ABSTRACT
This Chapter provides some preliminary statistical analysis of the phenomenon in the light of an alternative theoretical approach taken to the topic. Many writers say that farmers' suicides happen because of factors such as the withdrawal of state subsidies and indebtedness. All small-scale producers are vulnerable. Farmers are particularly vulnerable because of nature-dependent and geographically dispersed and relatively small-scale character of their production. Farmers are facing a major contradiction: that is between near-stagnant revenue/income and rising costs. Farmers' suicides, like most things in society, are geographically concentrated. Farm productivity in India is relatively low in the global context, and the state's withdrawal of input subsidies contributes to this, which is adversely affecting farmers' international competitiveness. The effects of drought are severe because of the state's failure to provide adequate irrigation facilities. Seventy per cent of farmland still depends on monsoons.
