Maharashtra officer Vijaykumar Phad sings Bhajans to dissuade farmers from committing suicide

THERE’S nothing unusual if a senior bureaucrat changes his formal dress to dhoti and kurta after office hours. But how would you react if he takes a Veena in hand and starts singing kirtans and bhajans in villages? For Vijaykumar Phad, the deputy divisional commissioner, general administration in Maharashtra’s Aurangabad district, there is a purpose to his act. He feels his singing of devotional songs will dissuade farmers from committing suicide. In fact, Phad’s photo while singing in a village in Aurangabad, as published in…
The Times of India on Tuesday was a talked-about subject in the capital’s corridors. According to reports, over 650 farmers committed suicide this year alone in drought-hit state of Maharashtra. The suicides are mostly taking place in the districts of Beed, Osamanabad and Latur.
Right from 1995 when he was on probation, the officer has been using his skill of narrating stories with a moral lesson in the form of kirtans (devotional songs) to wean away farmers from suicidal thoughts, according to the Times of India report. The farmers organize Pravachan Saptah (weekly sermons) for Phad to deliver. He first used this tactic to recover tax from villagers in 1995 at Biloli in Nanded district of Maharashtra, and then deployed the same tactic for reducing tension among farmers and dissuading them from committing suicides.
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