What is the cause that has led to the increase in suicides among Indian farmers in recent decades?
The battle for the solution to this enigma is fought between two well-defined fronts: on one side, there is the school of thought led by Indian activist and environmentalist Vandana Shiva, who opposes new monocultures—risky for the balance of the territory and the maintenance of biodiversity—and the dependence on hybrid seeds and pesticides, which have caused the progressive impoverishment of farmers. On the other side are the multinational corporations, which see India as an opportunity to expand their commercial platform and apply the latest discoveries in genetic engineering in the field.
After living in India, my response to the debate can only be one: the increase in suicides is undeniably linked to the arrival of multinational corporations, chemical pesticides, and GMO seeds.
To demonstrate this thesis, I chose the most reliable documents I had access to: the report “Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India,” the “State of Indian Farmers: a Report,” and the “Situation Assessment Survey of Agricultural Programme.” A cross-analysis of the statistics presented in these documents allowed me to show the link between the rate of suicides among farmers and the major interventions of multinational corporations in the subcontinent.

Historians have defined as “green revolutions” those processes (technical, chemical, biological, etc.) that have brought significant change in the agricultural sector. Starting from Mexico, the first of these revolutions reached India in the early 1950s, aiming to increase food supplies to reduce world hunger.
To achieve these results, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, innovative irrigation techniques and selective crossbreeding were employed; there was also a strong mechanization and exchange of crops between continents. This had some side effects: the impoverishment of the nutritional value of crops, the homogenization of diets (loss of biodiversity), pollution and alteration of soil pH. Additionally, there is a dependence on fossil fuels, exacerbated by the greater amount of energy required by the production process, and a reduction in the need for labor, directly proportional to the growth of urbanization.

But while the first green revolution, along with its dark sides, certainly brought significant improvements in cereal production (an increase of 300% between 1967 and 1979 is mentioned), the same cannot be said for the “second green revolution,” characterized by the introduction of GMOs (genetically modified organisms), which in the end did nothing but enrich the multinational corporations that introduced (imposed) them on the Indian market.

First, it is useful to provide a general overview of the key players in this story.
One of these is Monsanto: founded in 1901 in Saint Louis, Missouri, as a chemical industry, today it is one of the leading producers of GMOs in the world, and its flagship product is the herbicide Round Up.
In May 1987, the corporation received the resignation of Tiruvadi Jagadisan, the marketing manager in India. He had learned that Monsanto no longer wanted to invest money in his country because “it did not have sufficient confidence in India.” The same source revealed to him that soon the corporation would move from the herbicide market to that of genetically modified seeds, including a Terminator gene (capable of interrupting the reproduction of plants, making them self-destruct after harvest) to ensure its dominance in seed sales.
The predictions turned out to be accurate: soon BT cotton appeared in the subcontinent fields, causing numerous disasters in local crops.

BT cotton owes its name to Bacillus Thurigensis. It is a soil bacterium, a specific gene of which has been reproduced in the laboratory (in synthetic form) and inserted into the DNA of cotton. In this way, the plant produces the BT toxin, capable of destroying the pink bollworm, its major pest. When the worm ingests any part of the plant, it attacks its intestine and kills it.
Not bad as a theory, but in practice the results have been far less encouraging. Before listing the actual consequences of these “innovations” and the various maneuvers carried out by multinational corporations in India, it is necessary to take a close look at the actual condition of farmers (distribution in the territory, climate, etc.).

It is not easy to navigate the large amount of data available; moreover, some studies contain a decidedly out-of-place “patriotic fervor” in an objective and rigorous analysis. Others, on the opposite side, are tainted by what can be gently defined as a “misleading advertising campaign.” Here is an example: among the presumably impartial documents I relied on is the report “Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India,” published annually by an Indian government agency (the National Crime Record Bureau – NCRB). However, in analyzing the historical series, I had to stop at the year 2013: coincidentally, since 2014, when suicides among farmers have a separate category, the percentages have curiously improved, showing a rosier and decidedly contrary situation to previous years. Why? Some articles speak of Indian government corruption, but it is not for me to judge and obviously, I do not have the evidence to do so.

