In Punjab, How Failing Pesticides, Seeds Are Claiming Farmers' Lives | Read

Seven acres of pest-infested cotton, an old mother, two sisters and a six-lakh debt, is what Kala Singh has left behind. The 33-year-old Punjab farmer killed himself on Wednesday by drinking the same pesticide that failed to save his crop. In Bhatinda's Burj Mehma village, his cousin Harbans Singh says Kala Singh was very hard working but could do nothing to save his entire cotton crop from being ruined by pests. Last week, two other farmers in neighbouring villages killed themselves because their cotton crop was destroyed.