Mumbai, March 22: At least nine farmers have ended their lives in Vidarbha in the past two days, raising the toll since P. Chidambaram’s “historic” loan waiver to 50.

NGOs blamed the latest suicide spurt on Thursday’s state budget, which has ignored the demands for a higher minimum support price for cotton, fresh credit and crop subsidy, and secondary sources of income such as farm-product processing units.

Even as state finance minister Jayant Patil, dressed as a farmer in a dhoti and cap, was finishing his budget speech, Vithal Dadmal was getting ready to drink pesticide at his home in Goji village, Wardha.

The 22-year-old, depressed by repeated crop failure and mounting loans, leaves behind his parents, a sister and a younger brother. Officials said Dadmal owned four acres of land and would have qualified for Chidambaram’s loan waiver.

At 10 on Friday morning, Manohar Raut, 37, told his family in Yavatmal’s Antargaon that he was going to the toilet. When he failed to return after nearly five hours, his family went looking and found his body in a well.

Raut, who leaves behind his wife, son and two daughters, owned six acres and had borrowed money from private banks and moneylenders. A full write-off is available only to those with up to 4.89 acres and unpaid loans from the institutional credit net.

An hour after Raut had jumped into the well, Sukhdev Surpadi, 30, drank pesticide and died in hospital. With two acres of farmland in Gada, Nagpur, Surpadi would have qualified for a complete write-off.

The six others who killed themselves are Shaliram Raut of Bhandara, Vinod Shelke, Suresh Jagrut and Pandurang Ingole of Buldhana, Pramod Phasle of Akola and Patru Wadhai of Gadchiroli.

The Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS), a Yavatmal-based NGO that monitors the farmer suicide toll, couldn’t say if these farmers had taken loans from private moneylenders.

“Eighty farmers committed suicide in January and 86 in February. Fifty more have died since the Union budget was presented, taking the year’s toll so far to 216,” said VJAS chief Kishore Tiwari over the phone from Nagpur.

“Sonia Gandhi had promised a minimum support price (MSP) of Rs 2,700 per quintal of cotton during the 2004 Assembly poll campaign. But the Congress-NCP government stopped advance bonus and brought the MSP down to Rs 2,500 in 2005-06, and Rs 1,800 in 2006-07,” Tiwari said.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had promised to look into the demand for a higher MSP during his visit to Vidarbha in July 2006 but the price has not been raised. Chidambaram’s budget, too, was silent on the demand.

On Thursday, the state budget lowered the interest on crop loans of Rs 25,000 to 4 per cent and that on loans between Rs 25,000 and Rs 3 lakh to 2 per cent.

“But the government hasn’t announced any plans for a regulator to control the cost and quality of input and check the exploitation by traders in the commodity market. Nor has it done anything to provide farm-product processing facilities,” Tiwari said. “It’s time to announce a complete loan waiver and price protection on all farm produce.”