Not connecting the dots

Somini Sengupta, whose journalism I generally admire, does a good report on suicides among farmers in India. This is a story that the Indian journalist P. Sainath has been covering for a few years now. Sainath bats from the left side of the plate, and connects the dots. Sengupta throws all the dots at you, which is pretty good, but won't call it what it is--neoliberal economic policies killing people. Instead, in her largest framing paragraph, she retails the neoliberal line:

Subsidies, once a linchpin of Indian economic policy, have dried up for virtually everyone but the producers of staple food grains. Indian farmers now must compete or go under. To compete, many have turned to high-cost seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, which now line the shelves of even the tiniest village shops.

But read the whole thing in today's NYTimes. The story is all there--good journalists don't blink the facts. And if you go through the NYTimes archive you'll find a similar story on farmer suicides in China, and one on the US as well, and you'll find a number of reports on broken down trade negotiations and agricultural subsidies in the US and Europe and you'll also find reports on intellectual property disputes and biological information and Monsanto--the corporation that sold the seeds that banrupted the farmer in India who Sengupta profiles in today's story. Just no connecting the dots.