Dear Friends and Colleagues,

An exciting development has taken place in India, where the Supreme Court has ordered the Genetic Engineering Approvals Council (GEAC) to stop all further approvals of GM field trials until further notice.

This follows a challenge by citizens to the proposed field trials of Bt
Brinjal (also known as aubergine or eggplant).  Although the court has not yet ruled for the GEAC to stop the Bt Brinjal trials, or the Bt cotton which is already grown commercially, they did order a stay on further applications for GM trials.  

A coalition of civil society organisations criticised the Expert Committee
set up by the GEAC to examine the case of Bt Brinjal, as they pointed out
that many of these experts had conflicts of interests, and could not be seen as independent.  NGOs therefore set up a committee of highly qualified independent experts.  They gained an important victory in the Supreme Court's ruling that the GEAC must include some of the independent experts in the Bt Brinjal committee.

This case has been touted as a landmark decision, and a wake-up call for
authorities to acknowledge the risks of GM crops.  After the suffering that
India's farmers have endured from the consistent failures and high prices of Bt cotton, it is about time for the dangers of GM to be acknowledged, and steps taken to protect Indian agriculture.

The next hearing on the issue will be held on the 13th October.

Best wishes,

Teresa


**********************************
1.  SC Bans Further Approval of GM Seed Field Trials
   Article from the Times of India.  Date:  23 September 2006
   http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2019114.cms
2. NGOs Form Experts¹ Panel on GM Crops
   Article from Financial Express.  Date: 25 September 2006
   Ashok B Sharma
   http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=141387
3. Stop Giving Approvals to Field Trials of GM Crops: SC
   Article from Financial Express.  Date: 23 September 2006
   Ashok B Sharma
   http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=141238
4. Independent Expert Committee Set up on Bt Brinjal
   Press Release form the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture.  Date: 23
September
   http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7062
5. India, Food, and Modernization
   Article from GRIST.  Date: 20 September 2006
   Tom Philpott
   http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/9/20/132541/552
6. Protest Against GE Brinjal Field Trials
   Article from the Hindu.  Date: 9 September 2006
   http://www.hindu.com/2006/09/09/stories/2006090907921300.htm
7. On India's Despairing Farms, a Plague of Suicide
   Article from the New York Times.  Date: 19 September 2006
   Somini Sengupta
  
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/19/world/asia/19india.html?ex=1158724800&en=c
d312107dc2deb70&ei=5087%0A
**********************************

1.  SC Bans Further Approval of GM Seed Field Trials

Article from the Times of India.  Date:  23 September 2006
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2019114.cms

 NEW DELHI: In what could be a wake-up call to the Centre, the Supreme Court on Friday banned for two weeks any further grant of approval for field trials of genetically modified seeds by the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC).

 This temporary ban on further permission to field trials of GM seeds was
granted by a Bench comprising Chief Justice Y K Sabharwal and Justices C K Thakker and R VRaveendran taking exception to non-filing of response to a PIL highlighting the apprehension of agriculturists about possible
mutilation of domestic seed variety by the onslaught of GM seeds.

 Though the Bench refused the plea of petitioner Aruna Rodrigues' counsel Prashant Bhushan for a stay on the ongoing field trials of GM seeds like Bt Brinjal, it agreed for inclusion of an independent expert in the statutory body for examination of the possible impact of GM seeds before they are given the go-ahead for field trials.

 Asking additional solicitor general R Mohan and senior advocate Rajiv Dutta to ensure that Centre files its response in two weeks, the court fixed October 13 as the date for next hearing on the PIL.

 Acting on Rodrigues' PIL, the court had on May 1 asked the government to ensure that no such trials in genetically modified varieties took place
without the prior approval of GEAC. It had also warned against
indiscriminate field trials of GM seeds.

 Petitioner had alleged that open field trials of Bt Okra, Bt Brinjal and Bt
Rice are being conducted in various parts of the country on the basis of the safety tests conducted by the companies and without any independent verification of their safety claims about GM seeds.


********************************

2. NGOs Form Experts¹ Panel on GM Crops

Article from Financial Express.  Date: 25 September 2006
Ashok B Sharma
 http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=141387
 
 NEW DELHI, SEPT 23: A network of over 20 NGOs and consumer groups, who are not satisfied with the way the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) is handling the proposed field trials of Bt brinjal, has set up a panel of independent scientists to review the hazards relating to this transgenic food crop.

