The Belfast Telegraph reported yesterday that over 1,500 farmers in the state of Chattisgarh, India, committed suicide after being driven into debt by crop failure and drought.
What can or should we read into the fact that some 1,500 human beings in one particular area of the globe decided that their only course of action was to drastically change their existential status? What does it mean?
Just about one year ago, stories cropped up everywhere about food riots all over the world. (You can read what I had to say about it here.)
Could this rash of suicides in an agricultural area of India be yet another indication that something larger is afoot? Have we entered some historic era in the chronicle of our species? Perhaps, even, the Final Chapter?
It is not clear from the article whether the suicides were some kind of en masse outcry, some tragic joining of anguished voices, or if they were the result of 1,500 individuals succumbing to despair.
Either way, people everywhere should take note. In this new, interconnected world, this "global" economy, there is no longer anywhere on the face of the planet that is "far away." Everything that happens, happens next door.
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