The distance from Yavatmal in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha to Adilabad in Andhra Pradesh is barely 100 km — one river and two bridges is all that one needs to cross from one town in India’s richest cotton belt to another. But it’s almost a million miles apart.

While Yavatmal tops the list for farmers’ suicides with 222 this year, Adilabad has had only two. In 2003-04, when Andhra reported as many as 4000 suicides, Adilabad had recorded 300 coming down to 17 last year.

That’s why this journey holds valuable lessons for policy-makers battling to break the debt-death cycle in Vidarbha. And nothing illustrates the difference better than Polambari, a scheme launched by the Andhra government a year ago. Under this, “field schools” for farmers are conducted by trained officers. And more than what they teach, it’s just their presence that, farmers say, is key to the turn-around. Along with a range of related policy interventions (see box).

In sharp contrast, in all the six districts of Vidarbha — where average landholding of 7 acres is similar to the pattern in Adilabad — almost half of all Agriculture Research Officer positions are vacant. Even those who are employed are virtually invisible: staff have neither the funds nor the willingness to travel to the fields leaving farmers to the mercy of aggressive marketing by seed companies, moneylenders and with zero advice on pests, disease or new farm techniques.

In fact, the Rs 4.5 crore sanctioned to strengthen such agriculture extension services, under the Prime Minister’s relief package, is yet to be utilized.

... contd.