Escape In Death

Farmer suicide is still a problem in India. Money lenders and the middlemen are squeezing the farmer dry. Now that land and stocks are transparent and online, it is time for farm produce procurement too to be streamlined. The process has started but has not reached most villages and does not cover all products. I hope the wait is short.

Limping through the jostling crowd the man waggles

Towards home and wife to tell the sickening news

Luxury and comfort a distant impossible ask

Survival and continuance a big question mark

The monsoons fail as in the preceding four years

Spurious seed and scantly sourced precious waters

His crop this year was meager reduced in quality

Middlemen like fine sieves waiting copiously

Value for produce never matches the effort

Farmer the last in line when the talk is profit

Never gains filter down to him who toils the soil

His life is drudgery with many waiting to foil

Benefits for hard-slog for blood sweat and tears

Snatched from him before his mouth it reaches

Lenders like hawks watch every movement

Ready to scoop-out any morsel money scent

A land of billions with deaths in thousands

Population and illiteracy perpetual scars

Haves and have-nots, the divide growing

Death here longed-for by many suffering

Hide and hole up a choice no longer available

Verdict pointing to only one direction feasible

End the torture from all encircled, humiliating

Whole family form pact to end misery alarming

Gulp down pesticide obtainable effortlessly

To never suffer from a plight, saved eternally

Such is the dilemma of farmers countless

In the land India, here death goes heedless

© Nalini Hebbar/openmind/2009 - all rights reserved

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