Yes, it coincided with the crisis. When I put together the data, the pattern was very clear, that farm suicides started increasing with each year.

Was it startling for you to find that nearly 1.5 lakh farmers committed suicide from 1997 to 2005?

It was not startling in the sense that one was already prepared for that. One knew there was a very deep crisis in the farm sector. The press had also written about the crisis that was there in certain parts of the country like the Vidarbha region in Maharashtra, in AP, in Karnataka, etc.

Could you find any pattern in the farm suicides?

Yes, there was a special pattern, and it was very clear that farm suicides were very largely confined to four or five states, that is, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh including Chattisgarh. Kerala also was in the list. But till now nothing has been written about Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh.

Were the farm suicides in MP as alarming as what was happening in the other states?

Not as alarming as say, a state like Maharashtra but it is quite bad. But the crisis was big in all the five states. I calculated the suicide rate and found that for example in Maharshtra, the farmers suicide rate was 25 in 1000 which is very high.

I also found except for Kerala, in all the other states, suicides were mounting day by day. The trend was one of increase. Also, the number of farmers was declining as people were leaving farming. This was particularly striking in Maharashtra.

Image: Daughters of farmer Neelkhant Haste mourn his death at Yavatmal on the outskirts of Nagpur, after he committed suicide by consuming pesticide in April 2006.

Photograph: Sebastian D'Souza/AFP/Getty Images

Also read: Vidarbha: Farmers suicide crosses 1100

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