Read the passage and answer the following questions :

The farmer’s cruel fate

We are staring, currently, at a period of record agrarian distress. Recently several thousand farmers marched to Delhi, across unions and political ideologies, to impress upon the government that their lives have been devastated by the whimsical and poorly thought out decisions of this government. It would have been a wake-up call for any other regime. But for a government intoxicated by its own hubris and with its priorities elsewhere, the valiant efforts were in vain.

Though it is impossible to summarise the myriad issues affecting farmers across the country, it is vital that we acquaint ourselves with their struggle. Farmer’s suicides have increased at an alarming rate. There has been a recorded increase of 40-46% in the number of farmer suicides across India.

Suffering farmers have adopted all sorts of mechanisms to try and catch the government’s attention. Farmers from Tamil Nadu have brought along skeletal remains of their kin who committed suicide. Peaceful farmers were forced to resort to loud protests in Mandsaur and were shot dead by an apathetic and cruel state government. Young children from Maharashtra who have lost their parents to suicides arrived in Delhi and waited patiently to be heard by the government. Not a single representative of the government bothered to acknowledge their presence, let alone grant them an audience.

The government continues to pursue policies that are bizarrely anti-farmer. For one, under GST, tractors and other agricultural implements are taxed at 12%, with some of their components such as tyres and tubes being taxed at 28%. The tax on fertilizers has risen from 1. 03% to 5%. Pesticides, which even a layman would attest are essential for farming, are taxed at 18%.

This year saw the highest ever domestic production of pulses at 22. 95 MMT. This would have been sufficient to meet domestic demand but instead, in an example of gross maladministration, the government imported a record 6. 6 MMT of pulses (at zero import duty no less).

This excessive supply led to a crash in prices affecting farmers and the domestic market. Separately in this same year, the government withdrew import duty on wheat from 25% to zero just as farmers were preparing to harvest their crop. This led to a massive increase in wheat imports (5. 9 MT) from abroad crashing domestic prices.

Source : Times of India, December 7, 2017

(a) ‘Farmers’ suicides have increased at an alarming rate. Support the statement with suitable reasons.

(b) What were the techniques used by the farmers to capture the government’s attention ? What were its effects ?