Thaindian News

Agartala, April 24 (IANS) Two farmers are committing suicide every hour in India while the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government is busy serving the interests of foreign and domestic corporates, a senior Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader said Sunday.

“In each hour, at least two farmers are killing themselves after they have lost their crops and find no alternative ways of livelihood,” said S. Ramachandran Pillai, president of CPI-M farmer’s wing, the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS).

“During the past ten years, over 200,000 farmers in India have forced to commit suicide after they lost their wealth in farming due to wrong and anti-farmers policies of the central government,” said Pillai, who is also a politburo member, at a gathering here.

Quoting a government survey report, Pillai said that in 1990, 22 percent of people were landless in India and now the figure has risen to 36 percent.

“In the 1990s, contribution of agriculture in India’s GDP was 32 percent and it has come down to 15.7 percent in 2009-10,” Pillai told the gathering, organised by the AIKS as part of its all India movement in support of several demands, including modification of British-era Land Acquisition Act, 1894.

He demanded the government confiscate the crores of black money deposited by some Indians in foreign banks and use them for the welfare of people and development of the rural part of the country.

Terming the new Seed Act a draconian law, he said that the proposed law would curb the right of the farmers and seed-related policies would be controlled by the US and other imperialist countries.