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124
ABSTRACTS OF SIKH STUDIES : APRIL-JUNE 2005 / 537 NS
PUNJAB GOVERNMENT’S STATUS REPORT ON RURAL SUICIDES
MASR demands Waiver of Institutional Loans
Chandigarh, January 6, 2005. Sardar Inderjeet Singh Jaijee,
Convenor, Movement Against State Repression, has asked the Punjab
Government to conduct a survey into the conditions leading to
continued suicide deaths of farmers, and to take suitable steps to
ameliorate these conditions. A letter written by Sardar Inderjeet Singh
Jaijee to the Chief Secretary, Punjab is reproduced below:
Dear Sardar Gill,
The Revenue Department has been investigating rural suicides
for some time. Their initial report on 29 cases that I presented to the
government established that all the cases were genuine suicides, of
which 26 were due to debt and economic hardship. This indicated
that more than 90 per cent were due to debt. This finding was supported
by a survey conducted by the Panjab Agriculture University, Ludhiana,
at the behest of the Central Government. The PAU survey blamed 86
per cent of rural suicides on economic hardship and debt. I am
enclosing a list of 231 suicides that were committed after April 1,
2001 from the two blocks of Andana and Lehra. Apart from this, 18
suicides are under investigation and there are 21 cases of
disappearances. Our data reflects only cases brought to our notice by
our informants in some of the villages.
If full data for these two blocks were collected, there would be a
minimum of 300 cases in three years. This represents approximately
50 suicide deaths per block per year. Punjab has 138 blocks and one
must presume that distress is widely distributed throughout the state
but, as the government report suggests, Malwa, Amritsar and
Gurdaspur are more affected than other areas. The Punjab government’s
recently released Status Report on rural suicides sent to the Center
mentions 2,116 suicide deaths since 1988. This is a gross underreporting.
We have verified record of 600 cases for this period from
Andana and Lehra alone. The rural suicides per year for all of Punjab
would far exceed 2,116 ...the number the government report gives for
16 years.
Last week our researcher initiated a survey in Dhun Dhaiwala
village, Tarn Taran Subdivision. This brought out 18 cases of suicides