Thanks to Rahul Gandhi’s visit and his subsequent Parliament speech in February last year, she instantly became the face of Vidarbha’s farm crisis. But in a little more than a year, she is anything but that.

Today, Kalavati Bandurkar, 46, doesn’t wear a torn saree, is more relaxed and doesn’t “have to” toil hard. She has bought a colour TV, a DVD player and a mobile, thanks to the Rs 6 lakh she has so far received from sanitation NGO Sulabh International. She is due to get Rs 19 lakh more.

Yavatmal district witnessed maximum number of farmers’ suicides in the region — 1,417 — during 2001-08. Kalavati’s village is in Wani tehsil, which though in Yavatmal, now belongs to the re-drawn Chandrapur constituency.

Nitin Khadse, a young graduate from the village involved in UNICEF micro-planning, besides being a farmer himself, says spoon-feeding has spoiled everything. “The Antyodaya scheme, for example, has led to people not preferring to work since they get their month’s ration for less than Rs 100. It has resulted in farm labour scarcity. Also, there are few takers for EGS works too,” he points out.

Kalavati’s growing isolation in the village led to Sulabh adopting Jalka village for a comprehensive rural reconstruction programme. Other villages haven’t been so lucky. And though they got loan waiver, farm packages and, above all, a hiked price for cotton and a solid market support from the Government this year, there are not many cheerful faces around. “Not all got these sops. Only small and marginal farmers got the waiver. Packages, too, benefited a select few, many of them undeserving. All this will hardly impact the polls,” says Congress activist Narayan Derkar from Botoni village in Maregaon tehsil.

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