evidence: In 2016, 38-year-old Itikyala Sudhakar and his 35-year-old wife Jyothi of Narsakkapally in Warangal (Rural) district shifted to sowing chillies from cotton, after seeing their neighbour’s chilli crop fetch Rs 13,000 per quintal in 2014 and Rs 12,000 in 2015, with assured procurement from the corporate group ITC. The couple harvested 160 quintals from the eight acre they cultivated as the yields that year were an unprecedented 20 quintals per acre. That year, prices crashed to Rs 1,000 per quintal (there is no minimum support price for chilli). They had racked up debt of Rs 6 lakh, of which Rs 50,000 had gone to pay just the labour to harvest the crop. [...] Itikyala Jyothi’s husband Sudhakar hanged himself in 2017 after their bumper chilli harvest fetched Rs 1,000 a quintal, as against Rs 13,000 the previous year. Fluctuating market prices and failure to get Minimum Support Prices are among the reasons why farming is becoming unviable, especially for small and marginal farmers, in Telangana.