Suicide Deaths and Quality of Indian Cotton

The suicide deaths of farmers is a failure of agricultural science and the historical nature of the crisis needs to be appreciated. This paper seeks to retrace the route by which the present connections between Indian cotton and the mechanised textile industry were first established, a direction that has led to the present crisis on the fields of the cotton farmers. It also explores the alternatives in the khadi movement which with the aim of reintroducing spinning to the masses had to look at varieties of cotton suited for homebased production and evolve tools for use in the movement.