Puli Raju, a government schoolteacher in Medak district in Telangana, has been keeping track of farmer suicides since 2004. With proper documentation like the death certificate, his list of farmers who took their own lives sits at 1,800. However, many farmer suicides go unreported and the figure could be as high as 3,000. When he filed an RTI application, he found that the official figure is 1,474. Why were such a large number of deaths not in the official records? "The government prefers escapism. . .
