3,228 farmers killed themselves in Maharashtra in 2015.
Maya Pawar is just 25. Little less than two months ago, her life changed forever. Her husband Vishal, a 34-year-old soya bean farmer, jumped in his well and committed suicide in the parched lands of Yavatmal district in Maharashtra's Vidarbha region.
With that he became one of 3,228 farmers who killed themselves in 2015 in Maharashtra, a state where large parts have been declared drought hit; a state which has recorded the maximum number of farmer suicides.
"He has Rs 7 lakhs of unpaid loans which he had taken largely from money lenders and the remaining from banks. He couldn't repay as there was no rain and the crops failed for three years," Maya explains wiping her tears. "My daughter weeps for her father and asks 'Papa why did you do this?'"
Vishal wrote four suicides notes. To his five-year-old daughter Vaishali he insisted he wasn't irresponsible and to forgive him. To his wife Maya he lamented he couldn't make her happy but was now "freeing her".
In the last two he touched upon an issue that's on the minds of thousands of vulnerable farmers across India: a scheme to waive off their loans.
He wrote to Sanjay Rathod, the local Shiv Sena legislator and a minister, pleading him to waive off his loan. The same request Vishal repeated to the officials of Ner Urban Bank from where he got the loans.
"If we take a loan and our crop fails, what option do we have? Our debt has to be cleared as there is no other livelihood. And therefore before the Budget session we demand the Prime Minister ensures that in these extremely dire times, he announce a loan waiver," says farmer and activist Santosh Arsod, as a group of other farmers nod in agreement.
However, several economists and politicians have pointed out that large-scale loan waivers are not a long term solution. The Maharashtra government too, while taking other measures to tackle the drought, has refused to oblige to a demand also made by the Congress. The Centre too seems less keen.
But farmers believe, the delay is only adding to the agrarian crisis in the worst affected state. Since January, 211 farmers have already ended their lives most of them hit by the agrarian crisis.
"Yavatmal has become the crematorium for farmers. Every day some farmer kills himself. Vishal was a progressive farmer who guided others. Can there be anything worse than this?" Santosh Arsod asks.