Harish Palaniappan's

Simply because Indians have isolated agriculture and farm produce far from being in sync with the growth and demand for non-agricultural products in India.

India on the face of economic growth has seen an increase in the prices of many things.. clothes, shoes, books, processed foods, petrol, oil, and everything... except farm produce.

All this just squeezes the farming sector like a sponge in attempting to pay them the same decade old cost for their produce, but asking them to live in a richer country...where the loan interest rates are rising, and even seeds are dearer in 2007 than what they were in the last decade.

If you are a farmer in India since 1999, you would earn the same amount of money now in 2007 from your produce.. but your spending and living expenses would have increased 5-10 times because of rising costs in fuel for transporting the produce or running tractors, because of rising interest rates, rising plant seed costs, rising fertilizer costs, rising irrigation costs due to dearer electricity, and also rising labour costs. Also, if as a farmer if you wanted to send your son/daughter to school or college, the costs are much higher..

So, Indians on the face of economic growth, still in the interest of keeping the inflation low, ban exports of farm produce as and when neccessary so that farmers don't get higher prices for their produce, control prices through government agencies and force farmers to sell only to the government or a very very few private agencies... and we Indians are trying to keep the farmer and his family forced to farming even with the poor quality of life they live..as long as they can survive.

India on the face of growth, wants to remove subsidies in electricity given to farmers, wants to stop practise of freebies given by politicians to farmers, wants to stop providing loans at subsidized rates.. wants to allow private fertilizer companies enter the market and have a free-pricing regime for better profits and trade for the companies and hence removing subsidies in fertilizer costs too..

And because farmers are poor, voiceless people who don't know how to stand in front of the people from the city and say "we need better prices for our produce because we also need to grow".. and, because they are confined to under-developed villages where there is no growth in roads or electricity reliability or infrastructure like schools / colleges / hospitals,

we, the educated people who are basking in the 10% GDP growth and ever rising foreign investments in the country, with higher salaries and more money..
are, squeezing these poor indirectly, without understanding how our ignorance is costing them their lives.

The price of one kilogram of tomato, compared to 1998 and 2007 is more or less the same and sometimes actually falling lower only.

The consequences: We, the non-farming based people of India are living happy buying tomatoes for the same old price and saving more on our salaries and expenses.. we would give away money to some stupid broadband or mobile phone or banking service provider even if we know they charge extraordinarily high, but we won't pay even one rupee higher each year to farm produce.

Farmers can suffer.. because none of my/your family or relatives or friends are farmers.. even if they where, they are not anymore (either dead or gave up farming itself).

We will boot it, with trying to stop businesses like Reliance Fresh, or other private agencies which are trying to bring in competition and higher demand for retailing of farm produce.
All these private company methods seem to promise a higher demand and a small increase in prices, over a couple of years, for farm produce, to a level where farmers can earn as much as to sustain their agriculture business, and come out of debt. But NO, we can't allow them.. it will increase 2 rupees in my weekly consumption of tomato.

Wheat farmers alone are saved:
Thanks to ITC, a company in India, which at least saved the wheat farmers from getting into this mess. Because India has good amount of wheat produce(thanks to the climatic conditions in North India which best suits wheat growers), India produces much more wheat than the demand for it in the country, and hence the government was happy a few years back, to allow private companies to acquire wheat directly from farmers and export it or sell it at whatever price they want. Yes, as far as I know, you can't do the same with a few farm products like cotton, sugarcane, etc., because the Indian government bans private organizations from buying directly from farmers (that is to keep the costs in control).

ITC's e-choupal scheme, revolutionized and supported the wheat farmers in North India in a big way, that everything has increased to very happy levels. The wheat produce and efficiency of farmers have increased since they earn more to produce more because they can now sell at a higher cost to ITC rather than selling to government agencies all the time.
The demand for wheat both within the country and outside the country has increased because the produce is now more richer and of higher quality than what farmers could sustain given the prices they could sell for earlier.
Yes, the prices of wheat and wheat based products have increased because of this, but not exorbitantly but in a controlled manner.. and people have happily absorbed a few rupees higher cost each year.
The wheat farmers are happy, and live a better life.

Bottomline:
If fuel prices increase by 2 rupees, every indian seems concerned, raises voice, and the government feels a pressure to keep the prices within limits. or, if not, the government will spend big bucks to advertize big in the first page of all leading newspapers.. and all media... to educate people that this price increase in fuel is neccessary to sustain business of the oil companies, and that further subsidies will kill the companies not just their profits.

But, everybody is happy that the vegetables, pulses are still at down-to-earth costs (atleast the unprocessed, unpackaged ones direct from the farms).. ofcourse the farmer is not happy, but that is not important now.. we will talk about it later.

To show our ignorance towards the subject further, we will talk stupid things like we should stop drinking coca-cola, or stop buying vegetables from reliance fresh, to sustain farmer's lives.. what??

Happily catch some corporations like that un-awares and blame them..

..and lets be happy with more farmer deaths.. by the way what is the finance minister saying about the GDP growth for next year.. lets discuss important things like that.

P.S:
This post is not written with the idea of charging the educated people / government, as the only reasons for farmer suicides.. but to put my opinions which I believe is the ground reality of the situation.. and is written with the thought "what problems I would have faced if I were a farmer" and hence the opinions.