Sumitra, 40, has little idea about the buzz of karjamafi (loan-waiver) that is all around her. The day after the government’s deadline to banks to waive off nearly Rs 71,000 crore loans to small and marginal farmers across India ended, she knows it does not benefit her but she is not bothered.

Luck has hardly been on her side ever since her husband Pandurang consumed poison on April 1, 2008. Sumitra, a Kolam tribal, had no courage to do farming after having seen her husband’s disastrous experience. So, she left her Kochi village to shift to stay in her parents’ house in Wagda village, about 13 km away. “I did not want to stay on in that village any longer, neither did my children. So rather than till my own land, I chose to be a labourer,” she says.

From the three non-irrigated acres they have at Kochi village in Ghatanji tehsil, Pandurang could reap just four quintal of cotton and 50 kg of pulses last year. With an institutional loan of Rs 25,000, taken after the eligibility deadline of March 31, 2007, and a private loan worth about 30,000, he had lost the will and the courage to live.

Pandurang’s death was adjudged a farm-related suicide by a government panel but Sumitra and her two sons haven’t got the government aid of Rs 1 lakh. Sumitra decided to give the land on rent (makta) to a fellow villager for Rs 1,000 per year and has preferred to work as farm labourer. Her daughter Renuka is married and her sons Prakash (18) and Pravin (16), too, work as farm hands.

Over 50 km away in Dahegaon, life has not changed much for Asha Lakde, another farm widow, despite the loan waiver. Her husband Ankush, 45, committed suicide by consuming insecticide on February 19, 2008. Her bank loans of about Rs 45,000 have been waived but she will have to square off the Rs 30,000 private loan her husband had taken. Or, she will have to use the Rs 30,000 cash-in-hand, part of the government aid for agrarian suicides, she is due to receive in a few days to the Krishi Kendra from where she has borrowed seeds and fertilizers worth Rs 25,000.

Asha has eight acres, and unlike Sumitra, she has decided to till it herself. She has no other option—she has three daughters and a son to look after. Jaishree and Jyoti, have cleared their Class X exams while Bhagyashri has done her HSC. Son Jitesh, the eldest, is uncertain if he can go to college.

“Who will do it (farming) then? I will have to,” she says. She has no excitement about the loan-waiver she is eligible for. “All of it will go in squaring off the other dues,” she says.

Suicide Capital

Yavatmal is the most suicide-prone district among the six main cotton-growing districts of Vidarbha. It has recorded 1,263 suicides since 2001. Of them, 524 have been found to have been due to agricultural reasons—that is about 65 every year. There were 144 and 97 agrarian suicides in 2006 and 2007 while 44 have been registered so far this year. An estimated Rs 365 crore has been waived off in Yavatmal, the highest in Vidarbha. Out of the 4.17 lakh farmers and 3.68 lakh account-holders here, about 1,27,000 accounts have benefited from the waiver, according to statistics accessed from the District Collectorate.