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An Intellgence Bureau report to the Prime Minister's Office dated 19.12.2014 has stated that farmers' suicides are on the rise in Maharashtra, Telengana, Karnataka, and Punjab. It has also pointed to farmers suicides by debt ridden farmers in Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Tamilnadu. A 75 year old farmer is reported to have committed suicide by leaping into his own funeral pyre.

 A Public Interest Litigation filed in the Supreme Court of India stated that in Maharashtra alone 4 farmers were committing suicide every day. This year alone 1022 farmers committed suicide in Maharashtra, 454 in the Marathwada region of the state alone, and a large number in the Vidarbha region.

  In Punjab farmers in large numbers committed suicide in the past two decades. The Saurashtra area of Gujarat is threatening to turn into another Vidarbha.

 The  'annadaatas ' of the nation are dying, their widows are weeping and wailing, and their children sobbing.

  Drought, erratic rains, and floods are playing havoc with the lives of farmers. They get a pittance for their produce, the bulk of the profits being taken away by middlemen.

 Costs of inputs e.g. fertilizer, pesticides, water, electricity, etc have all shot up, because of which farming has become uneconomical Farmers have to take loans to obtain these inputs, loans which keep mounting due to the heavy interest charged by money lenders, and which they cannot repay. Consequently their farms are being foreclosed and they with their families dispossessed. No wonder that they are hanging themselves.

       Happy days are here again. Thumbs up