Indian Vital Statistics : Fatal Figures about our FARMERS and OUR AGRICULTURE

* Hardly 10 per cent of Indian farmers are covered by crop insurance.
* Debt drove nearly 1 lakh members of farming community to commit suicide between 1998 and 2003, says a government report.
* 17,000 farmers and their kin killed themselves each year for six years.
* 12% of all suicides in the country was in the farming community.
* 2002 worst year. 16% of suicides among farmers.
* Agriculture provides nearly 600 million direct and another 200 million indirect jobs.
* The total annual rural debt of Punjab was Rs 24,000 crore in 2003-04 -- is more than its gross annual earnings from agriculture. (Source: The Telegraph, April 24, 2006)
* There is a total of about 455 million acres of land that is cultivated in India and only about a third of it is covered by irrigation.
* The four states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Kerala have recorded over 8,900 suicides between 2001-2002 and 2005-2006. * 70% of the Andhra's 78 million people are dependent on agriculture.
* Due to the acute distress, more than 1500 farmers committed suicide, mainly in Wayanad district, which is unprecedented in the history of Kerala.
* Rural development expenditure as percentage of GDP between 1985-1990 was 14.5%, which came down to 5.9% in 2000-01. * The expenditure on agriculture research is only around 0.3 per cent of GDP.