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Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service with me, Ruth Alexander.

This week we look at whether there's an epidemic of suicides among farmers in India.

A listener, Mark, has drawn our attention to a claim made about the number of such deaths

during a debate about food prices on the BBC.

Several million farmers have committed suicide in India in the past few years

because they couldn't make a living.

Now I would like you to go to the widows and say to them,

should prices have been higher or lower.

But have several million farmers in India really killed themselves in recent years?

Mark finds it hard to believe.

This is desperately tragic, however many it applies to, he says.

But it seems out by an order of magnitude, even for a country with more than a billion people

and a high proportion of farmers.

The number of farmers killing themselves in India has received huge attention worldwide

over the past few years, and a lot of resources have been plowed into tackling the problem.

But is everyone joining in the debate quite sure of their numbers?

Mark, we shared your suspicions and we got Wesley Stephenson investigating.

Hi Ruth, yes to check this out, first of all we contacted Jim Rogers,

an influential investor who you heard talking earlier.

...