In the cotton belt, farmers, saddled with old methods and ancient customs, must compete in a global market against formidable, often subsidized competitors, including U.S. cotton growers. The farmers' failure has one horrific measure: 4000 suicides -- an average of one every eight hours in just one region. Here's an excerpt from an upcoming documentary I produced. It airs Tuesday on most PBS stations.
EXCERPT FROM "WIDE ANGLE" PROGRAM, "THE DYING FIELDS":
NARRATOR: Vidarbha is a region of hilly forests in the middle of India, a land that is rocky but when the monsoon behaves, it is generous. About 3.2 million farmers here depend on cotton for a living. It's become a high-risk occupation.
Urkuda Attaram shares a grinding routine tending her family's nine-acre farm with two sons and their recent brides. Like most of the 700 million people in India who live off the land, this family survives on less than two dollars a day.
URKUDA ATTARAM (through translator): After doing work on our farm, I work on other farms. Only then can we afford food. We couldn't survive otherwise.
NARRATOR: For days, this family will clear the field as they prepare a bed for the cotton seeds.
Ms. ATTARAM (through translator): My legs hurt. My body aches. I just feel like going home and throwing myself on the bed.
NARRATOR: She runs the family farm as well as the household -- a juggling act she never anticipated.
Ms. ATTARAM (through translator): I used to only look after the home. He used to look after the fields.
NARRATOR: About a year ago, her husband, Dassaru, killed himself.
NARRATOR: At the time of his death, her husband owed money to the bank. Most farmers must borrow money to pay for seeds, fertilizer and pesticide. In India, that means bureaucracy. Urkuda Attaram can neither read nor write, yet she competes in a global cotton market -- a world that drove her husband into despair over debt. That cycle continues as she sets out on a two-hour walk to the bank for her crop loan.
Ms. ATTARAM (through translator): I think of him all the time. I think that if he were here he would be working with our sons in the fields. Now I have to do it all.
