by SALIMAH SHIVJI
India’s farming community averaging 28 suicides a day
Kiran Kaur surveys her family’s paltry plot of land in Mansa, in the northern Indian state of Punjab, and gestures dismissively at the three acres of wheat that will soon yield to cotton plants, which bring in little profit.
“Cotton is a complete failure for us,” she said. Prices are low, and the cost of producing the fibre is far too high.
It’s what drove her father, Gurnam Singh, to take his own life nearly five years ago on the same plot of land that defeated him, driving the family to the edge of economic ruin, she says.
“Life is still very tough without him here,” Kaur, 25, told CBC News. “But that first year after his death almost destroyed me and my family.
“I dropped my studies and sat at home. The world blacked out for me. I have no recollection of the 10 days that followed his death.”
What fills Kaur with guilt is that she didn’t see it coming. Her father was one of her best friends, and yet, he kept the crippling debt he was struggling to manage hidden from her and the family.
“When he died, things were falling apart,” acknowledged Shinderpal Kaur, Kiran’s mother.
She knew about the massive loans her husband had taken out to pay for their eldest daughter’s wedding and to cover medical treatment for Kiran. Even so, the notion that her husband would kill himself never entered her mind.
“I never thought [the suicide crisis] would hit me,” Shinderpal said. “Not in my wildest dreams.”
The crisis is deeply felt in Mansa, one of the poorest districts in Punjab, which is often referred to as the country’s breadbasket, because of its rich soil and rice fields.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for more