AGE: 37
OCCUPATION: Former cotton farmer, day laborer, cook
BIRTHPLACE: Kolai, Maharashtra, India
INTERVIEWED IN: Pandharkawada, Maharashtra, India
According to the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, in 2009 alone, 17,638 Indian farmers committed suicide, or one farmer every thirty minutes. They estimate that more than a quarter of a million Indian farmers have committed suicide in the last sixteen years. In 2011–12, the number of suicides was particularly severe among cotton farmers.1 Numerous surveys and reports link farmer suicides to debt and the pressures of repaying loans with steep interest rates. Increasingly, cotton farmers will borrow money in order to buy seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides, and the cost of these investments has risen dramatically, even as the market has kept the price at which farmers can sell their cotton relatively flat.
We meet Pournima Akolkar at a banquet in honor of over two hundred widows of cotton farmers in Vidarbha, a region with one of the highest rates of farmer suicide in India. Pournima agrees to talk to us about her husband Hanshal, who committed suicide two years ago by drinking pesticides. She later invites us to her house, where we sit and talk in the middle bedroom. This is where Pournima has been spending most of her time since she broke her hip nearly a year ago. On the wall behind us hangs a photograph of Pournima and her husband.
We share food and laugh together as we exchange photos of our families. Then Pournima tells us about how she works hard to provide for her two children. She speaks with determination to share her story, though her voice wavers when the subject turns to her husband.
Names have been changed at the request of the narrator.
MY FATHER IS A GOOD PERSON, A HAPPY PERSON
I was born in Kolai, in Vidarbha.2 My family is big, and we were happy growing up. We are four sisters and two brothers, and I am the youngest daughter. My father is a farmer—there are lots of farmers in Kolai—and he owns six acres of land. My father is a good person, a happy person. He loves us.
When I was little, I used to work on the farm along with my parents and siblings. I stopped going to school when I was eleven years old. There was no school after elementary school in Kolai, and my grandmother didn’t allow me to go to the nearest town, Pandharkawada, for higher studies.3 She was afraid for me. There was no bus at that time, and I would have had to walk over three miles to get there. She didn’t think it was safe for young girls to make the trip by foot.
For kids in the village, even if we didn’t do any work, we had to go to the farm with our families to learn about the work that was done there. The farmland surrounded the village, and most of the village families owned fields beside each other, so we’d all work in the fields together. Usually the men and women went separately and did different sorts of work. Sowing seeds, spreading fertilizers, weeding—these were the sorts of things my mother and other women taught me to do to help out. I used to enjoy that sort of work. It was done with love and nurturing and care, and there was a sense of community. I remember being on the farm with other girls and women. Most neighbors worked on their own plots of land, but everyone in the community would help each other out when our own work was done, and we’d socialize as well. We used to take our own tiffins with us.4 I enjoyed the environment.
Saturday and Sunday, they used to be days off. On those days, my siblings and I would still go to the farm, but only to play there with our friends through the day. We would take our kitchen sets and all our toys, and we’d use ropes and vines to make swings in the trees. We’d do whatever we wanted. There was a lake near the farm, so we would go there, have a bath, then wash our clothes and utensils, and horse around.
My family hardly had to buy any food because we got most of what we ate from the farm. Of our six acres, four were dedicated to crops we could sell, like cotton and jowar.5 The other two acres were used to grow vegetables—eggplant, onions, chilies, lentils, okra. Whatever crop we grew on the farm was used as food at home, and we’d sell our extra vegetables. We had oiling machines, so even the oil that was used at home came from the sesame and peanuts that we grew.
As for investments to make the farm grow, my father never took out bank loans. When I was a child, there were no bank loans for farms or anything else, really. There was just an informal society that would lend money, so every year my father would borrow as much as he needed to begin the planting season, and then every year he’d repay whatever he owed after we sold our cotton. Of course, we needed money for other things besides just the operation of the farm, and Father borrowed some money to pay our dowries as well.6 The dowry was very high in our community, around 1 to 2 lakhs. The grand total for my dowry was 2 lakhs, and 75,000 rupees of that was in cash.7 And then there were all the other household things.
It was very hard for someone who had only six acres of land to find husbands for four daughters, but he married all of us off. We are thankful to him for that.
