P. Ramesh was a farmer from Tirumalagiri village of Regonda mandal of Bhupalpally district. He ended his life by consuming pesticide on August 24, 2016.
Ramesh had one acre land for himself and leased out another two acres land to cultivate cotton and red chilli. However, as the crops failed he committed suicide unable to find a way out from the debt trap. He is survived by wife Rajitha, son Bhanu Prasad and daughter Likhita. Now Bhanu Prasad has completed Intermediate and Likhita is in Intermediate second year.
Since 2016, Rajitha has been moving around offices of mandal revenue officer (MRO), Revenue Divisional Officer (RDO) and Collector, seeking compensation under G.O. 194. Finally, almost after six years, last month the revenue officials visited the house of Ms. Rajitha and conducted an inquiry. They collected details from Rajitha and others in addition to gathering information from neighbours. She was asked to come to collectroate on October 10 and meet the officials in this regard.
“For six years I had been moving around government offices and finally last month they visited our home. I do not know what will be the final result. I am taking care of my family as a daily wage labourer,” Ms. Rajitha told The Hindu, while going to work.
This case was a tip of the ice berg, according to Rytu Swarajya Vedika (RSV), an NGO working on the farmers’ problems. It wrote to Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar recently in this regard.
“Based on our fact-finding study, we found that the district administration has stopped identifying farmer suicides under the pretence of giving Rythu Bandhu to the families of the deceased farmers. We would like to bring to your attention that G.O. 194 is still in existence. Also, many farmer suicides that happened before 2018 were also not identified,” the RSV informed the Chief Secretary.
“During our field research, we have visited 100 families of farmers who committed suicide in Nalgonda, Yadadri - Bhongir, Jangaon, Vikarabad, Adilabad, Mancherial, Bhupalpally, Karimnagar, Mahabubabad, Siddipet, Warangal, Kamareddy, and Jagtial districts. We have spoken to the family members and verified police final reports. All these 100 farmer suicides are due to distress in agriculture - crop loss due to lack of water, heavy rains, pest and the debt trap they got into. On multiple occasions, these families have approached the Tahasildars and Collectors' offices regarding ex gratia. Memorandums were submitted. However, no steps have been taken to address this issue so far. Hence, we wrote a letter directly to the Chief Secretary,” B. Kondal Reddy, a coordinator of RSV, informed The Hindu.
Mr. Kondal Reddy said that as per State Crime Records Bureau (SCRB) and newspaper reports, more than 7000 farmers had committed suicide since the formation of Telangana and as of now the government had identified only 1,600 farmer suicides as genuine. The RSV has urged the Chief Secretary to direct the district collectors to immediately identify all the farmer suicides and pay the compensation amount to eligible families.
