Sonora Jha calls attention to the protest by India’s formerly “most placid voter bloc: its farmers” during the current general election. In an op-ed published by the New York Times she writes:
The protest is inflamed by rising attention to the shocking suicide rate on India’s hardscrabble farms. Since 1995, more than 290,000 farmers have killed themselves. Though that figure, compiled by the National Crime Records Bureau, is sketchy at best, perceptions are what counts in politics. And that perception, along with the reality that most of these suicides are borne of desperation wrought by decades of official corruption, crushing debt and cruel neglect, is being coupled with a revolutionary change in election law. For the first time, angry farmers can reject all the politicians clamoring for the vote and mark their ballots “None of the Above.”
Jha wrote a upcoming novel on the issue – Foreign.
In an article for Index on Censorship, Mahima Kaul calls the general election the “greatest show on earth” and details how India is struggling with hate speech in the campaign season, especially against Muslims in rural areas.
Thoughts?