Cotton Crisis and Farmer’s suicides: Analysis of the recent happenings in India

India is mainly an agricultural based economy and majority of its rural population depends upon agriculture. Farmer’s suicides are the most tragic and dramatic symptom of the crisis of survival faced by Indian peasants. Nowadays the problem of farmers’ suicides is one of the vital concerns.A total of 5,650 farmers have committed suicides during 2014, accounting for 4.3% of total suicides victims in the country(Report of National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Ministry of Home Affairs, GOI, 2015). Causes of Farmer Suicides‘Bankruptcy or Indebtedness’ and ‘Family Problems’ are major causes of suicides,accounting for 20.6% and 20.1% respectively of total farmers’ suicides during 2014. The other prominent causes of farmers’ suicides were ‘Failure of Crop’ (16.8%), ‘Illness’(13.2%) and ‘Drug Abuse/Alcoholic Addiction’(4.9%) ( Economic Survey, 2014-15). In present study an effort is being made to study the rise in farmer’s suicide due to failure of cotton crop in India. 63