Indian prince Rahul Gandhi's poverty icon Vidarbha farm widow Kalavati Bandurkar's daughter is among two farmers, a wife of dry land cotton farmer along with her two small kids, who have reportedly committed suicide in Vidarbha.
VIDARBHA IS reeling under severe agrarian crisis since 2005, and has claimed more than 8400 farmer suicides, and has taken the deatl toll to 634 in the year 2011 alone. These are victims of an on going distress and despair resulting in suicides mainly due to debt, poverty, hunger and poor health care services in the most backward region of Maharashtra. Along with Kalavati's daughter, the wife of a farmer in village Tivali in Washim district namely Ujwala Batkal aged 26, killed herself along with her two children Aarti, 6 years, and Ganesh, 2 years, as reported by the daily Sakal. Others who died are Rajaraddy Nalawar of Digras in Yavatmal and Ganesh Doiphode of village Shendurjanabazar in Amaravati.
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As per news reported in Lokmat, Nagpur, recently Rahul Gandhi's Vidarbha farm widow Kalavati Bandurkar's daughter Savita Divakar Khamankar of village Ralegoan in Bhadravati Tahsil in Chandrapur district committed suicide in last week of September due to poverty after failing to get health care in her prolongned serious illness - though this was reported October 15.
After meeting Kalavati in 2009, Rahul Gandhi during his speech in the Lok Sabha spoke of her life and how she and her village suffered without electricity, and contended poverty is directly connected to energy security' and one NGO declared aid of Rs.25 lakh as fixed deposit to her and she is getting interest on FD but even this huge relief aid in isolation to just one widow has not reduced despair and distress of her family.
"We have been demanding urgent relief of food security, health care and proper counseling to these distressed families who have been identified by the state government in 2006 after door to door survey in order to follow directives of the High Court Mumbai in the PIL of VJAS and even after 5 years of recommendations, the Maharashtra government failed to provide requisite relief to one million identified distressed families who are debt trapped, having acute health problems and facing starvation hence these are not suicide but is genocide done by the state," said Kishore Tiwari of cotton farmers' advocacy group Vidarbha Janandolan Samiti in a press release.
