The situation for India's more than 260 million agricultural workers is dire. Nearly 30 people in the farming sector die by suicide daily, according to the most recent figures available, typically due to overwhelming debt. Indeed in 2020, more than 10,000 people in the agricultural sector ended their own lives, according to government data. India's economic backbone -- its farmers and their families -- is in collapse. They face crushing pressures: insurmountable debt, environmental degradation, and extreme rates of cancer linked to exposure to pesticides. This strain is compounded by climate change and extreme weather -- from ground water depletion to water shortages and crop damage due to rising temperatures -- effects which have been tied to increasing suicides in India. Farming is a notoriously economically unstable industry globally, but farmers in India find themselves buried under densely layered problems. Many are subsistence farmers who are drowning in the volatility caused by the Green Revolution which began in the 1960s as a way of industrializing the agriculture sector with high yielding seeds, mechanized tools and pesticides. In some cases, farmers cannot work their land due to illness linked to the revolution's pesticides and fertilizers. They are dealing with deep-rooted battles against multinational corporations. And all the while having to take out loans each year to make the agricultural cycle possible. And then, when farmers are unable to get loans from legitimate banks, illegal moneylenders -- or loan sharks -- step in, charging exorbitant interest rates and creating an inescapable debt-trap for farmers, in some instances pushing them to suicide. The state of Punjab where we visit, is known as the breadbasket of India.
The worst of the carnage has so far been confined to the city’s northern suburbs, which is where Dondyuk was wounded on March 6. That morning he set out by car to the suburb of Irpin, along with two other photographers. To stall the Russian advance,Typical for India, the edges of the canal were littered with empty plastic bags, soda cans, and dark orange pesticide containers that swirled together in a corner where the water met a bridge.
But alongside the discarded trash floated something else: a bloated body. It was the third body that had been sighted that day, locals told us.
I've encountered many devastating scenes like this, since I first started visiting farming families across the state of Punjab almost a decade ago. I go as part of a medical exchange program where American physicians learn how biopsychosocial factors -- such as government policies, the environment or economics -- impact health globally. Our group also partners with the local Baba Nanak Education Society, to gain a grassroots perspective.
In some cases, locals retrieve these bodies and return them to their families. Often, they are not recognizable and left to decompose in the river. By village consensus, the cause of death in this case was suicide. Though I'm not sure the body was ever identified.
During these visits, we speak to families affected by the epidemic of farmer suicides. Those left behind -- parents, wives and children -- share their immense grief in the wake of a death. They describe debt passed from one deceased son to another, resulting in multiple suicides in one family.
The families tell us that children, particularly girls, are pulled out of school because they can no longer afford the cost of education. Young girls show us their carefully guarded treasure of dowry goods, woven with their own hands, to decrease the ultimate financial burden on their families.
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