Editorial: Farmer Suicides in India: The Role of Psychiatry and Anthropology

Farmers in India continue to commit suicide at alarming rates. Although offi cial estimates suggest that fi ve thousand people have taken their lives since 2001 in India’s western and southern regions, unoffi cial estimates suggest that the number may surpass ten thousand (O’Connor, 2007). Once known for its ‘King Cotton’, Vidarbha, in particular, witnessed suicide rates of around two per day in 2006 due to a combination of rising seed and fertilizer costs, the state government’s 32% drop in guaranteed purchase price after harvest, and cheaper American imports after a slash in import duties, all of which forced farmers to accumulate debts from private moneylenders with interest rates as high as 50–60 % (Chu, 2006). Because few farmers leave suicide notes as suicide is an illegal act, many suicides often go unreported (Bhatt, 2004). However, little doubt remains when 79 % of the farmers have ingested pesticides (Saunders, 2007). In 2005, two districts alone accounted for 600 suicides, mostly of small farmers holding less than ten acres (Kulkarni, 2006). By the end of 2006, 1280 farmers in Vidarbha killed themselves and only 30 % of the eligible two million farmers received fi nancial support (The Asian Age, 2007). The Indian government’s response has been to announce the appointment of a research fellow through the Archaeological Survey of India to collect DNA samples from affected families in order