19 Sep 2006
On India’s Despairing Farms, a Plague of Suicide

They pushed hard for "free trade", allowing their nascent IT sector to soar. Now the chickens have come home to roost, so to speak, and there's Hel to pay.

I feel terribly sorry for the Indian farmers: I only wish I could say the same for their government. They've made a bargain of Faustian proportions, and the bill's coming due.

You'll soon hear the cry raised that this is our fault (the US and Europeans), because of our agricultural subsidies. And to some extent, it is. But on the other hand, look at this way: the deck may have been stacked against the farmers in India, but it's been equally rigged against the IT workers in North America and Europe. Hel, I moved from IT to farming, even though I don't get any of the vaunted subsidies (yet, anyway). The policies that set the decks up like this are policies that both Indian and Western governments negotiated.

So if Indian farmers have a gripe here, and they do, that discourse should take place in new Delhi, not Washington or Paris. And if the displaced Western IT workers feel ripped off (and they should) they need to take it up with their governments, not the one in new Delhi.

Because the Indian government is going to be facing it's own crisis soon enough. It's not good to have the second largest population on the planet and be unable to feed them.

India’s economy may be soaring, but a struggling agricultural industry remains its Achilles’ heel. In 2003, 17,107 Indian farmers committed suicide.

(link) [New York Times]

08:16 /Agriculture | 3 comments | permanent link