Yogita Chaudhary, who lost her husband a few days ago, sits with her mother-in-law outside their home in Vidarbha.
Little Kanhaiya is hungry and crying. The one-year-old has no idea that he has lost his father. Battling her pain, his 25-year-old mother, Yogita Chaudhary manages a fake smile to console her child. But who will console her?
Just two days ago, her husband Mahesh was found dead near the village temple in Daheli in Maharashtra's Yavatmal district. The 32-year-old consumed poison to escape the unending cycle of failed crops and endless loans.
This monsoon, armed with a loan of Rs 50,000, Mahesh had managed to buy cotton seeds and sow them thrice. However, erratic rains ensured they all died.
His fourth attempt was marginally successful, but all his three-acre field could offer was three quintals of cotton as against the 15 he was expecting.
"He was upset but he never even told me what was wrong," says Yogita, adding, "I have to take care of my mother-in-law, my baby and I'm six months pregnant."
For the Chaudharys it seems like a repeat of a tragedy that hit them in 2007, when Mahesh's father committed suicide, also because he was unable to repay a Rs 25,000 loan.
"That's two lives lost to the agrarian crisis, all for Rs 75,000. That's the value of lives in Vidarbha," laments local resident Jaykumar Chaudhary who quit farming to become a contractor.
"If i had continued, I too could have done the same," he adds.
To address the acute drought-like conditions in 19,000 of Maharashtra's 39,000 villages, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis announced a Rs 7,000 crore relief package which would compensate crop loss, waive power bills and restructure farm loans.
The new BJP government will spend Rs 3,925 crores on compensating farmers who lost their crop on over 9 million hectares of land.
Power bills from September to November have also been waived as has interest on loans for the 2014 kharif season.
Farmer advocacy groups say packages will only bring temporary relief. "Bigger focus has to be on remunerative prices where input costs are less than the minimum support price. Farming had to be viable," says Kishore Tiwari, president of Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti.