Farmer suicides have risen 50 per cent increase in suicides in the January-March period, after crop damage due to unseasonal rains.
It's another spell of heavy unseasonal rain lashing across the scorched and drought-hit Marathawada landscape in Maharashtra. As we travel on the national highway, visibility has dropped to just 50 meters.
But the heavens have opened up much too late. Last week in Khamgaon village in Aurangabad district, 39-year-old Eknath Khilare committed suicide. On April 4, he was found hanging from a tree in his own field.
Cotton is one of the main cash crops in the region. Marthawada is located in a rain-shadow zone which means precipitation is much less here because of the geography. What's worsened the crisis is that the monsoon has been very poor for two consecutive years pushing farmers to the brink.
"The two acres of land only gave a yield of two quintals of cotton as against the 15 quintals we normally get. For two years, the monsoon and the harvest have both failed. So he gave up," his younger brother Krishna explains.
There were other burdens that proved impossible to shoulder. Eknath Khilare's greatest worry was his daughter's marriage - like him and many others, she has a genetic disorder that gives her a drooping eye. "My father was tense about my wedding. The men who came with proposals rejected me because of how I look," Kalpana explains, her face visibly embarrassed and shaken.
From January to March, there has already been a 50 per cent increase in suicides over the same period last year. 114 farmers have been lost in the last three months. Though Vidarbha is known as known as the suicide belt in Maharashtra, Marathawada's farm suicide figures show prove how fragile a farmer's life has become.
"This is the first suicide in Khamgaon village. And farmers are scared now. We fear Marathawada will become another Vidarbha," farmer Rajesh Giri explains referring to the neighboring suicide belt of the state.