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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Records may not show, but women farmers dying too -Priyanka Kakodkar
-The Times of India

AKOLA: For the last 23 years, Rukhmabai Rathod had run her 6-acre farm virtually single-handedly. After her husband's death in 1992, the uneducated but determined woman took charge. She decided what to sow, how much to spend and stood her ground with banks and creditors.

"She was anguthachaap but she understood everything," says her brother-in-law Babulal Rathod from the Kazadeshwar village in Vidarbha's Akola district. "I didn't think she would manage but she proved everyone wrong," he admits. The Banjara tribal woman even got her three children married without help from anyone.

Yet in March, after more than two decades of shouldering responsibilities, Rukhmabai's courage ran out. Saddled with farming debts worth Rs 3 lakh, she swallowed pesticide and died at home.

The cotton belt of Vidarbha reports the highest farmer suicides in the country, but the distress of women cultivators is rarely recorded.

"Suicides by women farmers are less common but not that unusual. But they don't get recorded because women are often landless or the land is not in their name," says activist Kishor Tiwari of the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti.

As many as 16.46 lakh rural households in Maharashtra are headed by women, according to the Census 2011. This accounts for 12.5% rural households. In fact, the rise in suicides among male farmers in the state has led to their widows bearing the burden of running both the home and the farm.

Yet only 126 suicides by women farmers in Maharashtra were recorded by the National Crime Records Bureau in 2013, compared to 3,020 by male farmers. "In most cases, suicides by women farmers are classified as dowry deaths or accidents," says Tiwari.

Rukhmabai is among the few women cultivators here whose death has been classified as a "farmer's suicide" perhaps because her farm was in her name. Her family is eligible for state compensation.

"I don't remember a time when my mother was not working," says Rukhmabai's son Nagorao. In fact, in all farming families, it is women who do the bulk of jobs like sowing and weeding.

For the last several years, Rukhmabai's family had been growing soyabean. But rising costs and declining yields in the last three years pushed them deep into debt. Then Nagorao had a near-fatal accident last year that burdened them with an additional Rs 1 lakh loan for his surgery.

"We used to take loans earlier too, but we always had some income. This year we barely made any money because of the drought," says Nagorao. Over time, the family sold its bullocks and then its goats as well.

By the end Rukhmabai knew she would have to borrow again. "She had borrowed from her relatives and could not face them. She had run out of options," said her daughter-in-law Sarla Rathod. Nagorao's accident has left him incapable of running the farm.

In the neighbouring district of Yavatmal, another woman farmer lives on the edge. Five years ago, Sangita Pancheniwar from Hivra village ran a four-acre farm with her husband. But he committed suicide in 2010, leaving her to fend for his ageing parents and two school-going children.

After two crops failed in the drought, she tried renting out the farm but it had no takers. She now works as a farm hand for a few days a week. "I get work maybe twice a week for Rs 100 per day," she says.

With a loan of Rs 1 lakh still to be paid off, she fears for her children's education. Her daughter Nikita is in the tenth standard and hopes to be a teacher, while her son Sai is in the ninth. "We are reduced to eating bhakri and chutney. How can I afford to keep them in school?" she asks.