 This panel consists of KP Parabhakaran Nair, visiting fellow of the Royal
Society of Belgium, MS Chari, former director of Central Tobacco Research
Institute, A Narayanan, principal, agriculture college, Acharya NGR Reddy
University, Ramesh Bhatt, toxicologist formerly with the National Institute
of Nutrition (NIN), D Narasimgha Reddy, science policy expert formally with the Hyderabad Central University and Ghafoorunish, biochemist formerly with the NIN.

Several NGOs and scientists had raised objections to the proposed field
trials of Bt brinjal hybrids developed by Mahyco in collaboration with
Monsanto. The GEAC, in response to these objections, set up an in-house
panel headed by the Delhi University VC, Deepak Pental to review the case.³We do not have faith in this GEAC panel. We decided to set up a panel of independent experts,² said Kavitha Kuruganti of  the Hyderabad-based Centre for Sustainable Agriculture.

 The Supreme Court on last Friday, in its interim verdict, had cautioned
GEAC not to approve field trials of any GM crops before the final judgementis passed in a writ filed by Aruna Rodrigues and others asking for a moratorium on GM crops. The Court has also asked GEAC to co-opt the services of independent experts.


*******************************

3. Stop Giving Approvals to Field Trials of GM Crops: SC

Article from Financial Express.  Date: 23 September 2006
Ashok B Sharma
http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=141238

 NEW DELHI, SEPT 22: In a landmark interim verdict, the Supreme Court on Friday directed the Centre not to go ahead with its proposed plan for
approving field trials of genetically modified (GM) crops in the country.

 A bench, consisting of Chief Justice YK Sabharwal, Justice CK Thakkar and
Justice RV Ravindran, directed the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) not to give any further approval to the field trials of GM crop until the final judgement was passed on the writ petition by Aruna Rodrigues and other seeking a moratorium on GM crops.

 The counsel for the petitioner, Prashant Bhushan, told FE, "A rejoinder was filed on behalf of Aruna Rodrigues on August 1. This came up for hearing today and the apex court directed the government to reply to the rejoinder within two weeks."

 The Supreme Court also directed the GEAC to co-opt independent experts for deciding on GM crops.

 The judgement has given a relief to NGOs and consumer organisations who were opposing the proposed field trials of the country's first transgenic food crop, Bt brinjal. GEAC had formed an in-house panel of experts, headed by Delhi University vice-chancellor Deepak Pental, to review the objections to the proposed Bt Brinjal field trials raised by independent scientists, NGOs and consumer groups. The panel is scheduled to meet on September 25.

 The apex court's judgement has also given some relief to a group of
independent scientists who were opposed to the proposed field trials of Bt brinjal.

 GEAC has already approved a number of field trials for new Bt cotton
hybrid. It has also approved some Bt cotton hybrid for commercial
cultivation in the current kharifseason. As the court's interim verdict is
for restraining further approval of GM crops, the approved Bt cotton hybrid have escaped the purview of this order.

***********************************

4. Independent Expert Committee Set up on Bt Brinjal

Press Release form the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture.  Date: 23
September
http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7062
 
Hyderabad & Trivandrum, September 23, 2006: Following Supreme Court's orders on Friday on the need of Genetic Engineering Approval Committee [GEAC] to induct some independent experts into its decision-making processes and on the eve of the first meeting of the so-called Expert Committee headed by Dr Deepak Penthal set up on Bt Brinjal by the GEAC,civil society groups announced the setting up of an "Independent Expert Committee" on the issue.

Contending that the constitution of the official Expert Committee was
questionable and the terms of reference too narrow, Thanal (Trivandrum)
and Centre for Sustainable Agriculture (Hyderabad) have set up an
'Independent Expert Committee' to look into the biosafety claims by
Mahyco, the civil society responses vis-a-vis the promoter's data and
literature on the subject, to assess the very need for Bt Brinjal in the
country and to suggest a future course of action to the government,
including the GEAC.

"The official Expert Committee's constitution is questionable since
there is a serious and objectionable conflict of interest in promoters
of GM crops being part of the committee. Further, around half of the
'Expert Committee' consists of existing GEAC members (the constitution
of which was subject to Supreme Court's observations on Friday) who can voice their opinions as part of GEAC decision-making processes in any
case. It is not clear what procedures the official Expert Committee
would follow in taking public feedback on board. It is in this context
that we are setting up an Independent Expert Committee with members who have tremendous expertise in their respective fields and have exhibited their social commitment time and again", said Dr Ramanjaneyulu of Centre for Sustainable Agriculture.

