Word: rural
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...story of India today is one of great expectations, as soaring economic growth lifts tens of millions of people out of poverty and swells the ranks of the middle class. But India's progress has also brought sorrow to many farmers and rural workers, who still make up two-thirds of the country's workforce. The income disparity in the new India is massive: there are now 36 billionaires in India-and some 800 million people living on less than $2 a day. In the most desperate pockets of rural India, a confluence of factors, from poor rainfall...
...crisis is worst in Vidarbha, an orange- and cotton-growing region in central India famed for its black soil and the fact that Mahatma Gandhi built an ashram and lived there for a time in the 1930s. Now Indians know it as their nation's rural suicide capital. According to Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti, or Vidarbha People's Protest Forum, an activist group that keeps track of farmer suicides in the area and lobbies the government for help, more than 1,250 farmers committed suicide in Vidarbha's six central districts alone in 2006, up from...
...What's causing so many rural Indians to take their lives? According to a study by the government of Maharashtra, the state in which Vidarbha sits, almost six in 10 of those who kill themselves have debts of between $110 and $550. Many farmers complain that banks don't offer them credit, forcing them to turn to rapacious moneylenders, who typically charge up to 20% interest on a four-month loan. As collateral, explains one lender in the bustling town of Pandharkawada, farmers often sign away title to their land. "If they pay back the loan, we give them back...
...Vijay. "He said he needed it to get to the fields. The young these days-they want more luxuries with less tension." Pravin had taken a loan from a local banking cooperative for the motorbike, and further loans from moneylenders to buy seeds, fertilizer and pesticide. But like most rural Indian men, conservative and proud, he had not discussed his worries with his wife. "He was smiling all the time," says Smita. Yet Pravin owed at least $2,800 when he hanged himself...
...Local health activists are pleased by the findings of Save the Children Report, although they acknowledge that there is still work to be done, especially in the south of the country. "Child mortality rate remains high in rural Upper Egypt," says UNICEF's El Sanadi. Egypt's goal now is to move from the list of developing countries and measure itself with the South European nations along the opposite shore of the Mediterranean...