Hyderabad: Farmers’ bodies are seeking revival of the earlier system when a three-member committee used to visit mandals and districts to determine the reasons behind farmers’ deaths by suicide. This process was practically stopped after the BRS government announced the Rythu Bima scheme on August 15, 2018.
Rythu Bima pays Rs 5 lakh compensation to the family of the farmer who has died by suicide. The insurance scheme considered land ownership as the eligibility criterion and left out landless tenant farmers.
After Rythu Bima was introduced, the system of verification at the mandal level by a team comprising a tahsildar, mandal agriculture officer and a sub-inspector as mandated by GO 194 to visit families of farmers who ended their lives, was given the go by. The subsequent verification saw the aggrieved families get a compensation of Rs 6 lakh.
Farmer unions say that abandoning that system meant that the government would remain clueless about the actual reasons for the death of farmers.
Of the 4,000 farmers who ended their lives after the formation of Telangana, families of only 1,600 received compensation.
“We had to take the BRS government to court challenging this situation and ensured payments for some families. Cases on the issue continue to gather dust in the courts even as families await justice,” said B. Kondal Reddy of Rythu Swarajya Vedika.
“With around 136 farmers ending their lives in the last six months of whom 42 are tenant farmers there is a need to revive the old system. This was promised even by Rahul Gandhi during the Bharat Jodo Yatra. The government should this time ensure that visits by officials happen in time. Ex gratia was rejected by committees earlier on pretexts that the farmer had ended his or her life owing to family disputes, debts incurred for education or marriage of children or showing lack of tenancy agreement by tenant farmers. There has been no headway in identifying tenant farmers," Kondal Reddy said.