My brothers Amol and Sudhir helped out with household expenses and with our dowries as well. My two brothers studied through high school and then started working. Both brothers had their businesses that provided income, and a lot of that income would go into farm expenses. Amol had a paan shop.8 It was a good job. Besides investing in the farm, Amol used the money that he earned from the paan shop to pay for dowries for me and my sisters, as well as other big family expenses. The daily household expenses were with Sudhir, who sold milk. His business was as good as Amol’s.
Amol and Sudhir each got a dowry from their wives’ families when they got married. In our community, almost everything is given in dowry—from basic kitchen utensils to the beds. Amol got 2 lakh rupees; Sudhir got 1.5 lakh rupees.
I was eighteen years old when I got married. It was around 1995. My father arranged it all, but he chose my husband Hanshal because he had a reputation in the community as a good, kind man. At the time, I was scared. I had also heard good things about Hanshal, that he was liked and respected, he was known to be very hospitable and treat friends like family, but I had never met him before. I didn’t know much about him or his family.
AT MY IN-LAWS’ PLACE, I HAD A LOT OF RESPONSIBILITIES ON MY SHOULDERS
After my wedding I went to my husband’s village, Andavi.9 Andavi is a few miles from where I grew up, on the other side of Pandharkawada.
Many decades ago the government gave three acres of land to my father-in-law through a program called Bhoodan.10 Its English meaning would be something like land donation. My father-in-law held the title to the farm, and my husband and his brothers used to work with their parents during the growing season. After their marriages, Hanshal’s brothers did other work since the property was small and they could make more money with other jobs. His elder brother worked as a laborer on other people’s farms. His younger brother was a driver.
My in-laws cultivated mostly cotton for sale at market, and some jowar and lentils. The routine was familiar in many ways, but there were differences between my new home and the community where I’d grown up. Just as in Kolai, all the villagers in Andavi would head to the fields together in the mornings. But in Andavi, the land was dry and it wasn’t irrigated like it was near Kolai, so there were more limitations on what crops we could grow and what times of year we could grow them. Our growing season was only six months in Andavi. Also, we had to purchase food in Andavi that we’d grown for ourselves in Kolai, things like wheat, nuts, beans, chilies, chickpeas, which required irrigation to grow.
For me, there were other differences between life in Andavi and in Kolai. The main difference was that back home, I was with my mother, and at my mother’s place I was nurtured and cared for, and my work in the fields and at home was done with love and care. But at my in-laws’ place I had responsibilities on my shoulders. There, I’d work hard because I had a constant sort of a fear—If I don’t do the work properly will my mother-in-law say something to me? If I don’t get up early enough, will my father-in-law say something to me?
Each day during the growing season from June to November, I would go with my in-laws and neighbors to the fields to weed, spread fertilizer, tend to the crops. Then I would come home early with my mother-in-law, and we’d prepare food, do the housework along with my two sisters-in-law. My father-in-law and my husband used to come home a bit later, after feeding the cattle. They would be at the farm until eight or nine at night. Before my husband came home I would serve food to my in-laws, my husband’s brothers, and their children. Then after Hanshal came home, he used to wash, freshen up, have food, and then rest.
When my husband and I first got married there was not a very heavy workload on the farm. We had time to talk about future plans—work that needed to be done on the farm later on to improve it, and raising money for the education of our future children. We were really happy.
Then in 1997, when I was about twenty, I had my son Sachin. In our community it’s traditional to return to your childhood home when you’re five months pregnant and stay there for one complete year after the child is born. So I lived with my parents for a little over a year starting in 1997, and then I had my daughter Indumati three years later, in 2000, and again I went home for a little over a year. During those times, my husband would come to Kolai and stay for eight or nine days at a time with me. My husband was very nice to the kids. He would bring gifts for them and nurture them, look after them. All the care and love for me was now mainly concentrated on the children. My husband was very happy having a son and a daughter; it was like a complete family.
MY HUSBAND WOULD BUY THE SEEDS. MY HUSBAND WAS EDUCATED.
