The famous and the not so famous, both die

I decided to read the excellent coverage of the Bhutto assassination by going to The Hindu Times web site (India). They had a correspondent who was only 30 feet from the explosion at Bhutto's car. He also had a nice photo of her at the rally, just before the tragedy occurred.

I scanned the other headlines and saw the sad news that five farmers had committed suicide. There was no detail, just the usual cause, which was unbearable debt. Many Indian farmers commit suicide because they do not receive enough money for their food, the cost of farming has gone up, the risk is always high (weather and so forth), and they often have dowry costs for marrying off their daughters that they cannot afford. So they take out loans from the bank and eventually it all comes crashing as they cannot pay. So these poor men commit suicide. These are farmers... men who know how to grow food that is desperately needed and if anything they should be extolled and supported. Yet of course even here in the USA many farmers can also tell a sad story of debt and despite subsidies, no real assistance of the sort that would allow family farms to survive. Farmer suicide is not unknown in the USA. But in India the suffering is enormous. I wish India could, with foreign help, implement some sort of rural farm protection and financial cultivation, something like what Roosevelt did during the depression. Not the same, of course, but you know what I mean... a way to help farmers with loans, credits and real assistance (that they don't have to pay back) in order to preserve an essential part of the social fabric and economy. And it is so unfair that people who till the land for others have to suffer so much.

http://www.hindu.com/2007/12/28/stories/2007122857460100.htm

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I just had an idea. Someone ought to create a fund, structured the way retirement funds are structured, except it would be dedicated to the poor who must provide a dowry. When a girl child is born she is enrolled in this fund, receiving "shares." This would take the temptation away to harm the baby girl or not let her thrive during her childhood out of fear that the parents cannot afford a dowry, because they have the shares that are receiving interest and maturing along with her. So when she is of marriage age the funds in the account should have yielded a sufficient amount to pay all or most of her dowry having earned interest from the time she is born into her teenage years or even twenties. Depending on a means test the parents could contribute to the fund, and it is matched, but for the most poor they should not have to pay more than a nominal few cents amount so that they have fulfilled dowry by buying the shares, but not actually having to pay more than a symbolic amount. Parents could then just love their baby girls without fear that the dowry will crush the family.