Category Archive Agriwatch

District Mental Health Programme Initiation in Adilabad District

We are happy to announce that after a lot of discussions and persistent efforts, we were able to finally initiate the District Mental Health Programme (DMHP) in coordination with the team of National Health Mission (NHM) and DMHO in Adilabad. DMHP is a mandatory programme which needs to be implemented in every district across the country, but considering it isn’t happening yet and a dialogue is still on with the state officials of Telangana, we thought that it cannot wait in Adilabad and something needs to be done immediately given the rising number of suicides and overall distress there and hence started the program today.
Awareness programmes related to mental health and prevention of farmer suicides through Kisan Mitra have started today in a couple of mandals. Medical officers, paramedical staff and ASHA workers of the concerned PHCs along with the Kisan Mitra team are driving this activity.


Shruti, Psychologist explaining the flow to Asha Workers
We are making sure to take care and also convey that rural distress and farmer suicides aren’t just psychological but a combination of social, economical and other factors contributing to their distress which will also be addressed and resolved through Kisan Mitra along with Counselling.
Background
World Health Organisation has brought Non Communicable Diseases and Mental Health under one cluster considering psychological illnesses often coexist with other non-communicable diseases and they share many risk factors. Hence we wanted to group mental health awareness as a part of NCD Outreach activity through NHM.

Ease of doing agribusiness Index

like ease of doing business, Central government is trying to come up with an index to measure performance of states on supporting agribusiness. here while, the concept notes talks about farmer as entrepreneur, much of the indicators considered to be measured are to process indicators and outcomes are not measured. for example it talks about implementation of market reforms as suggested by centre and not the prices farmers accrued as a result of the reforms.
there is a need to rework on these indices and probably develop an independent one.
here is the press release
http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=188052
http://www.agricoop.nic.in/sites/default/files/Concept_Note.pdf