MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE AND FARMERS WELFARE
‡ãðŠãäÓã ??? ????? ?????? ½ãâ¨ããÊã¾ã ½ãñâ À㕾㠽ãâ¨ããè ( SHRI MOHANBHAI KUNDARIA )
(a) & (b): As per the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Ministry of Home Affairs report entitled ‘Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India’ for the years 2012 and 2013, the total number of suicides under the profession ‘Self employment - Farming/Agriculture’ is as under:
Year No. of suicides
2012 13754
2013 11772
For the year 2014, the NCRB delineated for the first time the number of suicides under two sub-categories, namely, farmers and agricultural labourers. The number of suicides with respect to these categories due to various causes is as under:
Farmers 5650
Agricultural labourers 6710
According to NCRB Report of 2014, the major causes of suicides by farmers are as under:
i) Bankruptcy or indebtedness
ii) Farming related issues e.g. Failure of crops, Distress due to natural calamities, inability to sell produce.
iii) Poverty
iv) Family problems
v) Illness
vi) Other causes
The NCRB Report for the year 2015 has not been published.
(c) & (d): The Department has been designing and adopting various schemes and programmes based on ‘National Policy on Farmers 2007’. In accordance with the Guidelines of these schemes and programmes and the applicable pattern of fund sharing between Centre and the States, proposals received from the various State Governments are reviewed and allocations and releases made by the Department. The details of allocations made to the States during the last 3 years and the current financial year (2015-16) are at Annexure.
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With the acceptance and adoption of the recommendations of the 14th Finance commission, the financial devolution to the States has risen from 32 percent to 42 percent of the central tax revenue. With this the sharing pattern of the funds under the various schemes has also changed and the States are expected to share the funding by a larger margin during the year 2015-16, relative to the pre-devolution period. The ratio of funding the schemes is largely 60:40 between Centre and States. However, in case of North Eastern and Himalayan States, the sharing ratio is 90:10.
The Department undertakes review and monitoring of the schemes/programmes through reports, meetings and field visits to ensure that the States adhere to the guidelines, meet expected standards and achieve the targeted outcomes.
(e): The State Governments are primarily responsible for the development of the agriculture sector. The Government of India considers agriculture and allied sectors as highly critical for the welfare of the farmers and supplements the efforts of the States through appropriate policy support, schemes/programmes and budgetary support. The Govt. of India has taken several steps to revitalize the agriculture sector and improve the conditions of farming community on a sustained basis by increasing public investment, improving farm practices and focusing on rural infrastructure development, extension, marketing support, etc. Various programmes/ schemes for the development of agriculture sector are being implemented in a decentralized manner with a flexibility to the State Governments to formulate and implement appropriate projects to suit their specific requirements. The focus of the Central Government is primarily to reduce the cost of cultivation, ensure remunerative returns to the farmers, facilitate access to enhanced credit and improve productivity of rainfed agriculture, which covers a vast area in the country. In this context, some specific schemes and initiatives rolled out are i) Soil Health Card to every farmer once in a cycle of 3 years; ii) Promotion of neem coated area; iii) Promotion of organic farming under ‘Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (PKVY); and iv) Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana (PKSY) to bring more arable land under irrigation and improve water use efficiency.
While the above interventions will improve production environment by reducing cost of cultivation and achieving higher productivity, the Department is implementing ‘National Agriculture Market’ (NAM) to create an integrated market which will improve marketing efficiency in the country and enable farmers to realize higher remunerative prices on their produce.
Other measures taken by the Government for the benefit of farmers include enhancement in Minimum Support Prices (MSP) of agricultural commodities, increase in institutional credit flow to agriculture sector, post-harvest loan for six months to eliminate distress sale of agricultural produce by farmers, debt waiver/relief, interest subvention on crop loans, revival package for strengthening Short Term Rural Cooperative Credit Structure, etc.
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