`Government unable to provide jobs to farmers who quit agriculture' : P Sainath

CHENNAI: Around 15 million people have quit farming from 1991 to 2011, which the government approves of, but isn’t able to provide alternate jobs for them, said veteran journalist

P Sainath

on Thursday.

“There are zero jobs in the industry. Many farmers are working as cooks and cleaners in canteens of information technology (IT) companies,” he said at University of Madras on “agrarian distress and media”, a talk was hosted by the department of journalism and communication and Poovulagin Nanbargal, an NGO.

After widespread coverage of farmer suicides reported in the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), the government is in the process of killing data as it was embarrassing, Sainath said. The definition of farmer has been changed, leading to an increase in the ‘others’ column, he said, adding, “we are deluding ourselves as a nation”.

“From 1995 to 2015, 3.1 lakh farmers took their own lives. This has no parallel or precedence in human history. States like West Bengal and Chhattisgarh have begun to show zero suicides in their reported data. Despite that, the figures of farmer suicides is still alarming,” he said.

Criticising the media for not deploying a full-time agriculture/labour reporter, Sainath quoted a Centre for Media Studies study to say only 0.67% of front page or prime time coverage was devoted to agriculture-related issues. “The reporter covering the agriculture ministry is seen as agriculture reporter. People sent to cover agrarian issues during a crisis don’t have much domain knowledge,” he said.

Mumbai-based TOI reporter Priyanka Kakodkar came in for praise by Sainath for documenting the agrarian distress in Maharashtra. Her stories were shared on People’s Archive of Rural India, a not-for-profit website run by Sainath documenting India’s rich diversity of rural life .