On October 2, 2005, when more than 50,000 farmers from 14 states of India belonging to different farmers unions participated in a huge rally against WTO in Mumbai, they were only echoing the concern of lakhs of farmers' across the nation over Govt's lackadaisical attitude towards the 'crisis in Indian agriculture'.

This crisis is evident from farmers' suicides in every corner of the country. Since 1995, more than 25,000 farmers have committed suicides all over the country, due to what the farming community calls "the cascading effect of the capital-intensive, corporate agribusiness-driven, export-oriented, peasant-insensitive domestic policies" coupled with the subsidized import surge due to withdrawal of Quantitative Restrictions, which has led to depression in the domestic farmgate commodity prices.

The burden of the agrarian distress has fallen on the small and marginal farmers in India.

This is a direct result of the WTO's Agreement on Agriculture that protects subsidies in the developed countries and allows them to dump cheap commodities in countries such as India.