Less than 40 km away from district collector S Chokalingam's residence, at Goud village in the Devli taluka, 48-year-old Bhimrao Kamble looks up at the sky with both hope and increasing despair for the rains.
Kamble has resown soyabean seeds on his 20 acres of fields, the third time he's tried his hand at sowing crops in the past two months. The first two sowing failed because it didn't rain.
Goud is a pre-dominantly Dalit village in Maharashtra's Wardha district. The rains have been scanty in the region -- and farmers are in debt and at the end of their tether. Goud's misfortune is shared by other villages like Kerna, Paizgaon, Agargaon,Vatkheda, Adegaon, Durgada, Murudgaon and Yezgaon.
At Goud, photographs of the father of the Indian Constitution, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, adorn nearly each household.
Kamble and his four brothers sowed cotton seeds on June 7 and 8 after the area's first showers, when the cloud-laden sky threatened to burst. But this sowing failed. Then on June 18 and 19, Kamble borrowed money and made a second futile attempt at sowing. However, the dry spell continued for more than 15 days.
This, the third, sowing on July 15 and 16, is his last hope of staying financially afloat. He has a 15-day leeway within which it has to rain. Says he: "I first sowed cotton seeds. That sowing failed. Soya is cheaper so I went for it in the second and third attempts. I have taken loans of around Rs 40,000 now, which includes Rs 15,000 from the Devli Cooperative Bank and the State Bank of India. The 'sahukar' (local moneylender) said only the other day to one of his debtors that he does not care whether we have to mortgage our mothers to pay him back. I can only hope and pray that it rains soon." He asks: "Would you like to stay over for the night in our village?"
His offer of hospitality is warm, but he has little to offer. His plight is shared by almost all the villagers, villagers like Arjunrao Tamgadge who cultivates 20 acres of land and whose son, 23-year-old Prashant is a computer teacher at a close-by computer training institute.
Says Prashant: "My father has also taken over Rs 40,000 in loans for the sowing season. Though the crops failed last year, the banks did not harass us. They normally wait for a couple of years before they start hounding us. But then, Rural Land Development Bank officials keep visiting our village."
Pandurang Vithoba Waghmare, another farmer from this village, has owed money to the RLDB for 10-12 years. Officials from the bank visited his residence recently. Says Kamble: "I heard them scolding him and threatening to have arrest warrants issued against him. He is resigned to his fate. He has also seen two sowing fail and told them matter of fact that they could auction a portion of his 22-acre fields to recover their dues. They were not interested in this option and left after warning him again."
Earlier, district Collector S Chokalingam told Business Standard: "In the Wardha district, 15 to 20 villages, including Goud in Devali, have suffered first and second sowing failures. I visited these villages in the belt. They need rains."
That's true of the other villages, too, where farmers are struggling to survive. A Shetkari Sanghatna leader makes an additional point -- farmers here can't seek government aid. Says he: "The problem is that farmers in these 15-odd villages cannot claim any compensation although their crops are insured. This is because the computation of failed sowing is done by considering blocks of over 50 villages. So the block in which these villages fall shows that the failure of sowing has not been less than average. These farmers on the other hand pay 6 per cent of the insurance amount as premium, in addition to the bank interest of around 14 per cent (effectively 20 per cent as interest cost on the finance they avail of)."
But the good news is that it has finally rained a bit here.