As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh arrives here next week one year after he announced a package for distressed farmers in six cotton-producing districts, he will have reason to hold out hope: nature and “nurture” have worked together to bring down farmer suicides and push up farm incomes.

The overall suicide tally in the six districts — Akola, Amravati, Buldana, Washim, Yavatmal and Wardha — as per official records, is down from 760 in the first seven months of 2006 to 664 in the same period this year — a dip of 13 per cent.

Of these, “agrarian” suicides — due to indebtedness and crop failure — are down, too. Of the 1448 suicides last year, 332, between January and June, were classified as agrarian suicides. This year, the number until June is only 90.

Although these are “dynamic” figures — revised upward after official scrutiny of each case — the total number, officials say, will be significantly lower than that of last year.

Incidentally, the government’s tally is drawn from police records and is higher than the number released by the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti, an NGO which regularly releases suicide figures to the media.

The samiti’s figures for the same period are 605 for all the 11 districts of Vidarbha.

The government’s data is as per “suicide eligibility” norms recommended by Mumbai’s Indira Gandhi Institute for Development Research (IGIDR). Significantly, it’s not necessary that the farmer should have committed suicide for his family to become eligible. Anyone in the family committing suicide is the criterion. So confident is the Maharashtra government of the accuracy of its data that it has asked IGIDR to independently validate it.

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