Farms are lying fallow and these widows, whose husbands committed suicide in the face of an unmanageable debt burdent, struggle to make their next move.
“One thing that has to be understood clearly,” says farmer-activist Gajanan Amdabadkar, who has for the last several years left his own twenty acres of land in the care of his wife Vijaya while he tours Vidarbha, collecting data on farmers’ suicides, “That women do not see credit in the same way as men do. While a man sees what needs to be done and gets credit accordingly, a woman is more inclined to tailor her farming activities – even as she does her household – to the available budget, avoiding getting credit, especially government credit in the form of bank loans, as far as possible.”
But official or not, credit is a must, and when it comes to women, access to any kind of credit is a highly insecure proposition. Most of the women I spoke with said that they relied on relatives – fathers, brothers, brothers-in-law – for credit. But as with official credit, this source can also have its limitations.
Even though these woman would rely on more loans to keep their farms going, they are reluctant to seek them after what they have seen their husbands go through–they would much prefer government aid. This piece is part of a series of stories on ‘The Feminine Face of the Vidarbha Agrarian Crisis’ (see this one on women’s struggle for land rights).
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