Ms Usha Jayakumar of Thanal added, "The Independent Expert Committee would not be bound by narrow terms of reference of just evaluating feedback from the public to the GEAC. They would begin by looking at Mahyco's data and claims. They would also have a broader scope of impact assessment than the GEAC's. The Committee has been set up drawing eminent experts from various relevant fields of experience and expertise. In addition, more members with expertise in their subjects
and social commitment would be taken on board soon. We hope that the
Independent Expert Committee and their recommendations will present to all Indians the real picture with regard to Bt Brinjal, its biosafety
and issues beyond biosafety. This is a matter of informed choices for
the farmers and consumers of the country which cannot be discounted by
the regulators".

The Independent Expert Committee consists of:

Dr K P Prabhakaran Nair: Eminent International Agricultural (Soil)
Scientist with over three decades of research and developmental
experience in Europe, Africa and Asia. Best known, the world over, for
developing "The Nutrient Buffer Power Concept" - a revolutionary soil
management technique that has thrown up the biggest challenge to
unbridled chemical agriculture. Widely travelled and the only
Agricultural Scientist in the world to have been invited to contribute
single author chapters thrice to the magnum opus Advances in Agronomy.
Formerly Professor, National Science Foundation, The Royal Society,
Belgium and Senior Fellow, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, The
Federal Republic of Germany.

Dr M S Chari: Eminent Entomologist. Formerly Director-Central Tobacco
Research Institute [CTRI] and ex-Director-Research, Gujarat Agriculture
University. Pioneer of non-chemical pest management approaches called NPM.

Prof A Narayanan: Eminent Plant Physiologist. Earlier with ICRISAT.
Retired as Principal of Agricultural College, Bapatla and Prof. And
University Head, Dept. of Plant Physiology. Was Emeritus Scientist-ICAR
at Sugarcane Breeding Institute, Coimbatore.

Dr Ramesh Bhat: Toxicologist, Formerly Deputy Director with the Food &
Drug Toxicology Research Centre, National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad.

Dr D Narsimha Reddy: Retired recently as Professor of Economics and
Dean, School of Social Sciences, University of Hyderabad. His
specialization includes science policy studies, Political Economy of
Development and Labour Economics. He was a member of the Farmers Welfare Commission set up of AP government to look into the issue of farmers' suicides and agriculture crisis.

Dr Ghafoorunissa : Biochemist dealing with nutrition & health related
issues and earlier with the National Institute of Nutrition for 37 years.

For more information, contact:

1. Kavitha Kuruganti, Centre for Sustainable Agriculture at (0) 9393001550
or kavitha_kuruganti@yahoo.com

2. Usha Jayakumar, Thanal at (0) 98-463-21118 or ushathanal@gmail.com

*********************************

5. India, Food, and Modernization

Article from GRIST.  Date: 20 September 2006
Tom Philpott
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/9/20/132541/552
 
India's current burst of free-market reform and official attempts at
"modernization" are by no means the area's first.

As Mike Davis shows in his luminous Late Victorian Holocausts (2001)*, the subcontinent's 19th century British rulers imposed an economic agenda literally ripped wholesale from the pages of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776), that bible of free-market dogmatists.
[*http://www.powells.com/partner/25450/biblio/1859843824 ]

Davis lays out in devastating detail (first chapter available for free
here**) how in the 1870s, high-living colonial administrators dismantled the old Indian system for handling droughts, replacing it with one in which the price of grain floated freely based on global supply and demand. Thus, when a drought struck a grain-producing region in India, the grain price surged.The only buyers who could then afford it happened to reside in merry oldeEngland.
[** http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/d/davis-victorian.html ]

The subcontinent's railroad system, paid for by taxes imposed on the
Indians, very efficiently carried grain being produced in the non-drought
areas to ports for shipment to the mother country. Its cutting-edge
telegraph infrastructure, also financed by colonial taxes, transmitted price
hikes rapidly. Famine thus rippled throughout India, including in
non-drought-stricken areas.

