Vidarbha: Epicentre of suicides

By Dilip -

Inside this abyss, Vidarbha is flooded with thousands of tales of tragedy. And the cold-blooded truth is, there is no end to this documentary of death and dying. Farmer suicides are only a symbolic pointer
Akash Bisht/Sadiq Naqvi Pandharkawada, Yavatmal
Advertisements promising massive crop yield dot the entire landscape of Yavatmal district in Maharashtra. Surprisingly private companies are spending gigantic sums on these rosy campaigns. On walls, on huge billboards, on Maharashtra State Transport Corporation buses. The  happy face of a farmer proudly showcasing his cotton yield in these thousands of advertisements makes one wonder if this unhappy twilight zone is indeed the ‘Farmer’s Suicide Epicentre’ of the country. However, like most ad campaigns, they are designed to mislead as these reporters discovered in the small town of Pandharkawada and in the deep interiors of crisis-stricken Vidarbha.
Seed and fertiliser stores line the small market-place of this mofussil town. They also serve as a meeting place for farmers, a sort of  adda away from the village. “I own a good 16 acres of land. Things have gone so bad that I had to sell almost 10 acres in the last five years,” says Badruddin Jeewani, standing next to a fertiliser shop. A relatively big farmer, people call him ‘Badru Seth’. “There is no other way I could sustain my family,” he says. “Cotton doesn’t bring any profits now. If things don’t improve  soon, I will be landless.”
Badru Seth is not the only farmer in distress in this largely agrarian society. District officials explain that almost 80 per cent of people in the region are engaged in agriculture or allied activities. Some till their own land, while others work as labourers on the farms. The entire Vidarbha region has an estimated three million farmers. “I have a sizeable holding of 20 acres. Even then, I am struggling to make ends meet,” says Prem Chavan of Maregaon. “Many farmers are selling their land. An acre of land fetches Rs 1 lakh.”

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