Yavatmal, Vidarbha:
Travel across Vidharba, India's suicide heartland, and you'll see the same story of desperation and helplessness everywhere.
Farmers say it's an old story of regional imbalance. Western Maharashtra, a region with larger political clout, continues to eat into Vidarbha's chances of progress.
Babybai Kochade's husband committed suicide two years ago. A cotton farmer, he felt defeated by crop failures one after the other. His debts had become overwhelming.
Today, Babybai has to pay back his debts, feed the large family and keep cultivation going. She has not received a single paisa of assistance from the government.
None of these multi-crore packages for distressed farmers have found her a worthy candidate:
July 2006
PM's relief package: Rs. 4,000 crore
March 2008
Union government: Rs. 71,000 crore loan waiver
August 2009
State government: Rs. 6,200 crore relief package
"No help has reached me," says the widow.
"Leaders of Vidarbha dance to the tunes leaders of Western Maharashtra because maximum number of ministers are from Western Maharashtra. None of them care about Vidarbha's future," says Omkar Rathod, a farmer.
"Western Maharashtra has great irrigation; Vidarbha doesn't even have enough water. Their farmers get loans of up to 1.4 lakh per hectare. We get only Rs. 14,000 per hectare," says Raju Rathod, also a farmer.
Relief packages, farmers say, mostly go to Western Maharashtra because relief is decided on the size of the land farmers hold, which are much larger in Vidarbha, than in Western Maharashtra.
So what if these lands have been kept away from modern irrigation, now dotted with farmers' blood.
Vidarbha posts the highest number of farmer suicides in the country. 800 farmers have so far committed suicide in the region this year.
The farm relief packages are more like a cruel joke disconnected from their reality. The few who have benefitted are now saddled with milch cows that produce no milk, diesel pumps to draw water from dry wells and electric engines to irrigate fields where no irrigation facilities exist.
Farmers say it's an old story of regional imbalance. Western Maharashtra, a region with larger political clout, continues to eat into Vidarbha's chances of progress.
Babybai Kochade's husband committed suicide two years ago. A cotton farmer, he felt defeated by crop failures one after the other. His debts had become overwhelming.
Today, Babybai has to pay back his debts, feed the large family and keep cultivation going. She has not received a single paisa of assistance from the government.
None of these multi-crore packages for distressed farmers have found her a worthy candidate:
July 2006
PM's relief package: Rs. 4,000 crore
March 2008
Union government: Rs. 71,000 crore loan waiver
August 2009
State government: Rs. 6,200 crore relief package
"No help has reached me," says the widow.
"Leaders of Vidarbha dance to the tunes leaders of Western Maharashtra because maximum number of ministers are from Western Maharashtra. None of them care about Vidarbha's future," says Omkar Rathod, a farmer.
"Western Maharashtra has great irrigation; Vidarbha doesn't even have enough water. Their farmers get loans of up to 1.4 lakh per hectare. We get only Rs. 14,000 per hectare," says Raju Rathod, also a farmer.
Relief packages, farmers say, mostly go to Western Maharashtra because relief is decided on the size of the land farmers hold, which are much larger in Vidarbha, than in Western Maharashtra.
So what if these lands have been kept away from modern irrigation, now dotted with farmers' blood.
Vidarbha posts the highest number of farmer suicides in the country. 800 farmers have so far committed suicide in the region this year.
The farm relief packages are more like a cruel joke disconnected from their reality. The few who have benefitted are now saddled with milch cows that produce no milk, diesel pumps to draw water from dry wells and electric engines to irrigate fields where no irrigation facilities exist.
Track Latest News Live on NDTV.com and get news updates from India and around the world
