Mumbai: Fifteen hundred suicides in eight months. That is more than six a day. The figure, from the eight months of the Lok Sabha election period, is recorded in the coverage of Tuesday's Dussehra rally.
About 1,500 farmers in the state died by suicide in those eight months, according to the figure that surfaced in the rally coverage.
From the rally stage came sharp criticism of the condition of farmers. The drought has burnt standing crops, and help for hailstorm damage has not reached farmers yet, it was said.
Once the figure was placed on record, the question of who bears the blame for the deaths was also raised. The coverage carries no answer to it.
In the same coverage, the deaths are set beside the state's relief. The government has announced a ₹5,000 advance for drought-hit farmers for Diwali. Fifteen hundred deaths and ₹5,000 arrived in the same report, side by side.
At the same rally, Uddhav Thackeray said a farmer's son died by suicide because money could not be given for a trip to Parbhani. That is his claim.
Questions over debt, crop insurance and the route that relief takes to farm households remain. The eight-month figure asks for an account of how far help actually reached.
How those eight months passed for 1,500 families is not set out in the coverage. The number has come out; what follows from it has not.