Tens of millions perished in a series of famines in late 19th century India;
before, when drought struck a certain area, food would move in from luckier areas and famines were rare. Davis claims the English took advantage of these not-so-natural disasters to consolidate its grip on the subcontinent.it was all very efficient, really.

Today in India, modernization is bringing new food-related woes: growing despair among farmers and surging diabetes rates.

While India's high-tech centers boom, its rural areas confront a grave
situation. A recent New York Times piece puts it this way:

"Changes brought on by 15 years of economic reforms have opened Indian farmers to global competition and given them access to expensive and promising biotechnology, but not necessarily opened the way to higher prices, bank loans, irrigation or insurance against pests and rain."
[http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7037 ]

That "promising biotechnology" is Monsanto's Bt cotton seed, genetically
modified to ward off the cotton bollworm. Indian farmers have been desperate to get their hands on it because they think they need it to compete with their lavishly capitalized and subsidized U.S. peers.

But the Monsanto seed, which promises to enable farmers to use 25 percent less pesticide, might not be worth the premium (it goes for about twice as much as conventional seed, the Times reports). The great Indian journalist P. Sainath wrote recently that "despite all the claims made for [Bt cotton],input dealers here have seen no decline in pesticide sales as a result of its use. Some claim higher sales than before."

As prices for seeds and other inputs rise, farmers have seen the price their goods fetch in the marketplace fall or stagnate. The result has been
crushing debt burdens, mounting losses, and a stunning surge in suicides
among farmers.

The Times reports that "17,107 farmers committed suicide in 2003, the most recent year for which government figures are available. Anecdotal reports suggest that the high rates are continuing."
[http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7037 ]

Well, that's one way to clear the land of "inefficient" farmers.

The above-linked Times piece as well as Sainath's are pungent chronicles of what it's like to farm in a laissez-faire market dominated by gigantic input dealers and buyers.

Farmers live with nearly unbearable risk: you invest time and money to plant a field, and pray that weather, pests, bad seeds, soil disease, or God knows what other menace doesn't prevent  a marketable crop from emerging. "Every year is a gamble," one Indian farmer told the Times. Amen.

Societies that are content to let farmers bear that risk alone gamble with
their food supplies, sure that someone, somewhere will produce sufficient
food. Such societies treat agriculture essentially as a low-value commodity enterprise best done by low-wage workers elsewhere.

As the agricultural economist Darryl Ray has shown (PDF*), the U.S., despite its absurd and costly subsidy system, is the model par excellence of such an attitude. Its $15 billion-$20 billion annual subsidy payout serves as a band-aid over a hemorrhaging farm economy. These subsidies are really a sop to the agribiz giants that buy farm goods and sell farm inputs -- they don't do much for farmers themselves, who face steadily declining prices even as their input prices rise.
[*http://gristmill.grist.org/images/user/2988/Ray_rethinking.pdf ]

Pro-market observers will murmur that it's a shame about all those suicides in India, but that the rural situation there merely reflects the natural course of modernization, which is what people everywhere want. The deaths are merely the "birth pangs of a new order," to borrow Condoleeza Rice's assessment of Israel's assault on Lebanon.

In reality, however, the Indian voting public issued a stinging rebuke to
the nation's farm policies two years ago, toppling the government and
bringing into power current prime minister Manmohan Singh, who promised to do better by farmers. So far, however, Singh has failed to deliver, and the Times reports that he, too, is facing public anger over farmers' plight.

Meanwhile, as the government throws farmers to the wolves and facilitates the industrialization of the food supply, India is being riddled by surging diabetes rates.

Here is the Times:

"Though 70 percent of the population remains rural, Indians are steadily
forsaking paddy fields for a city lifestyle that entails less movement, more
fattening foods and higher stress: a toxic brew for diabetes. In Chennai,
about 16 percent of adults are thought to have the disease, one of India's
highest concentrations, more than the soaring levels in New York, and triple the rate two decades ago. Three local hospitals, quaintly known as the sugar hospitals, are devoted to the illness."

If present trends continue, the Times reports, the number of diabetes cases will more than double over the next 20 years. "Diabetes unfortunately is the price you pay for progress," one Indian doctor tells the newspaper.

But there are other benchmarks for progress besides GDP rates or
stock-exchange averages. Is your farm economy robust, or dismal? Is the food supply making people healthy, or sick? What's it doing to the environment? Are your regional cuisines flourishing, or being homogenized into oblivion?

