Linking Digital India As A Tool For Curbing Farmer Suicides – A Case Study Of Telangana State

Abstract

Digital India, a prestigious programme of NDA led Government with a projected value of Rs.113000 Crore is aimed to transform India to Digital empowered society and knowledge economy and among the 9 concentrated areas of Digital India, the present study evaluates the Digital India programme as a tool of opportunistic and social welfare initiative to curb one of the most rising problems in the agricultural sector in the country. Though agriculture, still the major employment provider has been in the situation of crisis due to rising farmer suicides. Farmers have been facing problems including lack of agricultural infrastructural assistance from government, lack of financial assistance regularity from banks and most importantly, the sector has been facing the problem of providing marketable information of yield for farmers. All these resulted in depressed conditions to farmers both financially and mentally which have lead to rising suicide cases especially in the last five years. The state of Telangana has been taken as a case for the present study and the study focuses on how Digital India programme can act as a tool of information provider for farmers, remedial practices through Digital India programme for curbing the farmer suicides. The study further deals with the factors influencing Digital India programme and the areas in farming which require Digital India assistance. The study is based on both primary and secondary data sources. Primary data is collected from farmer families in select districts of Telangana State. Secondary data sources include the reports issued by the state government on farmer suicides, agricultural yield, reports from banks and other published sources from internet and news papers.