HYDERABAD: Five months after the launch of the farmer distress helpline in Vikarabad, one of the districts in Telangana state which recorded more than 100 farmer suicides in the last three years, close to 1,300 distress calls were attended to.
In a majority of cases, health problems and the pressure of getting their children married coupled with failed crops leads them into a debt, pushing them to resort to extreme step, said Divya Devarajan, Vikarabad collector.
District administration in association with farmer resource organisations, Centre for Sustainable Agriculture (CSA) and Rythu Swarajya Vedika (RSV) set up the helpline in April this year as part of reviving mandate to prevent farmer suicides mentioned in a GO passed in 2004.
The effect of demonetisation, stayed on till seven months or so, created confusion among the farming community. The maximum number of issues, a total of 506 reported by the farmers were related to the revenue department. Of this, 153 were resolved and around 300 are under way. At least 400 agriculture-related complaints came in and among those, more than 270 have been resolved. Close to 140 banking-related complaints were made.
“We learnt that though the process of accessing land records has been made transparent as it is now online, it is not simple for farmers to go to a mee seva centre and get their job done. Then, demonetisation played a major role. Bank loans, which are a formal source of credit for these farmers, were also not easily accessible,” informed Devarajan. Timely information regarding various agricultural schemes and campaigns was also provided.