It is govt's duty to prevent farmer suicides: SC

NEW DELHI: A day after questioning Centre’s much-hyped PM Fasal Bima Yojana for not being able to address agrarian crisis in the country, the Supreme Court on Friday said it is the responsibility of governments to ensure that farmers, in distress due to crop loss, did not commit suicide.A bench of Justices Dipak Misra and A M Khanwilkar said that onus was on the governments to take preventive steps so that farmers did not take extreme step of taking away their life.“It is the duty of executive governments to ensure that such incidents must not happen. The policy for welfare of farmers must be implemented at the ground level. The approach of the governments should be preventive rather than compensatory,” the bench said while hearing a PIL on farmers suicide in Tamil Nadu which is facing severe agrarian crisis due to drought.Additional Solicitor General PS Narasimha, appearing for Tamil Nadu, said that state government was taking all necessary steps to rescue farmers and told the bench that Centre was also sharing financial burden. He said that Centre’s Fasal Bima Yojana was intended to protect farmers in case of crop loss.Narasimha further said that RBI had also instructed Banks to held farmers by granting loan to them.“We do not know about insurance business but prudence and common sense says that premium for crop insurance should not be commercial oriented. How would poor farmer pay the premium,” the court saidThe petitioner, Tamil Nadu based NGO, contended that farmers were harassed by banks for default in paying back the loan, forcing agriculturists to commit suicide. The court then asked the state government to look into the matter and restrained financial institutions from taking any coercive steps against farmers for default.“That has to stop. No coercive step should be taken in violation of the procedure. They are poor and illetirate people and they must be protected,” the bench said.Earlier the court had pulled up Tamil Nadu government for its failure to come to the rescue of farmers who are suffering due to famine and sought explanation on steps taken by it address the crisis.“The State stands on the position of a loco parentis to the citizens and when there are so many deaths of farmers in the state of Tamil Nadu, it becomes obligatory on the part of the state to express concern and sensitiveness to do the needful and not allow the impecunious and poverty stricken farmers to resign to their fate or leave the downtrodden and the poor to yield to the idea of fatalism,” the bench had said.“The concept is alien in the welfare State and the social justice which is required to be translated in a democratic body polity. As is manifest from the assertions and the grievances that have been agitated, deaths are due to famine backdrop and other natural causes and also due to immense financial problem. The state, as the guardian, is required to see how to solve these problems or to meet the problems by taking curative measures treating it as a natural disaster. Silence is not the answer,” it had said.