Health as someone else's wealth

In other suicide-hit households we surveyed too, health costs were a big burden. Rs. 25,000-Rs.30,000 was a common enough figure. That in households owning two to four acres. And often in heavy losses, with farming slipping by the season. That is why Shamrao and Anjamma just stopped buying medicines. "At the government hospital," say the farmers in Waifad, "you get nothing."

On the other hand, "if we go to Nagpur," says Manoj Chandurvarkar, "we'd have to pay a fortune. People fear a hospital." Nagpur's private hospitals mostly reject the blood test reports or X-rays they take in from Wardha. Even if the reports are sound. The referral racket won't be denied its cut. "So we have to go through the tests all over again. Everyone gets a cut and is happy."

These "CT scans and medicines are for big people. We have no money," says Rameshwar Chardi, also a farmer. The uncontrolled private sector can charge any fee it fancies. The under-funded, ill-equipped and crumbling government hospitals seem a poor option to many. "The treatment was `free,'" laughs Santosh Isai in Malwagad. "But it meant little." He spent Rs. 35,000 on medicines and care for his brother Ashok, a cancer patient. Isai sold three acres in this Yavatmal village to raise the cash. Then they ran out of money.

His friend Sandeep Kadam went straight to a private hospital. He spent almost Rs. 2 lakhs on his father, who died of tuberculosis. "That meant selling three acres," he says. About a third of the land holding of his large family. 

Like in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, all this hits the farm community in the midst of a crippling agrarian crisis. Very few are able to attend to major health problems without taking loans for it.

Anjamma lies on the floor unwell and too weak to sit up. Shamrao sits on the bed, frail and infirm. He is pleased he has cleared his dead son's dues. "We got rid of that debt so that his soul may rest in peace." Their own bodies, though, do not. Ill health has taken its toll. Neither, at their advanced age, can work and earn a living. But health comes at a price. A price they, and countless millions like them cannot pay. 

In Waifad, they bid us a cheery goodbye. "If you want to know about health," says one, "look at our farming. Then you'll know. We are all on saline drip, us farmers. Two years from now, we'll be on oxygen."

Postscript

October 31, 2005: Shamrao Khatale died just a day before the National Commission on Farmers team arrived at his house in Ashti. A cavalcade of cars cruised into this Wardha village to meet his wife, but she has lost her sanity. Just like one of her sons did last year. Another son, Prabhakar, committed suicide in 2004. Shamrao's wife is yet to grasp that her husband is dead. She has withdrawn into a private world where none of this has happened. Those who can speak are her daughter Ganga, unmarried at 31 because of the family's bankruptcy during the farm crisis. And yet another son who has returned jobless from Amravati. Shamrao and his wife, both quite ill, had stopped taking medicines for a year. "Who can afford doctors?" Shamrao had asked me in June. "Not us. It's all too costly. And how do we buy medicines?" 

A slightly different version of this article was originally published in The Hindu.