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Abstract
It is estimated that more than a quarter of a million Indian farmers have committed suicide in the last 16 years-the largest wave of recorded suicides in human history. This paper focuses on the human rights of Indian farmers and surviving family members who have been affected by the farmer suicide crisis to date. Farmers in the western state of Maharashtra, for example, now address their suicide notes to the President and Prime Minister, in the hopes that their deaths may force the Indian government to remedy the conditions that have led so many farmers to take their own lives. These farmers and their families are among the victims of India's longstanding agrarian crisis. Economic reforms and the opening of Indian agriculture to the global market over the past two decades have increased costs, while reducing yields and profits for many farmers, to the point of great financial and emotional distress. As a result, smallholder farmers are often trapped in a cycle of debt. The magnitude of the number of Indian farmers who have committed suicide must not overwhelm the fact that an intensely individual tragedy lies behind each and every one of these deaths. The effects of this tragedy haunt the families of these casualties of India's agrarian crisis in ways that are impossible to escape- families inherit the debt, children drop out of school to become farmhands, and surviving family members may themselves commit suicide out of sheer desperation.
This paper also focuses primarily on the human rights of the poor farmers in India. It is necessary to take steps to prevent farmer suicides and ensure farmers' rights is not just a matter of sound policy or basic humanity for the Indian Government; it is also a matter of hard legal obligation. India is a State Party to multiple international human rights treaties and has consistently been put on notice by United Nations bodies that the human rights of farmers are at stake. It is neither inevitable, nor lawful, that the conditions which have led to this wave of suicides continue. The Indian government can, and must, act to put an end to this tragedy.
Keywords : Indian Farmers Agrarian Crisis Human Rights
Introduction
"There have been tens of thousands...