 Now, another thing happened the day before yesterday, and it's one of the big processes that's going on. It started in the UPA, it's going to have gigantic implications. The Modi government has wound up the National Crime Records Bureau. NCRB has been shut down, merged into something called, something which I'd never heard of, I don't know, Bureau of Police Research or, I don't even know the name. The NCRB was the most important source of data on 100 things, not just farm suicides, okay, on rape, on murder, on killings, on everything, on farm suicides, on female suicides, on, you name it. The National Crime Records Bureau has been merged into BPPR. I think that will happen within the next month, they've announced that they're going to do it. But at that time, it's had a story on this thing. There's a reason why the NCRB had to be destroyed. 2015, the Modi government destroyed the National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau. The only body in this country that kept longitudinal data, long series data which you could compare over very big periods of time. And indeed, the last report they did, offending the UPA government, showed that most rural people were consuming 513 calories less, yeah, so many grams of magnesium less, so many grams of vitamin A less. This is the last survey of the National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau, the results were shocking and the government responded by shutting down the Bureau. So the National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau is gone, the National Crime Records Bureau is gone, you're looking at 25 years, not just this guy, not just the NDA. The NDA does it more blatantly, brings that personalized nastiness to everything they do, yeah, but they started well under the UPA regime, the destruction of Indian data. It started, already was advanced when Montek Singh ordered the redoing of the NSS of 2019, said it was conducted in a bad year, in a drought year, so re-conducted so that it would show less negative stuff about poverty, so they had to redo it. All your surveys are now being outsourced, so where a government body used 10,000 to 20,000 people to cover a large survey, it will now be done by 3,000, 4,000 people, this has been going on for quite some time, it's been going on for quite some time. So you're looking at one of the great processes of our time for journalists and reporters to be aware of, you're looking at the complete destruction of the integrity of any data process in this country, 2 minutes on why it is important in one example, farmers suicides and I can tell you this that so many progressives, so many leftists are taken in by the kind of crap that has been put out in the NCRB in the last 2 years. Why is the NCRB different from other bodies? It had a balance of disinterested civilian and disinterested police. Why is the NCRB data, you know every day when you read about farm suicides in Maharashtra or somewhere, do you know whose data you're reading, not the NCRBs. For the last 10 years, for the last 5, 6 years you have not been reading NCRB data. That is the state government's revenue department data, there are 3 kinds of data on the farm suicides. One is the CM's office having to produce an answer in the assembly says Kuchto Liko and they will put some number there which will be absurd. I once published 4 different estimates of farm suicides made in the same week in Maharashtra varying by just merely 5,200 percent simultaneously in parliament and in the assembly. The figures were given by the chief minister, the agriculture minister, the union agriculture minister and the NCRB. The highest estimate was that by the NCRB. Why revenue department? Because they were worried about compensations. The job of farm suicides is not given to the agriculture department. It's not given to that, counting that is given to the revenue department which will make damn sure that almost no suicide was due to distress because they don't want to pay all the figures you're reading are revenue department figures. You'll find a huge deviation between and I'm serious a lot of progressives simply I'll come to that thing about progressives and data especially academics and data and this is where you guys are important. We are not academics, we are not bound by stupid conventions. If you find that something is silly you stand up and say it's silly. My hero in journalism for me the first great reporter in history you know was someone who said something that was visible. It was the kid who said the emperor is naked that was the first great journalist in history. Now everybody else could see that the emperor was naked but somebody said it the emperor is starkers and then it became the rogue. So you have second is the so one is the CM's office putting out stuff. One is the revenue department's figures the third was the NCRB. Why is the NCRB data superior to anyone else? How do farm suicides data come in NCRB? Every police station in the country is filing data. Every police thana in the country say let's take the state of Maharashtra highest number of suicides more than 65,000 more than 65,000 suicides in 20 years. Every police station in Maharashtra files its data not just on farmers suicides on all crimes to a body called District Crime Records Bureau. All districts then file their data to a body called State Crime Records Bureau. All states file their data to the National Crime Records Bureau. So any mischief anything happens it's happening at the level it's just too many police stations across the country. Now the NCRB is staffed by people. They are statisticians bureaucrats technocrats they're getting the data they're formatting it they're collating the data they're not creating it okay. So and it will be headed very often by a from 2012-13 they started having it headed by IG's of police where it used to be IAS officers. So the police element became more pronounced in the NCRB. Then the state government started telling the police that you know that people including me are creating needless propaganda and thing and you should start. So from 2012 two states from 2011 states after states started declaring zero suicides. In 2014 data 12 states and 6 union territories declared zero farmers suicides meaning India is paradise on earth for farmers that is they don't even have the number of suicides that the rest of society has. They don't even have a fraction of it in those 12 states. As soon as Chhattisgarh started doing it the next to kick in the same year was Didi. So West Bengal which had an average of 800, 850 farmers suicides a year for the next four years had zero Chhattisgarh which had an average of 1555 suicides for 10 years had zero for the next five. So numbers will fall. I kept doing the calculations on suppose I take the I give both calculations the figures that NCRB gives and what would have happened if we calculate on that average on the ten year average okay. Then this was still causing them a lot of trouble. So they started playing with the definition of farmer and this is where a lot of academics and others have been taken in yeah. They divide it into farmers, tenant farmers and agricultural laborers. Now the implication is that what you got all along included all these groups it's not so it is not so those others came in the column called others okay. So what happens is when you say tenant farmers 85% nonsense 95% of tenancies in the country are not recorded okay. Since 95% of tenancies are not recorded what does it mean? It means that that in India even a trained researcher or someone with 30 years experience like myself in this it is very difficult to tell the difference between an agricultural laborer and a tenant farmer. There are no documents. So when the cop goes to the suicide house the first thing he will ask the widow is Patadika in Maharashtra they will say Sat Baradika she will say what Patta because the tenancy is done on word of mouth word of honor your family knows my family I give you three acres I am not ever going to give you a document I am afraid that you will and appropriate my land. So look at the hilariousness of it suddenly the country becoming famous for farmers suicides in 2014 there are far more agricultural laborers suicides than farmers and farmers suicides fall by 50% because all your tenant farmers have gone into the agricultural laborers column which is confirmed to me by the statisticians of the NCRB. But there is another place where the farmers went the others column as the farm suicide numbers are falling the others column is exploding. In 2014 data out in 2015 celebrated and accepted in EPW articles and elsewhere farm suicides have fallen by more than half yeah the others column went up for those 5 states Karnataka farm suicides fell by 56% others column expanded by 245% for the 5 states accounting for 70% of your suicides the others column went up by 132% there is absolutely no precedent to that kind of thing in a others column there is one going back to the first farm investigation. So I am saying data is being destroyed the integrity of the data process is being destroyed by changing those making those changes in 14, 15, 16 they made the current data completely incomparable with the past data set and now we do not know whether it will happen there at all and by the way they are talking since we are in the process of decriminalizing suicide someone is going to ask the question why should we maintain suicide data.