NEW DELHI, Jan. 31 APP: As many as 17,060 farmers committed suicide in India in one-year while such incidents rose in Maharashtra dramatically during 2006.According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) in its report on Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India, 2006, Maharashtra state witnessed 4,453 farmers’ suicides that year, since the NCRB first began logging farm suicides, a leading daily reported.
The suicides in Maharashtra registered an increase of 527 over the 2005 figure. This was four and a half times bigger than that in Andhra Pradesh, the next worst-hit State, which witnessed a rise of 117 farmer’s suicides over 2005.
Maharashtra’s upward trend has been registered in the year when the relief packages of both the Prime Minister and Chief Minister worth Rs 4,825 crore were being implemented in the Vidharbha region, where suicide incidents are the highest.
The states, which account for nearly two-thirds of all farm suicides in the country, include Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh (including Chhattisgarh).
NCRB data recorded 1, 66, 304 farmers’ suicide in a decade since 1997.
Of these, 78,737 took place between 1997 and 2001. The next five years from 2002 to 2006 “proved worst, seeing 87, 567 farmers taking their own lives. On average, there has been one farmer’s suicide every 30 minutes, the record indicated.