00:00On a small farm in Maharashtra, Mirabai Khindgar says that the only thing her land grows is
00:12debt, after crops failed in drought and her husband killed himself.
00:16Farmer suicides have a long history in India, where many are one crop failure away from
00:21disaster, but extreme weather caused by climate change is adding fresh pressure.
00:26Dwelling ills due to water shortages, floods, rising temperatures and erratic rainfall,
00:31coupled with crippling debt, have taken a heavy toll on a sector that employs 45% of India's
00:371.4 million people.
00:39Mirabai's husband Amol was left with debt to loan sharks worth hundreds of times their farm's
00:45annual income, after the three-acre soybean, millet and cotton plot withered in scorching heat.
00:51I had to pay for 5 years.
00:53Once I had paid for 5 years, I was injured during just the summer.
00:59Before I was injured, I would not be injured in my hospital, get sick together, get sick.
01:04I didn't stay in school and get sick.
01:07I was injured during the course of the week.
01:10I had to him lose my time, my father did leave.
01:13He attempted suicide last year and died a week later.
01:30Her last conversation with him was about debt.
01:32A mole's brother and fellow farmer Balaji Khintgar said summers are extreme and even if they do what is necessary, the yield is not enough.
01:49Seek Khatijabi, mother of Latif Khatijabi, a farmer who died by suicide, said that there is no water to drink.
02:19Seek Khatijabi asked where shall they get water to irrigate the farm.
02:37R. Ramakumar, professor of development studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, said that farmer suicide in India began much before many of these extreme weather events were striking.
03:07But what climate change and its vulnerabilities and variabilities have done is to increase the risk in farming.
03:14Farmer suicides in India began much before many of these extreme weather events were striking.
03:21But what climate change and its vulnerabilities and variabilities have done is to increase the risks in farming.
03:28And this increasing risks in farming is leading to crop failures, uncertainties and so on, which is further weakening the economics of cultivation for small and marginal farmers.
03:40And that, in that sense, exacerbates the crisis.
03:45R. Ramakumar said agriculture should not be a gamble with the monsoon and it should be a more certain enterprise.
03:51R. Ramakumar said agriculture should be a more risk-free enterprise.
04:03So, you need investments of the government in infrastructure, irrigation and so on and so forth, which will make agriculture more safe and certain.
04:12According to Union Agriculture Minister Shivra Singh Chauhan, between 2022 and 2024, 3,090 farmers took their own lives in Marathwada, an average of nearly three a day.
