Policies that created the crisis have not changed: P Sainath on farmer suicides

Senior journalist-cum-agriculture expert P Sainath discusses the ongoing crisis of farmer suicides in Maharashtra, with the state government admitting to 767 such deaths in the Vidarbha region within the first three months of the year. He emphasises that farm suicides are the outcome, not the cause, of the agrarian crisis. Sainath points out that policies leading to the crisis have intensified over the past 30 years, particularly in the last decade. He highlights issues such as the diversion of agricultural credit to non-farmers, high input costs for farming, and the shift from family farms to corporate control.