Media Work and Interviews

Avtar Singh, a farming laborer in Sangrur district, took his own life in August 2022 after creditors harassed him over a debt of approximately 200,000 rupees ($2,500)—money borrowed at 5% monthly interest to pay his wife’s medical bills. As the family’s sole breadwinner, he saw no way out. His death is part of a largely invisible crisis devastating Punjab, India’s breadbasket state. A comprehensive Punjab Agricultural University survey documented 16,594 agriculture-related suicides in just six districts between 2000 and 2018—nearly five times higher than official government figures for the entire state. In Sangrur alone, 2,506 farmers and farm laborers ended their lives during this period. The pattern is devastating: 88% of these deaths were driven by debt, with victims trapped between rising costs, stagnant crop prices, and predatory lenders charging usurious interest rates. Most were small farmers and laborers—the backbone of rural Punjab, now casualties of a collapsing agrarian economy where farming has become economically unviable despite the region’s agricultural wealth. This interview with Avtar Singh’s family reveals the human toll of a crisis that continues to be systematically undercounted and inadequately addressed.