Eugen Leitl [18/04/13 17:22 +0200]:
I think the farmer suicides are a canary in the coal mine though.
Precipitation shift + fossil water depletion are not a good combination.
India isn't immune from what's creaming Pakistan.
Farmer suicides have also been due to a debt trap they've got into. [though
yes drought is a contributing factor of course]
Several private banks decided to fulfil their mandatory quota of rural
banking customers - the so called "priority sector" where banks need to
lend 40% of their loans for agriculture, student loans and such .. by
hardselling tractor loans to farmers that'd have like a small plot of land
and would be much better off just renting one for the small part of the
year that it is needed.
Several farmers would just get these loans and use them to, say, marry off
their daughters. And then wind up unable to pay - and faced with hard nosed
collection agents (or even hired thugs, with more than one bank), they'd
just drink pesticide and die. Shiv might have some theory on why
organophosphorous pesticide is such a favored means of committing suicide
in India.
