On a stage lit by camera flashes, ministers cut ribbons the way magicians pull scarves from hats — with flourish and zero follow-through. Meanwhile, in the fields, the script is simple and brutal: onions sell for ₹2.30 a kilo; the cost of cutting, weighing, hauling and heartbreak eats every rupee. The farmer walks home with warm coins in his fist and a cold debt in his belly. That’s not a punchline. It’s the arithmetic of neglect.
City folks ask, incredulous, “Why would a farmer take his own life?” As if despair grows in isolation. It’s not a sudden storm — it’s years of drought, loans that compound like bad interest, crops priced below the cost of breathing, middlemen who eat margins for breakfast and policy that prefers press conferences to policy corrections. When the system makes survival a gamble and the state treats markets like a stage prop, why should anyone be surprised when people break?
We laugh at the photo-ops because laughter is cheaper than outrage. We applaud the selfie because the camera angle makes incompetence look competent. But a well-posed photograph doesn’t pay for a child’s schoolbooks, a tractor’s tyre, or the medicine for a fever. The real picture — the one the microphones don’t show — is of families left to stitch dignity from scraps while politicians move on to the next carefully choreographed scene.
If you want a one-line answer the city can digest: a man doesn’t choose death because of one bad day — he’s pushed by years of invisibility, by markets that punish toil and reward speculation, and by a safety net with holes so big you can see Parliament through them. If you want a solution, stop asking for soundbites and start demanding structural fixes: guaranteed minimum price that actually covers costs, accessible low-interest credit, honest procurement that cuts out exploitative intermediaries, universal crop insurance that actually pays, and — crucially — mental-health and social-support services that reach villages, not just press releases.
This is not solely a farmer’s tragedy; it’s our collective moral failure. Laugh all you want at the next ribbon-cutting, but remember: a camera can capture a smile, not the ledger behind it. If someone you know is struggling, be present, listen without judgment, and help them reach local support — and if there is immediate danger, contact emergency services right away. We can mock the circus or we can rebuild the tent: the choice is ours.