BEED, India (AP) — On a sweltering hot day this May, farm worker Shobha Londhe is reminded of the desperate circumstances that led to her husband taking his own life. It was the hottest and driest summer in years, he said, and that often meant little or no income for farmworkers, mounting debts and unbearable heat.
Londhe, a resident of the village of Talegaon in western India, knows all too well how droughts caused by climate change can hurt farmers. Three years ago, he said, the family’s financial situation was untenable as crops failed due to extreme heat and not enough water. Her husband Tatya went out to the field one October day and never returned.
“He was always struggling because we were in debt,” said Londhe, who had a framed photo of her husband next to her. He partly blames his death on the increasingly hot and dry weather in their hometown of Marathwada in the state of Maharashtra. We are completely dependent on rainwater for agriculture,” she said.
Londhe is one of India’s 120 million farmers who share rapidly dwindling water supplies as groundwater is pumped out faster than rain can replenish it. Drought-prone regions like Marathwada are at the extreme end of famine, making life miserable for many. As the country continues to vote in a six-week election marathon, farmers are looking for longer-term solutions to the water problem, such as building networks of canals from remote rivers. But politicians promised little and did little to provide them with water; activists say big businesses and large farms are prioritized instead.
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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story contains discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs assistance in India, contact AASRA at 982-046-6726. In the United States, the national suicide and crisis hotline can be reached by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org.
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In the western state of Maharashtra, successive droughts, partly caused by human-induced climate change, have compounded farmers’ woes and forced them to take out loans to buy crops. Community members say the failure of these crops has also led some farmers to take their own lives. According to government estimates, 1,088 farmers died by suicide in Marathwada last year, and federal government records show that the number of farmers and agricultural workers dying by suicide across India has increased in recent years.
Local politician and headman of Dhondrai village, Shital Sakhare, says debt, crop failure, alcohol addiction and unemployment are some of the reasons for the high suicide rate among farmers. “We’re trying to help young people find more jobs outside of farming so they don’t take such drastic measures,” he said.
Londhe said the heat, poor crops and money problems have gotten worse since her husband’s death. “We can’t even find work as workers this summer, it’s getting harder to survive,” she said. Scientists say the frequency and intensity of droughts are caused by human-caused climate change, and overdraft of groundwater and lack of protection contribute to the crisis.
In most villages in the region visited by The Associated Press, local government-funded water tankers were positioned around main squares to provide drinking water to residents. But the villagers still had no water for their dying crops: the Sindhphana river flowing through the area and most of the reservoirs were dry. There was almost no election campaign on the issue in the region.
This was despite farmers in the area being politically active and “voting every time there is an election,” said Sarjerao Gholap, 76, a resident and retired headman of Talegaon village. But he said many people lose faith in the process when politicians fail to deliver on their promises.
Gholap said politicians from various parties in the past had promised to build a canal to supply water to their villages, provide better prices for their produce and provide running water through hand pumps. Gholap said that none of these were implemented and there was no water coming from the hand pump installed in the village a year ago.
Manisha Tokle, an activist living in Beed, said most politicians in the region support those who already have economic power, such as the upper caste, large landowning farmers, sugarcane mill owners and pesticide manufacturers. “They never think about small farmers, women workers and agricultural workers,” she said.
The average wage for farm workers has remained at about $3 to $4 a day for at least 15 years, despite repeated calls from farmer groups across the country to raise wages in line with rising costs, according to Indian government data. While vegetable prices increased by 27 percent this year compared to the previous year, the costs of tomatoes and onions increased by 38 percent and 29 percent.
Atul Jadhav, 26, a small farmer in Kambi village in the district, said the returns from farming were so poor that he “will not allow” his children to take up the business when they grow up.
He spends 5,000 rupees ($60) every day to irrigate his five-acre field of sweet lemons and sugarcane, but the soil is still bone dry and most plants are dead or wilted. “I don’t know if there will be anything left if this heat continues, but I have to try,” Jadhav said.
Village head Sakhare said farmers fed up with water scarcity needed to vote in large numbers to put the issue on the table, admitting that it did not attract much attention from politicians.
But he warned that while politicians could do more to find alternative water sources, encourage less water-intensive crops or provide financial support to farmers, they “will not be able to reverse the impact of climate change.”
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