Moving on: other authoritative sources are the “State of Indian Farmers: A Report,” which provides a general overview of the conditions of this class of workers; the analysis by the CSDS (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies), regarding the socio-economic profile details of Indian farmers; and, finally, the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) of India, which conducted the survey called “Situation Assessment Survey of Agricultural Programme.” The following histograms, taken from this latter study, allow us to delimit the territories dedicated to agriculture in various regions, placing the exact percentage of families engaged in this profession. In 2012 – 2013 it was estimated that there were about 90.2 million of these families across the subcontinent, that is 57.8% of rural families.

Focusing now on cotton, of which India is the second largest producer in the world, a large percentage of the population is engaged in this activity, which is not very remunerative in itself: a cotton picker earns about 100 rupees a day, or about 1.20 dollars, just enough to feed the family. At the same time, however, landowners, in addition to having to pay many pickers, also have to guard the fields at night to protect the cotton sprouts from attacks by wild boars, cows, and elephants. Life is very hard, having to live far from the family, sleeping little, and simultaneously saving something for the house and the children’s education.

In 1991, in Vidarbha, if a farmer grew the native variety of cotton and bought its seeds in the Indian market, they cost 9 rupees per kilogram. Hybrid seeds (i.e., obtained through selective crossbreeding) instead cost between 350 and 400 rupees per 450 grams. Between 2002 and 2004, BT cotton arrived, already illegally introduced earlier. BT seeds cost between 1,650 and 1,800 rupees per 450 grams; the price per kilo is thus about 4,000 rupees, compared to 9 ten years earlier.

A large advertising machine was set in motion to convince farmers that BT cotton was better than other types. But the promises turned out to be unfounded: GMO seeds need much more water and large amounts of chemical products (fertilizers and pesticides), at unaffordable prices. Result: immediate losses in the range of 50,000 rupees.

The enormous indebtedness is also due to the inability of growers to access credit through institutions, instead having to resort to usurious loans, with very high interest rates. Various statistics mention a range from 30 percent to 60 percent, but local farmers I interviewed revealed much higher percentages.

There is another problem that plagues Indian agribusiness: royalties. This term refers to the intellectual property right of the patent holder, which involves the payment of a sum of money by anyone who exploits the patented item. And the items in question are obviously GMO seeds. Regarding BT cotton, for example, of the 3,600 rupees per kilo initial cost, 2,400 were royalties owed to Monsanto. An unreasonable price, also considering the fundamental factor of the Terminator gene: if the crop fails, the produced seeds are still sterile, and farmers have to buy more GMO seeds again.

This way, people are deprived of their food sovereignty, overwhelmed by debt, and fall into poverty. The only solution is to move to the city, find a salaried job, and buy food. However, selling their land is not enough to get the money needed to start a new life: that money only repays old debts. For this reason, those who arrive in the metropolises are often already too poor or still in debt and consequently cannot fit in or find a livelihood. With these premises, unfortunately, the Indian reality does not offer many prospects, and often despair leads to the most extreme alternative: suicide. Women do not inherit the debts, so the man’s death “saves” the family.

But all this is not enough: what is the concrete key that allows us to observe the direct link between the increase in suicides and the interventions of multinational corporations in India?
So far, we have not proven anything yet, but only reported facts and figures. Only a cross-analysis of the statistics in the various studies mentioned above can shed light on the socio-economic and agricultural reality of India in recent decades, allowing us to link the major events reported in the chronicles (climatic fluctuations, expansionist maneuvers of corporations, plant diseases, etc.) with the periodic increases in suicide deaths among Indian farmers.

Let us then look in detail at which years significant events occurred in the subcontinent, coinciding with a peak in the number of suicides (dates and essays highlighted in red in the table below).

The table is very clear: it shows the year and the suicides that occurred in correspondence with it. We are interested in the last column on the right, which describes the suicide essay, that is the ratio of suicides number (in the third column) to the total population (fourth column). Highlighted in red are the larger overhangs.