Agrarian Crisis - Candle Light Vigil
Public Press Release : September 28, 2007
Mass National and Global Candlelight Vigil For Farmer Suicides In India
Even as the central and state governments of India continue to give them a cold shoulder, India's long-suffering farmers will hopefully find warmth and solidarity in the thousands of candles that will light up around the world on October 2nd.
Read full version....
Madhav , a 12 year old child is suddenly responsible for his entire household.
Are you wondering WHY?
His father Digambar Agose, a farmer in the cotton-belt of Vidarbha has committed
SUICIDE. He is not alone in this situation - Over 800 farmers have taken away their lives since Jan 2007 in this region and an estimated 1,00,000 over the past decade throughout the country.
This is fast assuming proportions of genocide ...
This is The Time to ACT
Would you like to know more?
Join a peaceful Candlelight Vigil (following a short documentary screening) at the Library Mall to demand the Indian Government to get their act together soon!
Proposals to the Government
- Provide a guaranteed Minimum Support Price that is more than the cost of production
- Waive debt currently owed to private money-lenders
- Set up a committee, with proper representation from farmers and people's groups, to carefully analyze the current situation, and implementation of Government relief packages, in suicide prone region and make real numbers of farmer's suicides public.
- Increase grants and provide training to farmers who wish to move away from mono-cropping to multi-crop, or organic agriculture – this will serve to increase food and livelihood security
- Set up a system of checks and balances in the marketing of seeds, and make available at the time of sowing, good quality organic seeds
- Provide appropriate subsidies for the organic cotton farmers so they could compete in the global market
- Explicitly make agriculture a permissible work under the NREGA – this will allow farmers, who want to make the shift to low-external input, sustainable farming, to hire the help they need for activities such as mulching, sowing, weeding and composting. Such a move would address aims of the NREGA as stated in section 1.1 of the NREGA, 2005 – protecting the environment as well as reducing rural-urban migration
- Support farming of traditional Jowar and Ragi – this will not only provide local access to nutrition, but will also provide a source of fodder for cattle that were part of the previous relief package
Background
Farmers' suicides in remote parts of the country have been on the rise over the last decade. With suicides, mainly by cotton farmers in Maharashtra' s Vidarbha region, hitting an all-time high of over 800 since Jan '07, the situation gets more grim than at anytime in the past . Vidarbha follows a pattern seen in Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka, Punjab – and the media chooses only an occasional moment to throw its spotlight on the crisis . With rising costs of production and falling prices of farm commodities due to various Government policies, there is a clear need for each responsible citizen to step up and ask questions:
- Corporate hijack of seed supply by Agricultural multinationals.
- Excessive use of pesticides and fertilizers depleting the soil fertility.
- Growing water intensive crops like paddy, sugarcane, banana in dry land areas
- Mono cropping patterns increasing pest attacks and soil degradation.
- High Input costs of fertilizers, pesticides, energy and seeds making farmers HIGHLY indebted
- Property-centric policies of the government leaving the landless farmers neglected
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