Beed:
Younger farmers in Maharashtra's Marathwada region may be more vulnerable and prone to commit suicide, a survey has found.
Dilasa Janvikas Pratishthan, an Aurangabad-based NGO, has carried out a sample survey by studying farmer suicides in the eight districts of the region. Their findings are startling: 50 per cent of farmers are between the ages of 20 and 40 years.
"We studied 247 suicide cases of which 75 per cent had the burden of unpaid loans. 30 per cent of farmers were between the age bracket of 20-30 years, whereas the remaining were 30-40 years old," Shilpa Gole, project head of the NGO's agribusiness initiatives explains.
Further analysis as per the NGO shows that while younger farmers were in debts they accrued after taking farm-related or personal loans, the older lot committed suicide unable to repay loans taken for their children's marriages.
"More and more we see that younger farmers seem to be committing suicide today. And it's perhaps because many live in nuclear families, without family support and then crack under pressure," says Dilasa's secretary Sanjeev Unhale.
Take the case of the Sontakkes in Beed district. Hanuman was just 35 years old and his wife Sumitra was 30 when they both consumed poison together last December. Sumitra died the same day while Hanuman died within 48 hours, leaving behind four children, a blind father and an aged mother.
"He has loans over Rs 1 lakh and couldn't repay as the monsoon failed repeatedly," says Hanuman's mother Imar.
20 kilometres away at another village was another tragedy of double suicides.
On January 1, 2014, when India was celebrating New Year's Day, just 38 years old, Datta Kale committed suicide by jumping in his own well. Exactly one year and one week later his father Atmaram ended his life by drowning himself in the very same well.
Datta's daughter Meera says he was tense how he would get her married, while his wife Chhaya Kale won't allow her young son to be a farmer. "What is there for us? Only poverty and unhappiness."