Harvesting Hope in the Suicide Zone: Women Who Challenged Drought, Death and Destiny

By Radheshyam Jadhav

As the flames danced all around her small hut, Vidya More had to make a hard choice. She could follow her husband into the fire along with her children. Or she could save herself and her little children from a terrible death.

Acclaimed journalist Radheshyam Jadhav brings to readers true inspiring stories of women farmers and farm widows, like Vidya and many more, from the 'farmer suicide zone' of Maharashtra. These women have battled the tremendous odds-of poverty, misogyny and inequity-stacked against them to herald a silent revolution to overcome agrarian crisis. These feisty women wake up every morning and battle for survival. Suicide, unlike their husbands, is a luxury they can't afford.

Extensively researched along with personal interviews, the book captures the women's stories and constructive struggle and how they discovered in themselves endless reserves of strength. While the men are driven to despair and death by debts, the women have fought their battles and found answers to the crisis. These simple, and often uneducated, women have developed their own methodology and science to manage and tackle drought and are experimenting with every possible option to give themselves and their families a life of dignity. They have taken up tough challenges and are sowing determination and hard work to achieve their dreams.

The book captures their belief that dreams often come true. And hope is what keeps life going.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Nov 18, 2018
• ISBN: 9789388271059

Book preview

struggles.

Part I – Cultivating Life

The heartbreaking epidemic of farmer suicides in drought-hit Vidarbha and Marathwada, and the farmers driven to despair and death by debts—these are stories many are somewhat familiar with. Women are left behind to deal with the penury, to raise children, run a home, look after ageing parents. These women cannot afford to choose eternal oblivion over life, however painful it might be. They bring life into this world and that is one responsibility they cannot abandon.

1 Phoenix

Sarola (Osmanabad)

As the flames danced all around her small hut, Vidya More had to make a hard choice. She could follow her husband into the fire along with her children or she could save herself and her little children from a terrible death.

A while earlier, her husband, Sahadev, had set fire to their home so that all of them could perish together in a single pyre. He was trying to grab her close to his burning body. Vidya made up her mind. She pushed her husband away and grabbed her children screaming in terror. She hurled them out of the hut even as Sahadev made another attempt to hold her but she stunned him with a blow to his face.

Vidya flung herself out of her home and rolled on the ground to douse the few flames that were searing her body. There was no one to help her at that moment. As Sahadev’s screams grew loud and finally faded, she held her children close and wept. Soon her home was reduced to ashes. In the struggle between life and death, the mother had triumphed over the wife. Soon neighbours gathered around but there was nothing left to salvage. Sahadev was dead and Vidya had two small children to raise.

Today, when she tells her story, Vidya remains dry-eyed and stoic. There are no tears left. There is a drought of tears within me, she says, weeding out the grass growing in a cotton farm. Only a grim smile on her ragged face marks the memory of that terrible night. Life cannot stop, she says.

You have to fight your own battles as others cannot fight them for you, says Vidya More.

Vidya is one of the farmers’ widows in Marathwada. Like thousands of debt-ridden farmers, Sahadev had decided to end his life as he was unable to repay the ₹30,000 loan he had borrowed from a local moneylender. He didn’t mean to die alone. Vidya says she had no idea about his intent to commit suicide. I was shocked and horrified with what he had done. He wanted to burn us all alive. At that moment I only thought of my children. Why should they die? Why deny them a chance to live? What is their fault? These and many other questions filled my mind and I decided to save my kids and live for them. Death is easy and life is difficult here, she says. Vidya had to pay a heavy price for her choice.

You will hear stories like this across the suicide zone of Marathwada, says Vidya. Between 2014 and 2015, 5,598 farmers committed suicide in Maharashtra, according to government figures and Marathwada and Vidarbha lead the tally.

As the government counts farmer suicides, it should also register what happens to the widows left behind, says Vidya. How do they survive? What happens to the children? Vidya can tell you what happened to her in the aftermath of her husband’s death. Relatives deserted her and flayed her for letting him die alone. Some questioned her love for her husband, her devotion towards him. What about the saat phere (seven rounds) around the sacred fire and the promises to stay together for saat janam (seven births)? They asked. Vidya says she was too busy coping with the challenges of life to find time to answer her critics.

Vidya started to work as a farm labourer. She toiled day and night but soon realised that she would need additional money to educate her children. Many times, my children and I would go to sleep on an empty stomach and I used to ask myself whether I had made a mistake by saving myself and the children, she says, shaken by the memory of those days. Vidya learnt to sew and also joined a band of women who did sundry jobs as members of self-help groups.

I knew nothing about farming. But the situation teaches you. I learnt all the farming skills on my own. It took years and only then was I able to save some money. Slowly I paid all the debts and got my land back. No one helped. I learned a life lesson that you have to fight your own battles, others cannot fight them for you. Don’t expect anything from anyone, says Vidya who had to leave school in ninth standard when her parents married her to Sahadev. Today, Vidya bitterly regrets not being able to complete her education. But she has admitted her daughter and son to a village school and dreams big for them.

Her daughter, Vaishnavi, arrives on the scene, looking for her mother. A bright top ranker in her school in ninth standard, she is a lot like her gritty mother. Ganesh, who is in eleventh standard, wants to join the army and serve the country, and Vaishnavi dreams of becoming an Indian Police Service officer. She is our mother, father, everything. I am going to study hard and become a police officer, says Vaishnavi and Vidya listens, her eyes shining with pride.

But Vidya’s successful struggle has not gone down well with the villagers, especially the men. That woman who behaves like a man? She is over-smart, says a villager when asked about her. His breath reeking of guthka he mutters, These women are not loyal to their husbands. They want freedom. He spits in contempt and a couple of men cycling past stop to listen to the discussion. They are surprised that anyone would travel from a distant city to meet Vidya. Why do you want to meet her? they ask. They sympathise with Sahadev’s decision to end his life. He had been drinking heavily to cope with the crisis. What can farmers do? We are left with no option but to end our lives. The government is not doing anything for us, they