Indian citizens flatly rejected the government's neoliberal ag agenda in
2004. May they continue to do so -- and may the nation's leaders heed them.

*********************************
 
6. Protest Against GE Brinjal Field Trials
 
Article from the Hindu.  Date: 9 September 2006
http://www.hindu.com/2006/09/09/stories/2006090907921300.htm

"Tests can cause contamination"

NEW DELHI: Greenpeace India and several consumer groups on Friday sought to prevent large-scale field trials of genetically engineered (GE) brinjal.

The bid comes in the wake of revelations that agrochemical company Bayer's field trials of GE rice had contaminated American rice exports, inviting immediate import bans from Japan and the European Union. Also, it was found that illegal GE rice from field trials in China had contaminated food products in France, Germany and the U.K.

"What has happened in Europe over the past three days is just the first
information report," Divya Raghunandan, Greenpeace India campaigner, told reporters here.

Manipulated gene

She said the manipulated gene, found to be tainting the banned rice from
China, was the same one that was sought to introduced into brinjal in India.

Ms. Raghunandan said India was a centre of diversity for this crop and it
was cultivated over 5 lakh hectares annually. If these tests were carried
out, they could cause contamination on an unimaginable scale. The approval of GE brinjal for large-scale field trials was pending before the GeneticEngineering Approval Committee (GEAC)

Eminent molecular biologist Pushpa Bhargava, at a press conference, stressed the need for banning field trials of GE brinjal. He said given the appalling bio-safety risk assessment protocols in place today, there was absolutely no case for large-scale field trials. The veracity of these risk assessments was also not authentic, as these were carried out by the same companies that were marketing the crop.
---
*************************************

7. On India's Despairing Farms, a Plague of Suicide

Article from the New York Times.  Date: 19 September 2006
Somini Sengupta
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/19/world/asia/19india.html?ex=1158724800&en=c
d312107dc2deb70&ei=5087%0A
 
BHADUMARI, India - Here in the center of India, on a gray Wednesday morning, a cotton farmer swallowed a bottle of pesticide and fell dead at the threshold of his small mud house.

The farmer, Anil Kondba Shende, 31, left behind a wife and two small sons, debts that his family knew about only vaguely and a soggy, ruined 3.5-acre patch of cotton plants that had been his only source of income.

Whether it was debt, shame or some other privation that drove Mr. Shende to kill himself rests with him alone. But his death was by no means an isolated one, and in it lay an alarming reminder of the crisis facing the Indian farmer.

Across the country in desperate pockets like this one, 17,107 farmers
committed suicide in 2003, the most recent year for which government figures are available. Anecdotal reports suggest that the high rates are continuing.

Though the crisis has been building for years, it presents an increasingly
thorny political challenge for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. High suicide
rates and rural despair helped topple the previous government two years ago and put Mr. Singh in power.

Changes brought on by 15 years of economic reforms have opened Indian farmers to global competition and given them access to expensive and promising biotechnology, but not necessarily opened the way to higher prices, bank loans, irrigation or insurance against pests and rain.

Mr. Singhs government, which has otherwise emerged as a strong ally of
America, has become one of the loudest critics in the developing world of
Washingtons $18 billion a year in subsidies to its own farmers, which have helped drive down the price of cotton for farmers like Mr. Shende.

At the same time, frustration is building in India with American
multinational companies peddling costly, genetically modified seeds. They
have made deep inroads in rural India a vast and alluring market bringing
new opportunities but also new risks as Indian farmers pile up debt.

In this central Indian cotton-growing area, known as Vidarbha, the
unofficial death toll from suicides, compiled by a local advocacy group and
impossible to verify, was 767 in a 14-month period that ended in late
August.

The suicides are an extreme manifestation of some deep-seated problems which are now plaguing our agriculture, said M. S. Swaminathan, the geneticist who was the scientific leader of Indias Green Revolution 40 years ago and is now chairman of the National Commission on Farmers. They are climatic. They are economic. They are social.

Indias economy may be soaring, but agriculture remains its Achilles heel,
the source of livelihood for hundreds of millions of people but a fraction
of the nations total economy and a symbol of its abiding difficulties.

In what some see as an ominous trend, food production, once Indias great pride, has failed to keep pace with the nations population growth in the last decade.

