The Farmer Will Live Only by Dying, The Maoist Will Live Only by Killing
Since June 2005, according to official records, 1,045 farmers have committed suicide across various provinces of India. Yes—this tragedy unfolded in the very era when we, the middle class and the affluent, were chanting paeans to “Brand India.” It happened at that precise moment when we were told that foreign investment was pouring in like a flood, that our foreign exchange reserves were overflowing, that within ten years India would be so “developed” that every middle-class household would flaunt Tata’s one-lakh car. We were drunk on this dream. We were told: India is self-sufficient in food, India is an agrarian giant. And yet, in that other India, a rope brings down the lifeless body of one farmer, while another starving, debt-stricken farmer prepares to take his place. This is no parable—it is fact. For the India that is supposed to become the world’s leading developed nation by 2020 (a fable relentlessly sold to the masses by domestic and foreign capitalists, by media, and b...