14/05/2007 - Jaydeep Hardikar comments

Western Vidarbha :
Loan waivers, credit can stop farmers' suicides'

Agriculture expert Jaydeep Hardikar reiterates need for alternate sources of income for farmers

Express News Service
http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=236190

Pune, May 13: Slamming the State government for its inefficiency in addressing the issue of farmers' suicides in the state, journalist and agriculture researcher Jaydeep Haradikar said it was not the mindless 'packages' but loan waivers, long term credit and collective farming which will help in easing farm crisis.

Speaking at a function organised by city-based Sewawardhini on 'Crisis in agriculture and situation in Vidarbha,' at Dnyanprabodhini on Saturday Hardikar said farmers are not in so much in need of the government packages as compared to systematic solutions which will bring them back to the basics of stable agriculture. He said that although the government is of the opinion that loan waiver is impractical, it is the only viable option to make farmers feel safe.



According Hardikar, farmers' crisis is only one of the symptoms of the crisis that the agriculture sector is facing. "Migration, malnutrition, health problems, suicides are all symptoms of the agrarian distress," he said.

Stressing that agrarian distress was never this worse and it is only the present political decisions, and policy changes that have resulted in the situation. "In the last 100 years, the condition of agriculture in Vidarbha has remained unchanged including the monsoon. The only change was the use of hybrid seeds resulting in the import of textile technology from the West in 1991 which worsened the situation," he said.

Although the state government had set up 17 committees to study the issue of farmer' suicides in Vidarbha, Hardikar said that the committees did not see the actual crisis.

"Subsidies and alternate occupations to farming like bidi making, fishing, pulses farming, vegetable growing are on a decline. Efforts should be made to diversify the activities of farmers and not allow him to depend on farming alone," he said adding that today the Vidarbha crisis prevails across the country even in Uttarakhand and Punjab which had earlier given success stories in agriculture.