Farm distress in Telangana is rooted in the larger failure of land reforms and redistribution in the state, as well as a heightening unviability of the farm economy
Economy Policy: July 6, 2017, had started as an ordinary day for 26-year-old Ramavath Challi, who had spent it picking cotton for a daily wage. However, on returning home that evening, she had found the entire thanda (tribal hamlet) gathered there, surrounding her husband Madhu’s lifeless body. “Appula baadha padaleka ayina mandu taagindu,” she told IndiaSpend on a recent November day, her voice choking. Pressured by debt, the 29-year-old had consumed pesticide.
Paucity of rains had caused the cotton crop on their five-acre patch to fail for four consecutive years, and Madhu had racked up loans totaling Rs 6 lakh ($8,500), mostly from private moneylenders, in part to dig two borewells. These borewells had failed–groundwater levels have fallen drastically across Telangana–and Madhu had been struggling to repay his debt on which the interest was 24% annually.|Rythu Bandhu scheme
It was only after Madhu’s death that Challi realised the extent of their debt, when lenders demanded their money back. A year-and-a-half on, Challi is yet to receive any compensation from the state government because the local revenue department has refused to treat Madhu’s death as farm suicide because the land title was in his mother’s name.
Challi has been managing the farm by herself. She expects to make Rs 20,000 this year–Rs 1,600 per month or Rs 53 a day, less than the World Bank’s $1.5 (Rs 106) poverty cut-off. The yield is likely to be low due to scanty rainfall. In a good year, the farm yields six to seven quintals (100 kg) per acre; this year, it might give just three.
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