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The Centre for Alternative Agricultural Media (CAAM) has expressed its dissatisfaction over the media reports on farmer suicides which are concerned about counting the deaths than analysing the situation. It has urged the media to focus on the measures that could prevent such incidents across the state.

In a country where farming is the backbone of the economy and the society, even if one farmer decides to end his life, that should caution the entire system. But unfortunately, the number of suicides is given more importance in the media than farmers' genuine problems that force them to bid adieu to life. The Centre said that the media should be proactive and focus on reasons and realities behind such incidents.

CAAM said the number of deaths which has exceeded 360 this year, has dominated over other issues behind it. When the media reports them it has not gone beyond the number, into the factors that have put the farmers in a deathtrap.

The media which should have given voice to the helpless farmers has not been able to serve the purpose through its number-centric reports. Farmers' real difficulties have been overshadowed by the attempts to label each suicidal incident with the most 'circulated' reasons of crop-failure and debt. The Centre felt that such stereotype reports will neither help the farmer, nor will it build pressure on the government to take measures for the betterment of farming community.

CAAM said that even the G.K. Veeresh Committee set up by the Karnataka Government to look into the situation has not come to the rescue of the farmers. The committee in its report said that debt is a cause for their deaths. But the reason for debt is not only crop- loss but also farmers' bad habits like alcoholism. With this background, if the media also fail to analyse the situation properly, it would be easy for the government to consider the reason for the suicidal incident as 'bad habit' and escape from its responsibility. This year government has accepted around 90 deaths (out of 360) as due to 'crop-loss' and has given compensation to their family.

Saying that the farmer suicides indicate the status of the entire farming sector in the state, the Centre has felt that if explored properly, each incident of suicide would reveal before us a host of problems and crisis the sector is facing - from drought to globalisation.

The Centre said, the situation reflects the outcome of a lengthy transformation that has been taken place in the country's farm sector. The Green Revolution has made farmers lose their holistic relationship with the soil. The 'modern' agriculture practice which requires pesticides and chemical fertilisers in abundance created series of problems. This makeover gave way to many fertiliser and pesticide companies and moneylenders. Gradually they took the farmers into their hold. The person who provides poor quality seeds and fertilisers is the one who lends money and also the one who purchases the produce! Farmers are caught in this trap and are finding it difficult to escape.

According to CAAM, the need of the hour is to boost the confidence among farmers. This can be done if the media examines the different dimensions of the problem through its analytical reports and arrives at possible and feasible solutions. The Centre said, instead of becoming part of the problem media should be a part of the solution.

The Centre said, even in this depressed situation we come across several success stories among the farmers which, if made known to the farmers in distress could bring back their hope in life. Many farmers are striding the road to sustainability by adopting organic farming and soil and water conservation methods. Centre for Alternative Agricultural Media felt that if the media throws light on these success stories that would inspire many other farmers to follow them, thus change the destiny of the farm-sector in the state.