Victim families stage protest

Farmer Suicide

BY OUR STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI, Nov 19: The family members of the 19 farmers of the State who committed suicide due to poverty and loss of crops, staged a protest demonstration along with the members of Assam State Kisan Sabha (ASKS) at Lakhiram Borah Khetra in the city today. The protestors slammed the government for to its ‘anti people’ policies.

Speaking to The Sentinel, Saraswati Talukdar, wife of late Bhupen Talukdar said, “We were earning our money by working in the paddy fields of other people and after the heavy loss in farming, my husband started to earn by pulling rickshaw. However, the earning was not sufficient to run the family of six members and he committed suicide on last October 19.”

Addressing the protest demonstration, former MP Hemen Das said, “53 per cent of employment is related to the agriculture sector of the State, but due to anti farmers land policy of the government, farmers are facing several problems ranging from high rate of agricultural equipments and high rate of production cost and low rate of production sale as the government reduced MSP for the agricultural sectors.”

Slamming the NDA government in Centre, Tripura MP Jiten Choudhury said, “At Present, one farmer dies every half an hour in our country and after Modi government came to power, the suicide of farmers increased by 26 per cent.” He also highlighted what Manik Sarkar led left government in Tripura has done to give support to the farmers.

“The families of the dead farmers are living in the worst condition without any source of income. Even these families are also out of the governmental schemes like Indira Awash Yoja, ration card, BPL card and others. The employees under Joint Centre of Indian Trade Unions (JCITU) collected money within them and gave the aid of Rs 4,000 per family to these 19 families of the State,” said ASKS secretary Tiken Das adding that they have been demanding the government to approve an aid of Rs 10 lakh to each victim family apart from fixing a proper MSP for paddy.