The issue of `farmers' suicide', has created furor in the Monsoon Session, 2006 of Parliament. This brouhaha is not new, because suicide is being committed by farmers unfortunately for quite long time in one part of the country or the other and it is mainly driven by debt. As per a survey of 40 farmers who committed suicide in Andhra Pradesh, each farmer on an average owed Rs. 1,06,000 - roughly five to ten times of their normal annual income. Such suicides are on a scale and magnitude that is unique in recent times because earlier these used to be stray cases on stand-alone basis. As accepted aforesaid, the immediate cause of these deaths is debt.
For quite some time people from different segment of the population, ranging from politician to sociologists to intellectuals to journalists do raise the issue, but after certain time it is thrown in the backyard of the house to be retrieved at convenience. All of us know and believe too that India's heart and soul resides in her villages. Unless rural India and farmers are given their dues and are empowered enough to become socially and economically free, all the progress made/being made by the country will remain a myth for larger section of the Indian society.
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