“NITI Aayog’s Aravind Panagariya [Vice-Chairman of NITI Aayog] doesn’t know who is a farmer,” he said, stressing that it wasn’t just the media but even governments—present and past—that have not paid attention to farmers or the spate of farmer suicides. “In his book, Aravind Panagariya and Jagdish Bhagwati, they are mocking the farmer suicides. They say that the ratio of farmer suicides is so low that we should bring the level of suicides across the rest of society to that of farmers.” Panagariya and Jagdish Bhagwati had argued that 300,000 suicides is a small number, considering the size of India’s farming base, a statement that Sainath vehemently disagreed with, “This is what your NITI Aayog chairman has written”.