Drought, crop failure, lack of support and piled up loans has led another farmer in Karnataka to commit suicide.
According to the Mandya police, 30-year-old Prakash, a farmer from T Malligere in Mandya district, committed suicide on Tuesday by hanging himself.
“His mother filed a complaint on Tuesday afternoon. She said in the complaint that Prakash was upset that farmers’ loans not being waived off in the state budget. Prakash had incurred a loan of Rs 5 lakh for growing paddy and the crop had failed due to lack of water,” a senior police official said.
Prakash had installed a borewell last year, which had also dried up. “His mother own an acre of land in T Malligere and the family has been cultivating paddy for a few years now. Prakash was unable to pay off the loan and hence he committed suicide,” the officer added.
Four consecutive years of drought, lack of water, crop failure and growing debts have led to another spate of farmer suicides in Karnataka. According to officials with the Agricultural Department, there have been 821 farmer suicides in the state between April 2016 and March 2017.
Officials say that while 521 of the farmer suicides this year were drought-related deaths, 198 deaths were due to other issues.
“We have not yet included an additional 102 suicides as they are still being verified by the Forensic Department,” a source from the Agriculture Department said.
“The farmers have lost both the rabi and Kharif crops this year. We are yet to receive confirmation on waiving 50% of the farmers’ loans. The state has been hit with a drought we haven’t seen in almost 40 years,” he said.
“This figure is better than the 2015-16 data as there were 1,569 farmer suicides in that period and 457 of these occurred between April and November 2015,” he said.