The cries of Indian farmers or what Prime Minister Singh recently described as their acute distress can hardly be neglected by the leaders of a country where two-thirds of people still live in the countryside.

Mr. Singh's government has responded to the current crisis by promptly
expanding rural credit and promising investments in rural infrastructure. It has also offered several quick fixes, including a $156 million package to
rescue suicide prone districts across the country and a promise to expand
rural credit, waive interest on existing bank loans and curb usurious
informal moneylenders.

But pressure is building to do more. Many, including Mr. Swaminathan, the agricultural scientist, would like to see the government help farmers
survive during crop failures or years of low world prices.

Subsidies, once a linchpin of Indian economic policy, have dried up for
virtually everyone but the producers of staple food grains. Indian farmers
now must compete or go under. To compete, many have turned to high-cost seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, which now line the shelves of even the tiniest village shops.

Monsanto, for instance, invented the genetically modified seeds that Mr.
Shende planted, known as Bt cotton, which are resistant to bollworm
infestation, the cotton farmers prime enemy. It says the seeds can reduce the use of pesticides by 25 percent.

The company has more than doubled its sales of Bt cotton here in the last year, but the expansion has been contentious. This year, a legal challenge from the government of the state of Andhra Pradesh forced Monsanto to slash the royalty it collected from the sale of its patented seeds in India. The company has appealed to the Indian Supreme Court.

The modified seeds can cost nearly twice as much as ordinary ones, and they have nudged many farmers toward taking on ever larger loans, often from moneylenders charging exorbitant interest rates.

Virtually every cotton farmer in these parts, for instance, needs the
assistance of someone like Chandrakant Agarwal, a veteran moneylender who charges 5 percent interest a month.

He collects his dues at harvest time, but exacts an extra premium,
compelling farmers to sell their cotton to him at a price lower than it
fetches on the market, pocketing the profit.

His collateral policy is nothing if not inventive. The borrower signs a
blank official document that gives Mr. Agarwal the right to collect the
farmers property at any time.

Business has boomed with the arrival of high-cost seeds and pesticides. Many moneylenders have made a whole lot of money, Mr. Agarwal said. Farmers, many of them, are ruined.

Indeed, one or two crop failures, an unexpected health expense or the
marriage of a daughter have become that much more perilous in a livelihood where the risks are already high.

A government survey released last year found that 40 percent of farmers said they would abandon agriculture if they could. The study also found that farming represented less than half the income of farmer households.

Barely 4 percent of all farmers insure their crops. Nearly 60 percent of
Indian agriculture still depends entirely on the rains, as in Mr. Shendes
case.

This year, waiting for a tardy monsoon, Mr. Shende sowed his fields three
times with the genetically modified seeds made by Monsanto. Two batches of seed went to waste because the monsoon was late. When the rains finally arrived, they came down so hard that they flooded Mr. Shendes low-lying field and destroyed his third and final batch.

Mr. Shende shouldered at least four debts at the time of his death: one from a bank, two procured on his behalf by his sisters and one from a local moneylender. The night before his suicide, he borrowed one last time. From a fellow villager, he took the equivalent of $9, roughly the cost of a one-liter bottle of pesticide, which he used to take his life.

Those like him with small holdings are particularly vulnerable. A study by
Srijit Mishra, a professor at the Mumbai-based Indira Gandhi Institute of
Development Research, found that more than half of the suicides in this part of the country were among farmers with less than five acres of land.

But even those who are prosperous by local standards are not immune. Manoj Chandurkar, 36, has 72 acres of cotton with genetically modified seeds and sorghum in a neighboring village called Waifad. Every year is a gamble, he said.

Each time, he takes out a loan, then another and then prays that the
bollworms will stay away and the rains will be good. On his shoulders today sit three loans, bringing his total debt to $10,000, a vast sum here.

The study by Mr. Mishra found that 86.5 percent of farmers who took their own lives were indebted their average debt was about $835 and 40 percent had suffered a crop failure.

The news of Mr. Shendes death brought his wife, Vandana, back home to
Bhadumari. Relatives said she had gone to tend to her sick brother in a
nearby village. By the time she arrived, her husbands body was covered by a thin checkered cloth.

A policeman had recorded the death the eighth in six months for the officer.Ms. Shende, squatting in the narrow village lane, shrouded her face in her cheap blue sari and wailed at the top of her lungs. Your father is dead, she screamed at her small son, who stood before her, dazed.

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