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Journalism of Courage
After registering an impressive annual drop in number of suicide cases, Yavatmal district in Maharashtra’s cotton belt has shown a sudden rise in the suicide graph in the first three months of the year.
As many as 95 of the 277 suicide cases registered up to March since January this year in the six cotton and soyabean producing districts of western Vidarbha — considered most suicide prone — were from Yavatmal. The number is a jump of 55 from the previous year’s January-March figures. In 2013 and 2014, the number of suicide cases in Yavatmal in the first three months of the year were 56 and 44, respectively. The remaining five districts of Western Vidarbha together showed a rise of 40 and 33 cases in January-March figures this year over 2013 and 2014, respectively.
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Yavatmal, known to have the highest suicide rates in this belt, has been showing a continuous drop in numbers since 2007. The number of suicide cases was 360 in 2006. Since then, the rate witnessed a progressive decline in the eight years — 359, 311, 324, 309, 240, 237, 231 and 265 per year — till 2014. The district that has shown the biggest drop is Buldhana, rated as the most backward district of Vidarbha after Gadchiroli. The number of suicide cases dropped from 306 in 2006 to 110 in 2014.
Incidentally, all suicide cases were from the countryside and not necessarily related to agrarian distress. Official scrutiny of data over the years reveal that between 20-50% of these deaths are related to agriculture. Thus, of the 10,019 suicides registered in these six districts — Wardha, Amravati, Akola, Yavatmal, Washim and Buldhana — from 2006 to March 2015, only 3,790 families have been declared as related to farm distress were entitled to compensation.
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