In her one-room dimly-lit house in Rajna village in Chandur Railway tehsil, 60-year-old Shantabai Neware doesn’t even have a satranji (a rough carpet) to offer the guest to sit on. All she has in her house in the name of belongings is an old rickety wooden rack with a few utensils kept neatly on the shelves and a small hearth by the side. The other room had crashed last monsoon and there is no way she can rebuild it. Naturally, she has no preparations to make to welcome her special guest Thursday — none other than Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi. When asked if she knew who Rahul Gandhi was, Shantabai takes a long pause, covering her mouth with her pallu. She doesn’t answer but smiles shyly. When prompted if she had heard of Indira Gandhi, her face lights up and she nods, muttering a “yes”. Further asked if Rahul was anybody to Indira, Shanta says, “perhaps her grandson”. That is how most of the widows from the nine households that the Congress vice-president is scheduled to visit Thursday as part of his Kisan Padayatra programme react to the question. All these nine households have seen farmer suicides since January 2014. The Dhamangaon Railway assembly seat was bagged by Congress’s Virendra Jagtap in the 2014 elections. With the sudden activity around them, the locals seem to hope Rahul will change the course of their life, unmindful of the fact that he does not belong to the ruling party in the state or the Centre. All of them trace their agrarian distress to years of crop failures. Asked if they are going to question Rahul on why the Congress government couldn’t help them during the 15 years it ruled the state, only one, Mangesh Thaokar from Tonglabad, answered, “Why not, I can ask him that. He is just another human being like me.” None of them knows anything about the land Bill Rahul has taken up cudgels against. But they mostly agree on not bartering away their land for industrial development in the hope of jobs. “There is no guarantee of that,” says Rajeev, son of Kachru Tupsundare who committed suicide in December 2014 at Ramgaon village. Incidentally, only two of these nine cases have been adjudged as agrarian suicides in government scrutiny and the deceased farmers’ families have been paid a compensation of Rs 1 lakh each. And only two of them were below 50 years of age. At least two of them, Neware and Shankarrao Adkine, were apparently frustrated because arthritis had “crippled their legs” and they allegedly ended their lives by jumping into a well. Ambadas Wahile, a retired teacher and pensioner, and Marotrao Neware, who died in a railway accident as per police records, were considered ineligible. Most of the family members expect their loans to be waived, irrigation facility and remunerative prices for their produce. Jobs are welcome but not at the cost of giving up their land. “What is the use if tomcat presides over meeting of mice. Industries might come, but outsiders will get jobs,” said a farmer at Gunji village. [related-post] The entire belt between Dhamangaon Railway and Chandur Railway, two of the tehsil headquarters in Amravati district, has only one spinning mill owned by BJP leader Arun Adsad for an industry. Though upper Wardha dam is situated close to this belt, very few get the advantage as the area lies upstream. Wells have been dug under Jawahar Yojana for many beneficiaries but erratic power supply has left irrigation a far cry. Mangesh Thaokar left his job in a diamond polishing unit in Gujarat after his father’s suicide last year. He used to get Rs 7,000 a month. “I had to return to look after the farm. Anyways, I have got married and Rs 7,000 is just not enough,” he says. Asked if he can get even that much from agriculture, he replies, “Not really, but one hopes that it might sometime reap a rich harvest.” Rajeev’s son Akshay has just got a temporary job in the agriculture produce marketing committee yard. “I am getting Rs 6,000 per month,” he says, adding, “I think I will prefer doing job.” While the families are waiting in awe for one of India’s topmost politicians, groups huddled in village chaupals are cynical. “Nothing is going to change. We have seen many such visits in the past. And now, we have Narendra Modi. Whatever happened to his promise of achhe din (good days),” asks a Gunji villager. But will Rahul really not deliver anything? “Empty mind is devil’s workshop. Since he has nothing to do now, he might succeed in creating a racket over it. That is no less desirable,” says a man identifying himself as a BSP worker, generating peels of laughter. The nine farmers on Rahul’s list: Nilesh Bharat Walke (Gunji) Ambadas Mahadeo Wahile (Gunji) Kishor Namdev Kamble (Shahapur) Kachru Goma Tupsundare (Ramgaon) Marotrao Neware (Rajna) Manik Lakshman Thaokar (Toglabad) Ashok Marotrao Satpaise (Tonglabad) Ramdas Adkine (Tonglabad) Shankarrao Adkine (Tonglabad)
