Indian farmers commit suicide every 30 minutes

[Shireling]

Every 30 Minutes": Crushed by Debt and Neoliberal Reforms, Indian Farmers Commit Suicide at Staggering Rate

(Democracy Now!)


A quarter of a million Indian farmers have committed suicide in the last 16 years—an average of one suicide every 30 minutes. The crisis has ballooned with economic liberalization that has removed agricultural subsidies and opened Indian agriculture to the global market. Small farmers are often trapped in a cycle of insurmountable debt, leading many to take their lives out of sheer desperation. We speak with Smita Narula of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University Law School, co-author of a new report on farmer suicides in India.

snip:

As a result, small farmers are often trapped in a cycle of insurmountable debt, leading many to take their lives out of sheer desperation. The rate of suicide is highest among cotton farmers. Like other cash crops in India, the cotton industry is increasingly dominated by foreign multinational corporations that tend to promote genetically modified cottonseed and often control the cost, quality and availability of agricultural inputs.

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/5/11/every_30_minutes

[patrice]

1. KICK!

[tabatha]

2. Damn! I unrec'd instead of reccing.

This has been going on for a long time.

Damn Monsanto.

[era veteran]

7. I got a rec in for you.

Monsanto the MOST EVIL corporation on the planet that it is destroying.

[handmade34]

3. not to downplay

because your post is very relevent... but on NPR the other day "...an average of 18 (U.S.)veterans a day commit suicide...) almost 1 1/2 per hour

way too many lost people!!

[OwnedByFerrets]

5. Repugs must LOVE that stat....helps keep down the health care costs

associated with veterans. :mad:

[Shireling]

10. That deserves a thread of its own

So many veterans are homeless, and the homeless are always put down and blamed. And I'm sure that those serving in our present conflicts have major PTSD because they have been called back again and again. They give their minds and bodies and are left behind.

[OwnedByFerrets]

4. Greed sucks....and kills.

[catrose]

6. Gandhi's grandson spoke on this topic

I can't find a link, but I heard him speak at a church. He said that small farmers used to hold back part of their crops for the next year's seeds. But Monsanto's Frankenseeds don't regenerate. So each year farmers have to borrow money for seed, which they can't quite pay back, so their debt snowballs and engulfs them.

[midnight]

8. It sounds like Monsanto has struck again...

"Monsanto would like nothing more than to be the sole source for staple crop seeds in this country and around the world," said Joseph Mendelson, CFS legal director. "And it will aggressively overturn centuries-old farming practices and drive its own clients out of business through lawsuits to achieve this goal."
http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/press_release1.13.05.cfm

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/01/308282.shtml

[yurbud]

9. people are dying because we are letting Wall Street and bankers run the world instead of democracy