Cultivating distress: cotton, caste and farmer suicides in India.
Anthropol Med
; 28(4): 558-575, 2021 Dec.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-2265448
ABSTRACT
Nearly 4,00,000 farmers committed suicide in India between 1995 and 2018. This translates into approximately 48 suicides every day. The majority of suicides were those from 'backwarded' castes including Dalit farmers. This ethnographic study on cotton farmer suicide reports narratives of surviving Dalit families. The results reveal that financial and moral debt when accrued within a web of family and caste-related relationships result in patterns of personal and familial humiliation, producing a profound sense of hopelessness in the Self. This loss of hope and pervasive humiliation is 'cultivated' by a cascade of decisions taken by others with little or no responsibility to the farmers and the land they hope to cultivate as they follow different cultural and financial logic. Suicide resolves the farmers' humiliation and is a logical conclusion to the farmer's distress, which results from a reconfiguration of agricultural spaces into socially toxic places, in turn framing a local panopticon. The current corona virus pandemic is likely to impact adversely on peoples who are culturally distanced.
Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Farmers
/
Suicide Prevention
Type of study:
Prognostic study
/
Qualitative research
Limits:
Humans
Country/Region as subject:
Asia
Language:
English
Journal:
Anthropol Med
Journal subject:
Anthropology
/
Medicine
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
13648470.2021.1993630
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