"Right to Information data collected and collated by activist Bharat Jhala nails government lies and exposes its attempts to suppress the truly horrifying scale of farmer suicides in Gujarat. Modi claimed in a TV interview to NDTV on March 14, 2007 that no farmer commits suicide in Gujarat. A month later, he admitted to 148 suicides on the floor of the assembly. Official data that we finally got in Oct 10, 2007, 5 months after we filed queries, confirms 498 suicides formally. However, even this list is partial as it does not feature several suicide stories painstakingly documented in the film! As many suicides are passed off as accidents, we also filed RTI queries seeking details of all accidental deaths - of the 6,695 farmers who died in "accidents", over 4000 have not been paid any Kisan Vima Yojana money (we've informally learnt that insurance companies have denied many such "accident" claims as many of these are suicides)! Amazingly, on Oct 10 itself, the day the Gujarat gave us RTI data confirming 498 suicides, an official ad released on ETV categorically stated that there are no suicides in Gujarat and people should not believe false propaganda. The ad itself seems to be done in response to the coverage in end Sept and October to our press conferences and the film excerpts we showed!"
