| The farmer suicides continue in India, and it's an awful lot more real when you see the picture at the link of two women - a daughter who found her father's body after he killed himself, and her mother, holding his picture. He had a debt equal to $20,000.
That man's younger brother may also commit suicide. He farms 2 acres of land and he's got a debt equal to $15,000. He's only 35. Currently, his wife is watching him around the clock to make sure he doesn't kill himself.
Each year before the harvest, the small farmers of Punjab, who make up nearly 85% of the state's farming community, borrow from local rural moneylenders at exorbitant interest rates to meet production costs, including fertilisers and electricity for irrigation.
Defaulting on payment increases the rates of interest and a farmer is publicly humiliated in the local panchayat (self-governing rural body) if he fails to pay up.
According to the article, 200,000 farmers have killed themselves in India since 1997 - mostly in a handful of states. As our Monsanto friends pointed out, the immediate cause of death was frequently debt:
Amarjit Singh, another small farmer from Barnala whose father committed suicide a few years back, says: "My father could not read or write, so he could not calculate the amount of loan he had incurred.
"Once it reached a staggering sum, he was publicly threatened by the moneylender and committed suicide.
"If I am asked to pay my father's debt, I will also have to commit suicide," says Amarjit, who has also taken on loans to meet rising production costs.
However, debt alone cannot be blamed. What caused the debt? Lack of credit and lack of education, clearly. But what else? Trade liberalization and industrialized farming techniques. The former led to lower prices, the latter to increased costs. |
