Thousands of Farmers Committing Suicide in India

Beneath the clamor of the American, nay Western, news, where even the BBC is sucked in by the latest mass murder in America, other things are going on in the world and even here in this country.

In India, thousands of farmers have committed suicide in the past few years. Almost 1,000 have killed themselves in the past year. If you read the Indian news at all, which anyone can do with a computer today, you'll sometimes see news stories reporting that 6 or 7 killed themselves in the same area on the same day or weekend.

Why?

Well, it has to do with debt. It has to do with economies, global and local. It even has to do with patented seeds that farmers are required to purchase every year (either because the genetically modified seeds do not produce plants that produce viable seeds or because it is illegal to save seeds from these patented plants).

Here is an interesting article that explains some of the economic factors, some Indian, some American, and draws the big picture of the global seed and agriculture markets:
The Suicide Economy Of Corporate Globalisation, by Vandana Shiva

Here is a BBC article from 2004 where a recently elected official pleads with farmers in his state to stop committing suicide and has helped passed legislation to aid them and the families of those who have already killed themselves:
Plea to suicidal Indian farmers, by Omer Farooq

Another site with a good explanation of the background:
India’s Agrarian Suicides

Here's another BBC article from one month ago that sums up the state of things in its headline:
India farm suicides hit new high

This article from the middle of last month sums up nicely the problems many of these farmers face. I can sum it up too -- in 1997, India's agriculture market was opened up to globalization in every way and India and its farmers were not prepared in any way, shape or form to compete. It is interesting to read some of these articles, however, and see what they had to compete against, such as American competitors who enjoy billions of dollars of government subsidies which enable them to artificially lower their prices, not to mention things we may take for granted such as access to loans and insurance:
On India's Despairing Farms, a Plague of Suicide, Somini Sengupta

The latest news on this topic, the past couple days, is a minimizing of the suicide problem by the Indian Secretary of Agriculture, accompanied by news of a 3.7 billion dollar aid package approved in New Delhi for subsidies, loans, debt relief and so on for the cotton belt in India, which has been hit hardest (in part because, if what I read is true, in recent years cotton has replaced other crops that many farmers traditionally grew). Why the aid package if there's really no problem, according to the Secretary of Agriculture? How can weekly news stories of multiple farmer suicides not be a problem?:
View farmers' suicides in context: official
India to spend $3.7 billion to curb farmer suicide