Article content continued

“In this narrative, over the last 10 years Indian cotton farmers have not figured out that they have been deceived — or are sufficiently innumerate that they cannot tell profit from loss and therefore do not know whether or not they are being duped.

“What is striking about this story is that the farmers of India — often branded as peasants in the narrative — have survived so long with such a high level of incompetence.”

But suicide within India is a crisis that is rampant across the country.

Prabhat Jha, director of the Center for Global Health Research in Toronto and the co-author of a recent study looking at suicide rates across India, said people killing themselves in the general population were far more troubling, with numbers particularly higher for young Indian women.

“While suicide in farmers is certainly an important phenomena, if we’re concerned about suicide we need to look at the bigger picture,” he said.

“The main story of suicide in India is not of farmers, it is of young people, between the ages of 15 to 29, who are taking their lives. So the dominant headline I think really is, why are so many young Indians killing themselves?”

The number of farmer deaths in India is much less than the general population. According to the report, the rate of suicide deaths among agricultural workers is around seven deaths per 100,000 people, whereas the overall suicide rate in India is close to 15 deaths per 100,000.

And while the number of farm suicides rose sharply between 1995 and 2002, the trend of late has been downward or flat.

“In fact, our study found that the numbers of deaths of men in occupations other than farming was twice as great, meaning there were more deaths in clerical occupations, students, and other occupations than in agricultural work,” he said.

Mr. Herring said the story of farmer suicides and GM seeds was too compelling a story for many people to let go.

“The narrative of Bt-cotton catastrophe in India is coherent and globally distributed; it catches attention and compels action. It is also without any empirical or biological basis,” he wrote.

National Post