Ten years ago, a guest house was built in the town of Khanauri, on the border of Punjab and Haryana, by the Sahara Charitable Trust. Usually, these are initiatives for tourists in the area,

but the reason for the little establishment in Khanauri is different. There is a canal here that attracts a large number of visitors from all over Punjab, but it’s not because of scenic

beauty. People come to Khanauri looking for their dead. Built between 1950 and 1954, Bhakra Main Line (BML) Canal is 164 kilometres long and runs through Punjab and Haryana. The inter-state

channel carries water from the Sutlej to these two states and Rajasthan. At Khanauri, the BML canal branches out towards Rajasthan and here, where water gushes out of a sluice gate, is the

knows who this man is, where he’s from and how he ended up in a canal on the Punjab-Haryana border. A sight like this is common in Khanauri. Locals say that there isn’t a day when at least

one or two bodies aren’t seen at this spot where the barrage acts as a temporary barrier — and this is literally just on the surface. There’s no number for the bodies that drown or pass

through the barrage at night. “We are seeing 35-45 bodies every month in Khanauri,” said Inderjit Singh Jaijee, chairman of the Baba Nanak Educational Society (BNES). “This doesn’t include

the bodies that have died in the last two to three days because they stay underwater. So, assuming 35-45 bodies a month, we have more than 500 bodies a year. That adds up to some 6,000

bodies in 10 years.” Jaijee has been working in rural areas of Punjab since the 1980s and also heads the Movement Against State Repression (MASR), a sister organisation of BNES, which has

been documenting farmer suicides in Sangrur district. BNES also runs a rescue programme for families of suicide victims. According to Jaijee, instances of farmer suicides in Punjab are

grossly underreported and he believes most of the bodies in BML are of those who killed themselves because of rising farming debts. “If there’s a murder, the police is very active,” he said,

when asked if the canal had become a convenient dumping ground for violent criminals. “If it’s an accident, say a car or motorcycle falls in the canal, the press is active. They [the

majority of the corpses found] are not murders or accidents – some may be, but they are reported. But what about those that are not reported? There’s a huge amount.” From the corpses that

collect at Khanauri, only those that are identified — usually by the families that come looking for their missing relatives — are recovered by divers. If not, they either flow further down

the BML or get stuck at the barrage. Families come to Khanauri from places like Patiala, Ropar, Sirhind, Fatehgarh and Ludhiana, in the hope of finding their missing loved ones among the

dead that gather in the BML. Jagpal Singh from Bhattiwal Kalan in Sangrur district, had been staying at the guest house for four days, ever since his father-in-law disappeared from Patiala.

“He was disturbed psychologically,” he said of the missing man. “His farm was adjacent to the canal so we think perhaps he fell in.” Jagpal had enlisted _gotakhor_ (diver) Ashu Malik’s help

to retrieve the body, but that would only happen once the corpse showed up. And so Jagpal was in Khanauri, waiting and hoping to see his father-in-law float among the garbage and green

waters at the BML barrage. Malik says he’s been diving into the canal to find and drag out corpses for 24 years. His experience suggests that Khanauri is the morbid gathering spot for the

dead simply because of economics. “To recover a dead body from the canal, it costs nearly Rs 7,000 to Rs 8,000, including the cost of transportation, fuel, last rites and post-mortem. But

the government doesn’t bear this cost. They [the police officers] have to pay it out of their own pocket.” Reports suggest the police offer little by way of help or support. Not just that,

they also say the claims of daily sightings of corpses are false. “There’s no truth to two-three sightings a day,” said Baljeet Singh, Khanauri’s Station House Officer, to _The Hindu_. He

also said there was a police post near the canal. “Just few months back, we’ve posted four policemen for round-the-clock vigil and to assist families of victims,” he’d claimed. However, _The

Hindu _found no one at the ‘post’ for almost four hours. Sardar Kuldeep Singh, former Sarpanch (village head) of Khanauri Khurd, doesn’t blame the local police. Like Jaijee and Malik, he

estimates between 30 and 35 bodies are found in the canal in a month. He also pointed out that there are bodies that flow underneath the barrage, officially enter Haryana and thereafter are

not only lost to the families, but also become another state’s problem. Rather than the police, Kuldeep points his finger at the state government. In 2012, the Punjab and Haryana High Court

instructed the state government to install underwater cameras to help with detection. These are yet to be installed. The only CCTV cameras here are the ones put up by the Sahara Charitable

Trust, which also built the guest house. “The police’s hands are also tied because the cost is too much,” said Kuldeep. “The Centre should intervene.” That there is a crisis in the

agricultural sector in Punjab is one that few acknowledge. While the government’s statistics largely underplay the numbers, MASR estimates that there have been 50,000 farmer suicides in

Punjab between 1988 and 2010. The Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU) estimates the number to be even higher – 90,000 suicides between 1990 and 2006 (the estimates are based on random sampling).

Jaijee concedes that not all suicides in Punjab are related to farming, but he insists at least “70 per cent are due to debt.” The staggering figures that MASR has exclude bodies that pass

undetected underwater or get caught in the undergrowth and silt. Warning: Slideshow includes a disturbing image [slideshow_deploy id=’42354′] The debt accrued by farmers in Punjab has

acquired astronomical proportions. A recent estimate puts the total amount of outstanding farmer debt at nearly Rs 70,000 crore. A 2014 study found that 89 per cent of farmers in Punjab are

under heavy debt. The same study points to the reason why farmers are forced into borrowing money – Green Revolution agricultural practices, which led to immense growth in the farming sector

in the 1970s and 80s, are now economically unfeasible for the small farmer. While the cost of production has steadily increased over the years – cost of seeds, fertilizers, tractors, fuel –

grain prices haven’t kept pace. As a result, small farm holdings have progressively become less profitable, causing farmers to accumulate debt which they have difficulty paying back. A

by-product of the growing unviability of farming is the process of de-peasantisation – it is estimated that 14.39 per cent of farmers in Punjab had left the profession since 1991. But their

prospects, even after leaving farming, aren’t very bright.  “In all the universities of Punjab, only five per cent of the students that graduate every year are from the rural sector,” said

Jaijee. “And the rural sector is itself 70 per cent of the population.” Speak to the people who stay at the guest house in Khanauri and farming families will say their earnings have been

dipping in recent years. Some, like Jagpal, will talk about how men turned to alcohol in an attempt to deal with the stress of their failing farms. Statistics can be manipulated, but perhaps

the most telling sign that the farming crisis in Punjab is real is that no one in Khanauri thinks suicide is an extreme reaction to the circumstances. For people here, it’s almost an

understandable next step because everyone’s feeling the bite. And so it makes sense to remove yourself from the world around you and throw yourself into a canal — even if it will mean ending

up at Khanauri, bloated beyond recognition, surrounded by garbage, eyed by wild dogs and becoming a rotting statistic of despair.