In India close to 2, 75,000 farmers have committed suicide in the last twenty years, average 50 farmer‘s a day and despite efforts by the state & the central governments the rate shows an alarming increase over the recent past. In France, one every two days, in UK one every week, in the US it is twice the rate in general population, plight of farmers in Canada is no different and Australia reportedly has one farmer suicide every four days. In China too it is a critical issue. Farmers rarely go for health, life or property insurance leave aside crop insurance. During a recent land slide disaster after the villagers lost everything they had to wait for government grant to relocate & build.
The issue is not only restricted to developing countries but also has become a Global Crisis.
The key factors driving farmers all over to take their life can be grouped as :
Economic - loans from informal market, no or inadequate crop-insurance reach.
Physical - Declining ground water level, draught or excess rain, changing weather pattern.
Social- Attached stigmas, lack of psychiatrists (one for 130,000)
To create a smart card for farmers through social impact investment with stress level indication early warning, when inserted, transmits message to a central command. It acts as enabler for
Efforts have been done in bits & pieces but we would like to do a highly organised focused & coordinated project staring with a district covering the state & later replicating the model to the country & overseas with social impact fund back up with triple bottom-line. Unlike most other social impact investments the results from this should be clearly measurable in terms of falling suicide rate.