While internationally India is respected as the world’s largest democracy with an economic growth one of the highest in the world -- projected 6.4% in 2015 --
lesser known is its record for another characteristic; one of the world’s highest suicide rates, hundreds of thousands every year and rising!
Particularly vulnerable are low caste farmers (formerly known as Untouchables), who accounted for 15,963 of 134,599 suicides in 2010, 14,207 of 135,580 in 2011 and 13,754 of 135,445 in 2012, latest figures available. While drought, debt and stress motivate some, a 2004 report commissioned by the Mumbai High Court cited “government apathy and absence of a safety net” as chief causes for the suicides.
The election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in May last year introduced more reasons. His government’s Land Acquisition Ordinance will dispossess poor farmers for the benefit of foreign mining companies, and its Infrastructure Development Plan will take their land away for road development.
New roads originally planned to cross a higher caste person’s land are being shifted without consultation to lands of low caste owners upon their richer neighbors’
appeal to elected officials. The poor have no resources to file complaints but the government has nonetheless mobilized a million military and paramilitary personal
to repress resistance.
The lowest caste isn’t qualified to work in industry; if they lose their land to mining interests and road building, what are they to do? Is the government’s intention not only to build roads and industry but also to reduce the number of destitute farmers by encouraging even more of them to commit suicide? Gives a whole new meaning to India’s claim that the caste system is dead.
Sign the petition urging the Modi government to stop its forceful acquisition of land from lowest caste farmers and immediately return their land to them.
