Mass suicide - more than 1500 Indian farmers chose death over debt

The Indian state of Chhattisgarh (Google Maps)

My day usually begins with vats of coffee and a couple of hours of visiting news websites and wire services – both foreign and domestic.

Most searches result in the expected ‘buzz’ topics - those on the tips of everyone’s tongues and often the lead stories for the many forms of media.

Now and again, however, there comes an item tucked quietly beneath the smothering blanket of information overload.

Yesterday’s report from the agricultural state of Chhattisgarh in central India is one such story.

Faced with dissipating water levels and massive debt, more than 1500 farmers in this once-fertile area of rice cultivation have chosen death over debt.

Little or no rain fell on the area this past year, and when coupled with poorly planned government dam projects that have diverted water from many of the farms, their fields now lay dead and barren.

The depletion of surrounding forests is also blamed for massive crop failure.

“The [underground] water level has gone down below 250 feet here,” a villager was quoted in Down to Earth magazine, “It used to be at 40 feet just a few years ago.”

The villager, identified as Shatrughan Sahu, lives in a district of Chhattisgarh that recorded more than 200 suicides last year.

Others fault predatory lending practices by banks and financiers.

Bharatendu Prakash, a spokesman for the Organic Farming Association of India, told a press association reporter, “Farmers’ suicides are increasing due to a vicious circle created by money-lenders. They lure farmers to take money but when the crops fail, they are left with no other option than death.”

With the death of the farm owner, families are often left with enormous loans and no means with which to repay them. Some simply abandon the land and seek employment as manual laborers with hopes to repay inherited debt.

For others, such as Dilip Mangalkar, the stress and worry take the ultimate toll. A relative found the bodies of Mangalkar, his pregnant wife and two daughters after the family had plunged to their deaths in the water well on their farm.

The Indian parliament is reconsidering the breadth of a farm relief plan that was introduced by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2006.

These mass suicides have been taking place for years; the extent of which remaining unknown to most of the population outside India’s borders.

Between 1995 and 2006, the National Crime Records Bureau recorded more than 36,000 suicides in the Maharashtra state alone.