An attempt to understand and contextualise farmer suicides

Abstract

Some perspectives on the issue seem to paper over the problem and get into comparisons. There is much discourse on both the issue of agrarian distress and farmer suicides. However, there have been some arguments that seem to paper over the problem and get into comparisons—that the people who committed suicide just happened to be farmers; that they were not poor; that (as argued by Shamika Ravi of Brookings India) the suicides of housewives are higher than that of farmers; and that, as argued in a recent article in Mint, the idea of debt-driven suicide was popularised by those opposed to genetically modified crops. Read more at: https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/ahcmBVMo38uPryNOzVyEEJ/Opinion-An-attempt-to-understand-and-contextualise-farmer-s.html