He owed more than $1,000 to banks and moneylenders and had told his wife that if the cotton harvest was bad this year, he would kill himself. Pandurang Chindu Surpam left the near-barren fields he worked with his sons to share a last meal with his family. Hours later, he died. He was 45.

Crushed by debts most Westerners would deem inconsequential, farmers like Surpam killed themselves at a rate of 48 a day between 2002 and 2006 - more than 17,500 a year, according to experts who have analyzed government statistics.

K. Nagaraj of the Madras Institute of Development Studies said 160,000 farmers have died this way since 1997.

The epidemic dates to the 1990s and is generally attributed to a toxic blend of slashed subsidies, tougher global competition, drought, predatory moneylenders, and expensive genetically modified seeds.

"It's one of the largest public-health disasters to hit India since independence," said Charles Nuckols of Brigham Young University, an anthropologist who has studied Indian village life for decades.

In northern India, authorities have banned a cheap hair dye because it was being drunk to induce death by kidney failure.

But it is India's cotton belt, a land of searing temperatures and backbreaking work, that has been hit hardest by the suicides.

There, in rural Maharashtra state, farmers say things have never been harder. Owing more than they earn, these steadiest of workers have become gamblers of the highest stakes, betting their land - and their lives - on one more good crop.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has visited some of the widows, and the 2008 budget offers some debt relief.

But the farmers say their plight is largely being ignored as the country rushes to embrace the global marketplace.

A decade ago, the government began cutting farm subsidies as it liberalized the managed economy. The farmers' costs rose as tariffs that had protected their products were cut. That made small farms even harder to sustain.

"Suicide is one of the symptoms of the larger agrarian crisis," said Srijit Mishra of the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research.

Meanwhile, banking changes forced farmers to turn more to moneylenders. These generally allow the farmers only 11 months to repay their loans at interest rates of more than 100 percent a year, or else they seize the land at a drastically reduced rate.

"It's not a nice business," said one village moneylender, who agreed to be interviewed if he was not identified, because he was unlicensed. "But you earn a lot of money."

He runs a small grocery and has made hundreds of loans to farmers. He said the number of farmers unable to repay loans has increased by 30 percent in the last 10 years.

Farmers and analysts say another blow was the introduction of genetically modified cotton seeds, notably St. Louis-based Monsanto Co.'s "Bt" seeds, which are resistant to boll worms.

The seeds are more productive and have become standard in much of Maharashtra but can be three times more expensive to maintain than traditional seeds.

Surpam's widow, Sumitra, a stoic mother of three with a face toughened by the sun, blames her husband's suicide on the loans he had taken over the last two years, his first taste of debt.

He borrowed 25,000 rupees ($625) from a bank and 20,000 rupees ($500) from private moneylenders to invest in his fields and to pay for his daughter's wedding, she said.

"He used to say we owe money and if anyone comes looking for us, it would be a dishonor," she said. She learned only after his death April 1 how much he owed.

Surpam's three acres produced $150 worth of cotton this year - not enough to keep the moneylender at bay.

The 2008 national budget made special provisions for farmers, forgiving debts to state banks. They were widely seen as an attempt to stave off rural discontent, which played a big role in toppling the previous government.

But the waivers apply only to farmers who own less than five acres, disqualifying millions. And they don't apply to loans from moneylenders.

After Blasts, Jaipur Under Curfew

Indian authorities imposed

a daylong curfew in Jaipur yesterday, the day after bombs tore through the pink-walled historic western Indian city and tourist destination, killing at least 63 and injuring more than 100.

A.S. Gill, the police chief for Rajasthan state, of which Jaipur is capital, said the bombers "obviously" intended to stir up strife between local Hindus

and Muslims, but failed.

The explosives had been attached to bicycles, the mangled ruins of which were found at the site.

India has already blamed "foreign terrorists" for the bombings, a phrase that usually refers to nuclear rival Pakistan, which was carved out of India as a Muslim homeland in 1947

when the British ended colonial rule. The two have fought several wars and both claim Kashmir. Pakistan, however, swiftly condemned the blasts.

The bombs could test the peace process under way between the two countries. Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee is due to visit Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, next week.

Although Jaipur is a popular

tourist destination, mid-May,

the peak of the Indian summer,

is not a busy season, and no foreigners were killed or hurt, police and hospital officials said.

- N.Y. Times News Service