AKOLA, May 20: On an incredibly hot afternoon, a newspaper lying on a deserted pavement of Akola screams: "Three more farmers commit suicide." About a 100 metres away a man in dusty white clothes collapses on the roadside due to sun stroke. By evening, news arrives from distant Bhandara district that a woman in her mid '40s has died of starvation. There is no confirmation but no one disbelieves it.Heat, scarcity and distress have virtually gripped the entire Vidarbha region of Maharashtra. In the nine districts of Vidarbha, the number of suicides has crossed 55 since March and the number is spiralling. Hardly a day passes without news of suicide and a fresh announcement of relief from the State administration.But though scarcity and distress over successive crop failures is a harsh reality, the State machinery has found over 70 per cent of families of farmers who committed suicide ineligible for compensation. According to H R Kulkarni, the Amravati divisional commissioner, most of the suicides areunrelated to the prevailing agrarian distress. In Amravati district, 14 cases of suicide were reported.While four families were given a relief of Rs 1 lakh each, three were given Rs 50,000 each. The rest of the cases were described as "not eligible" for compensation. In the case of Madhukar Bhimrao Bhagwat from Madhan village of Chandur tehsil, the commissioner's office said in an official communication to Mumbai that "he was unmarried and had no reasons to commit suicide".In most other cases the administration believes that the reason for suicide was prolonged illness. In Akola district about 14 farmers committed suicide during the past two months but none of them qualified for compensation. On May 18, the Amravati commissioner's office sent a fax to Mumbai stating that the reasons for suicide in Akola district did not warrant any compensation.In Yavatmal district, too, out of the 13 reported cases of suicides, families of only nine were compensated. In two cases in which the families were deniedcompensation, the administration claimed that the deceased had no land in their name. But independent investigations suggest that they were tilling land of absentee owners apart from doing odd jobs in town.In five districts of Nagpur division, the total number of suicides reported was 14, according to the divisional commissioner S S Hussain. However, only two were found eligible for compensation while one case was on the borderline. "He may be considered for the compensation," Hussain added.Hussain admits the situation is really bad this time. "This year we have seen the failure of almost all the crops from cotton, soyabean, to oranges. but things are expected to improve once the monsoon starts and a new sowing season begins."Flawed suicide list The State bureaucracy seems to have finally found a way to take the heat off the ruling coalition over the worsening situation in the countryside.Last week the divisional commissioner, Amravati, was asked to compile a list of suicides infour districts - Amravati, Akola, Yavatmal and Buldhana -from 1992 onwards. The list was promptly prepared and sent to the Revenue Minister's office in Mumbai on May 16.The list, a copy of which was procured by The Indian Express, suggests that the number of suicides in 1992, '93 and '94 were just as high as the number in 1995, '96, '97 and this year. In other words, farmers did kill themselves during the Congress regime as well. So why blame the ruling coalition?However, there is a catch. The list does not say how many of them were in urban centres and how many in the rural areas. Nor does it speak about the occupation of those who committed suicide in previous years. The administration seeks to compare the general numbers of suicides with this year's death wish in farms.
