‘A new face’ of Maharashtra farm crisis heads for Delhi

NAGPUR: All India Kisan Sangh (AKS), the peasants’ wing of Communist Party of India (CPI), is bringing in widows of farmers who committed suicide to join the farmers’ protest at Delhi-Punjab.
The outfit, which started from Kolhapur, came with over 100 farmers comprising 35 widows mainly from Marathwada for a stopover at Nagpur.
Among them, Savita Jadhav from Dasada village of Parbhani district is being presented as the face of Maharashtra’s agrarian crisis.Both her husband and father have committed suicide, allegedly due to farm crisis.
Like her, Kalavti, a widow from Yavatmal, was projected as the poster woman of farm crisis in 2009.
Sharing the dais with other leaders, Savita in her brief speech at Samvidhan Chowk said, “Barely two years of our marriage my husband committed suicide in 2010, followed by my father in 2017.”
Two buses with farmers and AKS workers further headed toward Saoner to finally reach Delhi. Their route will cover Jabalpur and Bhopal. Other farmers joining on the way is expected to take the number to 2,500, said the activists.
Speakers raised the issue of farmers’ suicide as they lashed out at the government over the new laws.
Even as Vidarbha has been infamous for suicides, the activist and widows heading for Delhi were mainly from Marathwada. To this, a CPI worker said they could mobilize farmers from Marathwada as the party has a stronger base there.
Savita told TOI she was in touch with the leaders since a year. “My husband Parmeshwar owed over Rs4 lakh to SBI, and died because he could not repay the loan,” she said and added, “He ran a pan shop.”
But the family also had two acres of land which was sold by her in-laws soon after Parmeshwar’s death. “In 2017, falling income from farms and a similar loan from Bank of Maharashtra drove his father Gyaneshwar Gajmal to suicide,” she said.
As her father’s land has been inherited by her brother, Savita said she earns her livelihood by working as a farm hand. She has a 10-year-old daughter.