NEW DELHI — The mustard seed, sunflower and wheat crops had all failed because of unseasonable rain. So Gajendra Singh Rajput’s father pushed him away from the farm, urging him to go find other work to feed their family.
Instead, the father of three came to a farmers’ rally in India’s capital on Wednesday, climbed a tree and hanged himself — in full view of thousands of horrified onlookers, as well as a large contingent of Delhi police, who witnesses said seemed to be frozen in place.
Onlooker Joginder Deshwar, 30, said that when he saw Rajput tying a noose, he began frantically scaling the neem tree and was the first to reach him.
“I kept looking down and telling police, ‘Help me, help me, please help me,’ ” Deshwar said. “I caught ahold of his body and brought him down, but by the time we reached the ground, he was already choking.”
The public tragedy that unfolded on television focused nationwide attention on the plight of India’s farmers, who have suffered mightily from recent unseasonable rain and hailstorms, which damaged more than 24 million acres of crops over 14 states.
The government has increased compensation for affected farmers in recent weeks, but advocates say that both national and state-level help has been slow in coming and that more is needed.
“It’s sheer desperation. There is no relief and untold damage,” said Sachin Pilot, a senior leader of the opposition Congress party from Rajasthan, where the farmer lived. “It reflects the lack of hope in Indian agriculture right now.”
Farmer suicides in India are on the rise, according to a December government report, with deaths attributed to crop losses because of bad weather and low prices, as well as to unpaid debts. Pilot said Singh was the 42nd farmer from his home state to commit suicide in the past two months.
“For some months, everybody has been talking about farmers’ issues, but there’s no attention to the real damage on the ground,” said Dharmendra Malik, a spokesman for the Bharatiya Kisan Union, a national farmers union that held a rally in Delhi last month. The farmers are so heavily invested in their land, he said, that “when a farmer faces crop damage, he has nowhere to turn.”
Climate experts say India is increasingly at risk for such extreme weather events because of climate change, including last year’s erratic monsoon. This year, there is more bad news for farmers: The monsoon season is expected to be dry.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted his condolences to Rajput’s family, saying the country was “deeply shattered and disappointed.”
“At no point must the hardworking farmer think he is alone,” Modi said.
Nagender Sharma, a spokesman for the party in charge of the Delhi government, said that more than 10,000 attended Wednesday’s rally to protest a controversial land bill that would diminish some farmers’ rights.
