look news india
Mumbai: In the first six months of this year, 1,267 farmers have committed suicide in Maharashtra, with Amravati district in the state's Vidarbha region being the worst affected with 557 suicides. This was followed by Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar division with 430, Nashik division with 137, Nagpur division with 130 and Pune division with 13 suicides. Not a single case of farmer suicide was reported in the Konkan division.
The worrying trend of farmer suicides in the state is confirmed by data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). In 2022, Maharashtra was the leading state with 37.6 per cent of farmer suicide cases across the country. Of the 11,290 farm suicides in 2022, 5,207 were farmers and 6,083 were agricultural labourers.
A similar pattern was observed in previous years as well. In 2021, 10,881 people committed suicide in the agricultural sector, while 10,677 people died in 2020. Maharashtra's share was 37 per cent in both years.
Of the total 1,70,924 suicides across the country in 2022, 6.6 percent were related to agriculture. In 2021 and 2020 too, more than 6 percent of the total suicide cases in the country were related to the agriculture sector. In all these years too, Maharashtra was at the top in terms of farmer suicides with 37 percent.
It is notable that despite Maharashtra being the biggest contributor to the country's GDP, it is facing the depressing problem of farmers' suicide.
