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Article: Death by cotton: Richard Swift travels to the troubled cotton belt of eastern Maharashtra, where a tragedy has been unfolding.(FARMER SUICIDE)
- Article from:
- New Internationalist
- Article date:
- April 1, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 New Internationalist Magazine. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Ravinder Kisan Piwar's brother came back at five o'clock in the evening as usual to turn on the electric pump. This is the one time the erratic electricity supply can usually be counted on in the eastern Maharashtra village of Chalbardi. He found the 23-year-old Ravinder bent over, holding his stomach and retching. He had swallowed a lethal dose of the pesticide he had purchased to safeguard the cotton crop on his family's four-hectare plot. It was a crop he relied on to support himself and five others--his grandparents, younger brother and two sisters.
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Ravinder was by all accounts a jovial sort of guy, or at least that is how his ...