prime Minister the spate of suicides in the State due to series of natural calamities during the last one year. The present khariff itself was affected by cyclone, one depression and now heavy rainfall inflicting immeasurable loss when the crop was in the final stage of harvesting, he regretted. This kharif season has so far witnessed 62 suicides by farmers and of them 42 cases were reported during the last three days alone. The difference and silence of the State Government towards problems of the farming community was defending and inhuman to say the least, he added.
“I have extensively toured the state, to instill confidence in the minds of the farmers and to desist them form taking extreme steps. The misery and suffering of the farmers is unprecedented and agonizing. All-party appeals to the state government to rescue the farmers could not get any positive response. This callousness of the state government is adding to the grimness of the situation. In protest, I undertook indefinite fast from December 17 demanding justice to the farmers in the state”, Mr Naidu said.
The TDP Chief reminded that in post-reform period, the cost-prices-yield scenario prevailing in agriculture sector, an inbuilt mechanism, was deliberately devised to act against the interests of the farmers in the Country. The continuous rise in the cost of inputs and stagnated productivity levels of almost all crops coupled with agricultural price policies have made farming an un-remunerative activity with negative income in most parts of the Country. Several surveys have clearly pointed out that this negative income in successive years, leading to accumulative debt burden, is the root cause for farmers’ suicides, he added.
——–NSS