Widow pensions? Ramrati was widowed by agriculture. Her husband Veeran Ram (42) and his brother Ratia Ram (3O) doused their bodies with kerosene oil and set themselves on fire within three months of each other last year.

Veeran Ram owned four acres of farmland and like almost everyone in his village, had incurred a heavy debt of Rs 2 lakh. After two successive failures of his paddy crop, he could not repay his loan taken from a local artiya at an annual interest rate of 24 per cent.

Today, Ramrati struggles to feed and educate her two teenage sons. She has sold an acre to repay part of the debt, but has still to pay Rs 40,000. Sitting in her one-room house, lines of worry etched on her face, she releasesa flood of anger and bitterness. ``People like me are suffocating under debt, no one takes it off. The artiya keeps pestering me for the money, how can I give it to him? There is no one to help me.''

In a neighbouring house, 30-year-old Kalavati, whose husband Ramphal drank a pesticide in his three-acre field three months ago, fights to fend for her quarrelsome 80-year-old mother-in-law, three small daughters and one school-going son. Her husband too had incurred a Rs 2-lakh debt which he could see no prospect of returning.

In between cooking and feeding her two buffaloes before going to her field, Kalavati mutters: ``I'm not interested in voting. I don't know who is standing. I'm out in the field all day.''

In village Chotian in the Lehragaga block, 27-year-old Roshni is a living testimony to what decreased land-holdings could lead to. Her labourer husband Sukhdev committed suicide three years ago. Roshni lives in a tiny low-roofed hovel with her mother-in-law and three children. She looks afterother people's cattle or does sundry jobs for which she is given no money, just a little food. Her only earning is through her 10-year-old son who works as a farmhand. He too is lucky to get food from work. As for the others, ``Sometimes they go hungry for three days.''

She will vote just for the sake of it, but she doesn't have any hopes left. ``First they promise they'll give us pensions, once we vote, they give us joottis (shoes).''

These are the killing fields of Punjab -- a microcosm of agricultural decay. In one of the most backward and suicide-prone areas of the State -- Lehragaga and Andana blocks in Sangrur -- the decreasing viability of agriculture has placed 62 per cent of farmers and labourers below the poverty line.

The area's proneness to floods and the salinity of the soil are the main culprits. The cycle of poverty and debt has seen a chain of suicides -- 30 in the last three years. For fear of the police, though, most suicides are dismissed as accidental deaths and cremations areconducted in almost unseemly haste.

With abysmally low literacy levels (29.5 per cent in Andana and 28.1 per cent in Lehragaga), people in this Banger region bordering Haryana are caught in a time warp, with the majority totally ignorant about lofty national issues. Women here are barred from watching TV by their menfolk, and girls are never sent to school. Questioned about Kargil, villagers look blank. ``O ki hai?'' Most do not even know the name of the Prime Minister.

Life is a constant battle for survival, with those unable to take the strain either swallowing pesticides, burning themselves or flinging themselves under running trains.

``Nobody does anything for us. Our only concern is to fill our empty stomachs. Who's bothered about elections?'' says a farmer. They have other things to worry about.

In the 4,000-strong village of Bangan (Andana), located close to the Ghaggar river, the paddy crop does not yield any income. For over six years now, farmers have been reaping a rotten harvest,ravaged by the waters of the river every monsoon. Although two crops are planted annually, the paddy crop inevitably dies, while the wheat crop is mediocre.

Each year, their hopes of settling debts ranging from Rs 50,000 to Rs 3 lakh disappear in the flood.