In the dusty farming village of Bhuttiwala, home to some 6,000 people in the Muktsar district, village elder Jagsir Singh, in flowing beard and cobalt turban, adds up the toll: "We've had 49 deaths due to cancer in the last four years," he says. "Most of them were young people. The water is not good. It's poisonous, contaminated water. Yet people still drink it."

Walking through the narrow dirt lanes past pyramids of dried cow dung, Singh introduces Amarjeet Kaur, a slender 40-year-old who for years drew the family's daily water from a hand pump in their brick-hard compound. She was diagnosed with breast cancer last year. Tej Kaur, 50, also has breast cancer. Her surgery, she says, wasn't nearly as painful as losing her seven-year-old grandson to "blood cancer," or leukemia. Jagdev Singh is a sweet-faced 14-year-old boy whose spine is slowly deteriorating. From his wheelchair, he is watching SpongeBob SquarePants dubbed in Hindi as his father discusses his prognosis. "The doctors say he will not live to see 20," says Bhola Singh.

There's no proof these cancers were caused by pesticides. But researchers have found pesticides in the Punjabi farmers' blood, their water table, their vegetables, even their wives' breast milk. So many people take the train from the Malwa region to the cancer hospital in Bikaner that it's now called the Cancer Express. The government is concerned enough to spend millions on reverse-osmosis water-treatment plants for the worst affected villages.

If that weren't worrisome enough, the high cost of fertilizers and pesticides has plunged many Punjabi farmers into debt. One study found more than 1,400 cases of farmer suicides in 93 villages between 1988 and 2006. Some groups put the total for the state as high as 40,000 to 60,000 suicides over that period. Many drank pesticides or hung themselves in their fields.

"The green revolution has brought us only downfall," says Jarnail Singh, a retired schoolteacher in Jajjal village. "It ruined our soil, our environment, our water table. Used to be we had fairs in villages where people would come together and have fun. Now we gather in medical centers. The government has sacrificed the people of Punjab for grain."