“How are we supposed to know about government schemes? There is nobody to inform us about programmes meant for us,” says 42-year-old Sanjeevani Bedage from Dharashiv district of Maharashtra. She is a farmer in Jalkot village of Tuljapur taluka who also labours on the fields of others to add to her meagre income. Since 2020 she has been trying to get integrated into various government schemes – but every attempt of hers to do so, however, has been a failure. “My husband, Shankar, died by suicide on January 24, 2020 – a few days before the lockdown began,” Sanjeevani says. “A person dies but debt doesn’t. My husband ended his life because of the debt burden. Now I live with that burden every day.”
Her late husband’s father owns a five-acre farm in Jalkot on which Shankar and his three brothers used to cultivate collectively. “Our farm is rainfed and has no access to water supply, but we still take on some water intensive crops as they have better prices,” Sanjeevani says. “We have soyabean and tur during monsoon and jowar, wheat, and black chickpeas post Diwali.”
From 2011 till about 2014, the prices were about Rs. 2,200 a quintal for jowar, wheat and black chickpeas, and around Rs. 5,000 a quintal for soyabean and tur. After setting aside enough for family consumption, they had around 4 quintals of each winter crop – totalling roughly Rs. 26,400, and 5 quintals of soyabean and tur each – adding up to Rs. 50,000. That meant an income of close to Rs. 76,400 annually. This money was divided into four parts for the families of the four brothers, Sanjeevani told me in Jalkot.
“The kachhaghar [mud house with a straw roof] we all lived in had many problems,” she explains, “Especially during monsoon – the roof leaked, and our children used to fall sick often. Healthcare is extremely expensive.”








