Suicide by pesticide

death hovers over Andhra Pradesh ( ap ). More than 150 cotton farmers in the districts of Adilabad, Karimnagar and Warangal in the Telengana region have committed suicide since June 1997, five of them in the first five days of January 1998. All consumed the same pesticide they used 40 times a year to get rid of Spodoptera , supposedly an "insignificant' agricultural pest. The pest is not dying, but the farmers are.

The monsoon failed in 1996, and Spodoptera destroyed the crop in 1997. This has pushed the cotton farmers of this region