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This is an archive article published on May 24, 2016

Marathwada: 36 farmers end life in a week

The total figure of suicides, as on Monday, has been put at 454 — almost hundred more than last year in the corresponding period.

marathwada, waterless in marathwada, farmers suicide, marathwada farmers, water crisis, indian express news, india news, latest news Representational image of drought hit Marathwada.

IN just one week, Marathwada has seen as many as 36 farmers committing suicides. The figure of suicides is highest for one week in the last four-and-a-half months. The total figure of suicides, as on Monday, has been put at 454 — almost hundred more than last year in the corresponding period.

Officials said every week, 20 to 30 farmers’ suicides — mainly due to mounting debts and crop failure — are registered. “But this week, the figure has gone up by a big margin,” an official said. On May 16, the figure of farmer suicides stood at 418, which reached 454 by May 23, officials said. With this, the collective total in last 16 and half months has reached 1,548.

Read | Farmer suicides in Marathwada cross 400 mark in 4 months; toll reaches 1,548 

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Figures released by the Aurangabad divisional commissionerate on Monday revealed that of the eight districts comprising Marathwada, Beed district has recorded the highest number of 81 suicides in last four and half months. However, officials claimed the figure is much lower than compared to the corresponding period last year.

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Nanded district with 70 cases claims second spot while Osmanabad, where the state government is trying to implement its “zero-suicide” plan, has witnessed 59 cases. Latur, which is facing its worst water crisis, has seen 61 suicides. Other districts like Jalna had 47 suicides, Parbhani 43 and Hingoli 27 suicides. Aurangabad has registered 67 suicides.

When contacted, Nanded District Collector Prashant Narnaware said the figures could have been bigger, but because of the fact that the government has initiated a number of steps, the suicides have remained down. “The distress level is too high. There are too many factors responsible for it. However, due to government intervention, the figure of suicides has so far has remained down,” he said.

Beed District Collector Nandkishore Ram too said the severity of drought is very high. “Despite this, the farmer suicides compared to last year is less. Last year, we had over 100 suicides during the corresponding period. But this year, we have 81 suicides so far. Therefore, given the worsening drought situation, the figure of suicides is down,” he said.

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.   Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were  asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.     Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More

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