There’s been a lot of change in the cost of farming over the years. I remember when I was around twelve years old, the price we got for our cotton used to be 400, 500 rupees per quintal.11 We’d grow eighteen to twenty quintals of cotton on three acres, and so in a good year we’d be able to make about 10,000 rupees off of our cotton crop.12
The rates have risen, but the expenses have also gone up. Around the time of my marriage, the rate of cotton per quintal was approximately 1,800 to 2,000 rupees. The best quality would get 2,000 rupees.13 But at the same time, the costs have increased for seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides. Since the early 2000s everyone uses Bt seeds, which can grow a lot more per acre.14 There are different strains—one called Mallika costs about 500, 550 rupees per bag, and one that grows a little better called Brahma costs 700, 750 rupees per bag.15 And the big difference is that we have to buy new seeds every year.
Before Bt seeds arrived, farmers in the area would plant seeds that were reusable. After harvest, farmers would pick cotton from the buds, separate the seed from the actual fibers of cotton, and then soak the seeds in water mixed with cow dung as a kind of fertilizer. Then after the seeds were dry, they’d be ready to plant. Nobody bought seeds every year like they do now.
There’s been a significant change in the way we grow cotton since Bt was introduced around 2002. My husband started planting the seeds around that time. With our old strains of cotton, we had to spray the crops with pesticides four times through the growing season. With Bt, we had to spray only two times. We also needed less fertilizer with Bt cotton.
The Bt seeds, I don’t know what they’re coated with or what is applied to them. They germinate almost as soon as they are sown. After they germinate, the cattle won’t eat them, so it’s not a problem. If the cattle eat them, their stomachs swell. Bt has no problems once it’s germinated. With our old cotton crops, in one spot we used to put down two seeds—if one doesn’t germinate, the other will. With Bt, it’s not that way. In one spot you put only one seed and it is guaranteed that it will germinate. So there are advantages, but it costs a lot more to plant the crop every year, and you must have a good crop to justify the costs.
When it was time to plant, Hanshal would go back to Adilabad to buy seeds for the farm.16 My husband was educated, so the neighbors would say things like, “You’re going to Adilabad? Get fertilizers and pesticides for me.” They would contribute money, help pay to rent a truck, and then he’d get the fertilizers and pesticides in bulk amounts. Every year, the merchants in Adilabad would have different strains of seeds to sell and advice about which was best. Fertilizers and pesticides, too—my husband bought them from the same place where he bought his seeds; it was called a krishi kendra, or farming center. Every year the merchants would have new advice, and nowadays they sell only Bt seeds.
When the harvest was ready, my husband would rent a truck to take his cotton to sell in Adilabad. The merchants there are employed by the ginning mills. First the farmer goes to the merchant and then the merchant goes to the mill with the cotton, even if it’s bad quality. The merchant says to the farmer, “I’ll fix a good price with the owner of the ginning mill even if the cotton is bad. But then you have to pay me some extra commission for it.” The mechant would usually charge a commission of around 500 to 1,000 rupees.17
THE RAINS BETRAYED US
Our first year with Bt seeds was good, and in 2003 or 2004 my husband and his father used 1.5 lakh18 they’d saved up to buy a house in the town of Pandharkawada so that we could have a place to stay when we went into town.
Then in 2007, my father-in-law gave the farm to my husband. At the time, he didn’t explain how he’d managed the farm’s finances—how he’d taken out loans each planting season, how he’d managed savings. He just handed over the fields to Hanshal. So my husband started to take out loans every year, for pesticides and fertilizers and seeds, just figuring it out on his own.
That first year he was in charge of the farm, Hanshal took out a loan of around 1 lakh from a private bank. The interest rate on his loan was 3 percent. There was another bank loan with the farm as collateral; that was less. No bank would give a big loan for a farm.19 With the farm as an asset we couldn’t get a loan of more than 10,000 rupees.20
Then, from 2007 through 2010, the rains betrayed us. For two years it didn’t rain, and the other two years it rained so much the seeds were washed away.
Because bank loans were small, my husband started to take out loans from other farmers or private moneylenders, and he wouldn’t tell me exactly what the interest rate for these were. He would just say, “Why are you worried about the interest rate? I’m taking a loan, that’s it. You don’t bother about it.” My husband had to make multiple payments, like paying the moneylender’s interest, then taking up a loan, then paying off the bank’s interest, then keeping the principal amount aside and paying off all the interest rates.
