Monday, January 28, 2013

Indian farmers trapped and desperate...

The agrarian crisis of which farmer suicides are a tragic consequence is a mega calamity, rooted in one fundamental cause, which P. Sainath, the rural editor for The Hindu newspaper, describes as “the drive towards corporate farming”, predicated by the “predatory commercialization of the countryside” that is forcing “the biggest displacement in Indian history”. Shocking and destructive as it is, it should be seen as part of a greater whole of interconnected issues facing India. Sainath makes this clear: “Don’t detach this crisis from the overall political, economic and social direction of the country,” he says.

The number of farmer suicides – the largest in human history – is estimated to have reached more than 300,000 and rising as we speak. Add to this the 400 a day who attempt suicide and fail, the 2,200 that daily quit farming and the one and a half million family members affected by suicides, plus the millions facing the very issues that are driving the tragedy, and the scale of the inferno begins to be clear.

Shocking, as they are, these figures are an indication only; women are one of eight groups who are generally excluded from official data because most do not have title to land. A woman is not classed as a farmer; she is a farmer’s wife, and her suicide is not included in the figures. Also excluded from the statistics, according to the Centre for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University (HRGJ), are family members of farmers who have committed suicide – who themselves take over farming land and subsequently commit suicide because of debt”. The Dalit and indigenous Adivasi people are also invisible to a government who ignores them in death as in life. Full story...

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  2. Waves of suicides among Indian famers...
  3. Monsanto official beaten up in India over failed GMO cotton seeds...
  4. 17,368 farmer suicides in 2009 in India, a total of 216,500 since 1997...

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