Farmers’ suicides: lip & ear service

Just how serious are our Parliamentarians on farmers’ suicides? In the Rajya Sabha today, a discussion on a calling attention motion on...

Just how serious are our Parliamentarians on farmers’ suicides? In the Rajya Sabha today, a discussion on a calling attention motion on farmers’ suicides could keep only 20-25 MPs in the House. Most exited after the first few speakers had their say.

While BJP’s Rajnath Singh — it was his calling attention motion — made use of the allotted time to recall his achievements as the NDA’s Agriculture minister and how the new Budget didn’t have anything substantial for the farmers, others used politically correct phrases to describe the farmers’ plight but didn’t care to stay on after they had spoken.

Even MPs from Andhra Pradesh, the state with the maximum number of suicides, didn’t exceed five. Over 950 farmers have died in the last two months, 650 in Andhra alone.

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For a good one hour, the BJP benches were empty. From the allies and other smaller parties, some 10 MPs were present, most waiting for a chance to speak. Lunch hour was suspended but members trooped out, leaving only a handful behind.

With Agriculture minister Sharad Pawar unwell, Priya Ranjan Das Munshi, the minister filling in for him, had only one more minister for company.

A total of 27 MPs spoke, some saying this was no time to ‘‘make farmers’ suicides a political issue.’’ Ram Jethmalani and R Chandrashekhar Reddy raised the problem of credit for farmers in Andhra Pradesh with the new government tightening the noose on private moneylenders.

Speaker after speaker used politically correct phrases like ‘‘it is a grave issue’’ ‘‘requiring urgent attention’’ ‘‘on a war footing’’ and ‘‘drastic measures.’’ But in the end, their political affiliations saw them blaming each other for the plight of the farmers.

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Only in the last 30 minutes of the discussion did attendance improve somewhat. Sharad Joshi, a farmer leader himself, said suicides were not a new phenomenon, only the reporting had improved.

Das Munshi read out Pawar’s statement, saying the UPA government had identified areas which required focus and priority. ‘‘In the next Budget, the amount of money spent will be more than what has been spent in the last six years,’’ he said, adding that a package was underway for farmers in distress. He said these included doubling of rural credit in three years, easing the burden of debts, nursing cooperatives back to health, introducing dry land farming, development of horticulture and improving water management.

Ashwini Kumar of Congress, Penumalli Madu (CPI-M) and R S Gavai of RPI said the decline in spending on agriculture and irrigation should be reversed. But much of the discussion was reduced to a slanging match: Opposition and ruling alliance partners traded charges over who was to blame for the plight of the farmers.