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.

Speaking to The Sunday Express, Srijit Mishra, who did the IGIDR study on Vidarbha’s suicides, said: “Some steps have been initiated and things have started moving in a positive direction. Nature also has helped but the crisis will need to be addressed in a sustained manner.”

Certainly, say officials, attributing this year’s improvement to policy interventions over the last one year in the form of packages from both the state and the Centre: availability of credit, interest waiver and moratorium on loan repayment for two years to schemes like funding of farmers’ daughter’s marriages and checks on private money-lenders. Add to this good rains that led to an unprecedented spurt in rabi production and lucrative prices for soyabean, which is fast replacing cotton as the main crop in these districts.

Cotton saw a bumper harvest — as against about 9.2 lakh cotton bales last year, production this year was 15.2 lakh, attributed by authorities mainly to the huge spurt in the use of Bt cotton.

Soyabean figures for the two years were 7.5 and 11.7 lakh tonnes, respectively — fetching an average price of Rs 1,490 per quintal this year compared to Rs 1,125 last year.

All this has translated into several positive indicators:

• Substantial increase in rural deposits from Rs 4,543 crore in March 2006 to Rs 5,471 crore (March 2007), as per Lead Bank Managers’ report.

• Number of farmers getting loans went up from 4.5 lakh to 10 lakh.

• Compared to Rs 750 crore given in loans in 2005-06, Rs 2,000 crore was disbursed in Rs 2006-07.

• Farmers got an interest waiver of over Rs 700 crore. Moreover, they are not supposed to repay their old debts until two years from now and even after that, they can pay in instalments.

• Early this year, 12 lakh farmers got relief worth Rs 400 crore as reimbursements of their deposits with the Cotton Federation. Another Rs 130 crore came in as relief against natural calamities.

• Significantly, rabi area (2 lakh hectares in 05-06) went up three times (6 lakh hectares in 06-07) due to the soil retaining moisture after a good monsoon.

“Whatever agrarian suicides that are now being witnessed are mainly because of high cost of cultivation on small land-holdings,” says Amravati Divisional Commissioner S K Goel.

But officials are keeping their fingers crossed. “One of the major lacunae in the farm package is non-availability of credit to defaulters this year,” said one of them who did not wish to be named. “Since agricultural gains and losses are a cyclic process, gains made in one year can be washed out the next year if monsoon and markets aren’t good. That is the reason why we need to have continued at least the interest-waiver for three to four years, rather than restricting it to one year.”

In fact, the Radhakrishnan Committee that looked into farmers’ indebtedness did recommend continuation of interest-waiver facility so that farmers continue to get fresh loans.