PM’s Rehabilitation Package for the Farmers in Suicide Prone Districts of Maharashtra—Impact and Policy Implications

Indian agriculture is currently passing through a period of severe crisis. Although certain features of the crisis such as deceleration in growth rate declining share of agriculture in GDP and falling public investment in agriculture started manifesting themselves in certain parts of India during the late 1980s the crisis assumed a serious dimension since the middle of the 1990s. One of the tragic manifestations of the crisis in the large number of suicides committed by the farmers in some parts of India mainly concentrated in Karnataka Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra.Concerned with farmers suicides the Honble Prime Minister of India announced a rehabilitation packages on July 1 2006. The implementation period of the package was fixed at 3 yearsThis book examines the ground reality as to whether the benefits of this package reached the intended beneficiaries in Maharashtra and also the impact of the package on the beneficiates.