Indian Farmers Hostage to Middlemen
http://www.globalpolicy.org/social-and-economic-policy/world-hunger/general-analysis-on-hunger/51399-indian-farmers-hostage-to-middlemen.html?itemid=id#1291
While India’s economy has been growing steadily, its agriculture sector has declined steeply since the “green revolution” of the 1970s. Scientists believe that the overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, as well as the government’s encouragement of water-intensive crops has led to severe environmental degradation.The current government policy is to give aid to farmers by subsidizing agricultural inputs, such as fertilizers, but these subsidies do not solve the problem and mainly benefit input producers. According to national statistics, over 250,000 small farmers committed suicide between 1995 and 2010, “mainly attributed to their inability to pay debts incurred on agricultural inputs.”