Farmer suicides have been taking place across India for years now, and studies of rural distress reveal the deeply-rooted, tenacious causes, such as lack of irrigation, FRAGMENTATION of land, unsuitability of seeds and inadequate sources of credit.Despite the democratically-elected governments that claim to represent a country where over half the population is dependent on farming, agriculture has been consistently ignored at a steep cost to farmers' lives. Remedies have been tried -- the state waived loans to small and marginal farmers ahead of elections and such sops were criticised after elections for disrupting credit discipline AMONG the borrowers.The crisis provided an opportunity to try more ADVENTUROUS "remedies"; farmers were cornered into using expensive, genetically-engineered seeds, even when these added heavily to the cost of CULTIVATION of crops like cotton, further indebting them. Although this GENERATED hope, which helped the governments get re-elected, none of the remedies worked.