The Economist has a short piece on India’s cotton sector:

Only one in 12 of India’s farmers has ever heard of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The mostly illiterate cotton farmers of Vidarbha—the north-eastern corner of Maharashtra, where Wardha is located—surely count among the other 11. But even the most exalted of trade officials has heard of them. In the past 18 months more than 1,200 farmers in this, the cotton bowl of India, have taken their own lives to escape debts to money-lenders…

Prices are low partly because cotton is so heavily subsidised by rich countries, principally America. The Doha round aims to cut these handouts “ambitiously” and “expeditiously”. If they were cut completely, it might add about 13% to world prices, according to one recent estimate by two World Bank economists. But the Doha round is unlikely to be so slick. A more likely scenario, in which cotton subsidies are cut by a third (and export subsidies eliminated), would add less than 5% to the price.

In the meantime, India’s government could impose a “countervailing” tariff on dumped cotton. But cheap fibres please its textile industry, which is keen to take advantage of the end in 2005 of the old global quota regime…

In the abstract, the answer to the farmers’ distress seems easy: move from growing cotton to weaving it in factories. But India’s onerous labour laws inhibit industrial employment, and the lack of a safety net leaves farmers clinging to their marginal patches of land.