The Indian Parliament was adjourned on Tuesday amid a bitter attack on the government over a wave of suicides by debt-ridden farmers in the country’s main cotton-growing belt.
Opposition MPs blamed the policies of the Congress party-led government for the suicides, which activists say are continuing despite an economic aid package Prime Minister Manmohan Singh offered to farmers in Maharashtra’s cotton belt in July.
”Farmer-killers, farmer-killers,” opposition MPs shouted in the Lok Sabha or lower house a day after an Indian court ordered Maharashtra state authorities to set up a website to help farmers.
Speaker Somnath Chatterjee adjourned the house for the day after opposition leaders refused to listen to calls for calm.
”By doing this, you are not serving the farmers’ cause … Is this responsible behaviour? Are you promoting their cause by creating such a situation?” Chatterjee said, but his voice was lost in the pandemonium.
Social activists say the suicide rate of poverty-hit farmers in the cotton belt has hit a 10 year-high despite Singh’s 37,5-billion rupee ($835-million) relief package.
Sixty farmers — including two fathers and their sons — killed themselves in July after falling prices of cotton wiped out their savings.
More than 600 farmers committed suicide in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha cotton-growing zone in the 12 months ended in June this year, according to the Vidarbha People’s Protest Forum NGO.
Federal officials earlier this year said more than 8 900 Indian farmers hit by debt, drought and falling prices had committed suicide since 2001, including 980 in Maharashtra. – Sapa-AFP