Farmers 'hostages' of moneylenders

Almost every farmer across India's arid cotton-bearing central plateau is a hostage, in one way or another, to a profitable mega-business of illegal moneylending.

Families have lost land, farmers have been asked to prostitute their wives to pay off debts and, when all else has failed, borrowers have killed themselves to end their misery.

An inescapable cycle of debt is fuelling one of the worst agrarian crises facing India, a crisis that has seen some 150,000 farmers commit suicide since 1997.