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.

... contd.