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Journalism of Courage
After a month’s wait, it has rained on the plains of Yavatmal for the past two days. As dark clouds gather overhead, Karanji’s desperate residents are out in the fields.
Only if the rains had come four days ago, the Dandekar brothers would not have lost their father. Bhaurao Dandekar, 54, consumed poison last Thursday, faced with rising debts and an elusive monsoon.
‘‘Father was extremely worried over the resowing, too, going waste,’’ recalls elder son Namdev. ‘‘On Thursday, while I was asleep at night, I heard him coughing a lot. Then he started vomitting, it was the foul smell of poison,’’ he adds.
The fear of crop failure and the burden of debt has taken a heavy toll in the eastern region of Maharashtra. In Yavatmal district alone, 11 farmers have reportedly ended their lives in June and July, two of them as late as on Tuesday.
With less than 15 per cent of Vidarbha’s agricultural land irrigated, farmers here are totally dependent on the rains. The returns from the land are meagre. The Dandekars, despite land holdings of 12 acres, live in a mud hut. Their material possessions comprise a table, some rickety chairs, and a few tin trunks.
Repeated crop failures have prompted many to replace cotton with soya. ‘‘We are burdened with a co-operative society loan of nearly Rs 13,000. This year, father had to buy seeds and fertilisers twice on credit,’’ says Wasudeo, the younger son.
With Vidarbha now being declared drought-prone, local farmers’ organisations are demanding a decision on restructuring of agricultural loans. Kishore Tiwari of the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti says: ‘‘If the government decides to pay loans to farmers at a higher scale of finance, say around Rs 6,000 per acre, more money can be available to people like Bhaurao.’’
