The Kerala government set up a debt relief commission which gave some hopes to the farmers in debt. The government also tried to write off some debts. On the other hand, we saw a kind of hopelessness in the situation for farmers in AP. Everything had collapsed there. There was no support system at all.

Could you find any common factor that lead to farm suicides? Why is it that farm suicides are confined only to these five states?

If you look at the heartland, you will see very interesting characteristics. These are all semi-arid areas except Kerala unlike the Gangetic plains where the land is fertile and water is no problem.

Secondly, this is also a highly diversified region in terms of crop pattern. There is much more of cash cropping here like cotton, groundnut, etc. So, cropping pattern is diverse and water is a very major problem. Land erosion is also a very major problem. It is in fact a very fragile region.

Now, if you look at the Gangetic plains, the suicide rates are very low, both general suicide rates and farm suicide rates. Farm suicide rates in the Gangetic plain are lower than the general suicide rates. Here, they grow essentially food crops, and the only cash crop you can think of is sugarcane. So, this is not a fragile region at all.

But these areas had been fragile before 1995 also. Why is it that farm suicides started occurring from 1995? Agriculture in this country was dependant on various types of state support. This is particularly so where you have cash cropping. In fact, modern agriculture anywhere in the world depends very much on state support. There is no part of the world where agriculture is fully self sufficient.

Image: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh meets families of debt-ridden farmers in Mahoob Nagar. In what was his first trip as prime minister outside New Delhi, Dr Singh had promised compensation to families of debt-ridden farmers who committed suicide.

Photograph: STR/AFP/Getty Images

Also read: 'Farmer's suicide & Tata project not linked'

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