One of my students responded, “Well, both Indian and American farmers work hard, but American farmers have larger farms with tractors and other machinery, so they produce more. In the old days, American farmers lived like Indian farmers with outhouses. Indian farmers struggle in a low-productivity world where they barely manage to subsist. Whereas agricultural workers form less than two per cent of American workers, in India, they are 45 per cent. It is puzzling why the same empathy can’t be shown to Indian farmers, and particularly women dairy farmers, who have few other avenues of employment.