Can't repay debts; US crop subsidies partly to blame

...that may be, but the act of suicide, and the barbaric act of self-immolation (burning to death), is a superstitious part of their religion where they believe they will come back in some other form. They will not. This despairing means of suicide may be a form of protest and complaint, maybe for just cause, but it is a poor substitute for living and acting in a way to fight and resist oppression.

Suicide is self-murder (like other forms of self-flagellation) and an act of despair that only concedes defeat and renders to the oppressor the conclusion of his oppression in advance--i.e. death.

OK - but what's my role? What's our complicity as Americans?

All that is true, but the fact is - 85,000 farmers in India commit suicide. It seems like a selfish act. It seems to lack logic. Often, it's easy to see the solutions to these problems when we're not the one's dealing with the hardship. Each suicide is a case of its own. Each case is a person. When you live with this oppression, acting in a way to fight and resist it is not so easy.

What is our role? I don't have that answer. I do know that we have a suicide problem in America as well. What is our role there?

India is the world's largest 'democracy'. The stuff the US is keen on exporting.

It is one of the downfall of free trade and a cultural view of taking ones life when they couldn't pay up . We have a problem here too in sunny California . A few months back
a father set his daughter, son and himself on fire in his Suv because of some financial problems .

Do we have an answer or a role? No .

abailart, I'm not suggesting that farmers in America have a suicide problem and comparing and contrasting the differing issues between Indian farmers and American farmers.

If people are killing themselves, there's a problem, no matter where it's happening. All I'm saying is that people are killing themselves in the U.S. People are killing themselves in India. They may be farmers, they may be doctors, they may be teenagers, they may be black, they may be white, they may be anyone. I don't value anyone's life any less because they reside outside the U.S. I don't even think in those terms.

An element of the despair that plunged these people into poverty is something Americans can change: subsidies paid to US farmers, which make it possible for US crops to be sold for less, even with shipping, than that of small farmers around the world.

This is part of why Mexicans come to the US in such numbers - subsidized American crops have put their many-generation farms out of business.

Even tobacco, despite our expense of millions to discourage its use, is still subsidized. We pay farmers to grow it; we pay Madison Avenue to discourage Americans from buying it. Result? Ads for Camels on every street corner in, say, Bucharest. Death exported, a gift of the American taxpayer.