Farmer suicides reflect growing desperation in rural India

[unhappycamper]

http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-india-farmer-suicide-20140805-story.html#page=1



About every 30 minutes in India, a farmer commits suicide

Farmer suicides reflect growing desperation in rural India
By Shashank Bengali
8.10.2014

The day before his little sister's engagement party, Vibhishan Tapse was in a buoyant mood. He laughed with his mother and teased the bride-to-be as they prepared food and set out sweets for 200 guests who would begin arriving the next morning.

Months earlier, the 23-year-old Tapse had told his father: You paid for my two older sisters' weddings. Let me take care of this one.

That meant paying the bridal dowry, a costly but time-bound custom in their community of smallholder farmers in western India. He met with a local loan agent to secure about $800, one-third of the dowry payment, enough to satisfy the groom's family and allow the engagement party to proceed.

~snip~

But that night in March, dark clouds rolled over the village. Heavy rain, then hail, pelted the farms. Balls of ice crashed into the tin roofs and burrowed into the fresh cotton, a freak storm devouring miles and miles of crops.