Global warming is causing climate change. Nowadays we are experiencing high temperature everywhere (“Rise in suicides linked to climate change”, Gulf News, August 2). According to scientists, the temperature recorded in 2016 is supposed to be the highest in 115,000 years with an increase of 1.2 degree Celsius from pre-industrial era.
India is largely an agrarian country and reports say that more than 300,000 farmers and farm workers have committed suicide since 1995. Recent studies revealed that 60,000 farmers committed suicide solely because of climate change. It’s quite alarming to know that in the Indian state of Maharashtra, 852 farmers committed suicide in first four months of this year. Severe drought and climate change causing crop failure has largely affected the agriculture sector. With low incomes and due to high costs involved in cultivation they are left with huge amounts of money as loan debts. Many moneylenders provide the loans at exorbitant interest rates that the farmers cannot pay after crop failures. This forces them to end their lives.
This also affects their family, because they are left behind without their primary source of livelihood. What follows is further poverty, and lack of education or health for their children.
Natural ecosystems are imbalanced due to high human interference and activities like sand mining and cutting down trees. Urban heat island effect is very pronounced. The average rainfall has declined and it has affected agricultural sector.
Here government intervention is required. They should waive the loans and offer good prices to farmers for agricultural produce. Instead of conducting seminars and in-house discussions, agricultural universities and researchers should go to the fields, work with the poor farmers and put forward their views in order to save agriculture in India.
The reader is a Logistics Manager based in Dubai.