Starting in 2007, my husband wasn’t able to pay back much of anything on the loans. He wouldn’t tell the rest of the family much about what was happening with the banks. He actually kept the gold chain he’d given me as a wedding present as collateral in the bank, and he took a loan on that.21 I didn’t know it; he didn’t tell me he had taken it. One day I saw a notice from the bank about the loan and learned they had my wedding chain. So he deposited 30,000 rupees and released the chain and gave it back to me.22
We made around 80,000 to 90,000 rupees from cotton after the 2007 season.23 We were just able to pay back the interest. After that the bank and moneylenders started talking. They said, “If you don’t repay the loan, your house will get confiscated. This’ll happen. That’ll happen.” My husband was experiencing a lot of stress. He said to me, “Everything I earned is all gone now. What will happen?”
In 2009, my husband couldn’t pay back any money at all, since our crop was washed away. I told him, “Sell the house in Pandharkawada. Pay back the money.” But he said, “I’ve taken a bank loan on the Pandharkawada house already. It’s an asset, so I cannot sell it.”
For business with the banks, my husband used to go to Bori.24 When he came home, he didn’t talk to me. He wouldn’t talk to the children either, and they were nine and eleven years old, old enough to sense that something was wrong. If I asked him, “Why are you not talking? Why are you so low?” he’d say, “I have a headache. Don’t disturb me.”
Hanshal changed a lot after 2009. Sometimes he would behave very normally, very nicely. Otherwise, he would just shout at me, use foul language. My father-in-law would say, “Why don’t you go back to your home and stay for four or five days till he cools off and gets normal?” So I would go back to Kolai and stay for one month, two months. Then when I went back to my husband, the situation would be the same. He would be very quiet and keep to himself, not talk much, and then suddenly lose his temper. I think he actually went kind of mad because of the loans.
He lost interest in the farm and wouldn’t show up until four or five in the evening, and he’d just walk around the fields a little, talk to our neighbors. Then at night he would go to Bori. Once he went to Bori, he didn’t come back till midnight sometimes. I don’t really know what he used to do in Bori. If I asked him, he’d hit me. By 2010, he was almost gone. He would keep to himself, quiet, lost in his own thoughts.
I SEARCHED THE WHOLE HOUSE FOR THE POISON
Sometimes my husband talked about killing himself. He’d say things like, “I will leave. I will do something bad to myself if you continue to ask me questions.” I used to say, “Why are you saying such things? We have a son. We have a daughter. If we lose anything, it’ll be our home in Pandharkawada. We can survive.” He would say, “I’ve lost my respectability. I’m going to lose the house.” I don’t know what got into his head.
My father-in-law would tell me, “Don’t say anything to him. Don’t cause more stress. I am there to make up for his part of the work.” So our family didn’t say anything to him. We were afraid he would actually commit suicide.
He’d stay at home for two or three days at a time. The children would tell me, “Mom, Dad was at home the whole day.” I was still going to the farm and working, and so was Hanshal’s father. During the last phase of cotton picking in 2010, I’d leave for the farm every morning and pick about five kilograms, ten kilograms of cotton. In the evening, I’d come home and he’d be asleep. I’d say, “Wake up, let’s have food. Why don’t you come with us to the farm tomorrow?” He’d ignore me.
One day in November 2010 he said to me, “Today I got some poison. I’m going to drink it.”
I searched the whole house for the poison. Even my mother-in-law searched with me. When I found where he kept it, I showed it to my neighbors. I was desperate for help. I told the neighbors, “Here. He’s got poison. Talk to him. Why is he behaving like this?” When the neighbors came, he lied. He said it was just pesticide for a crop of chilies.
He was honest with one of his brothers, though. Hanshal told him, “I want to commit suicide. I want to drink it. I have a lot of debt weighing on me.” So my brother-in-law overturned the bottle and threw away all the poison.
Two or three days after my brother-in-law threw out the first bottle of pesticide, my husband got another bottle. I was home the whole day and he didn’t show me, didn’t tell me about it. He came home from the market where he’d bought the poison, we ate our lunch, and then at two o’clock he went to the outdoor toilets. When he came back he was sweating a lot and he seemed a little afraid. He told me, “Pournima, I have taken poison.” Then he fainted.
My brother-in-law borrowed a car and we took my husband to Bori. There they kept him in the hospital for hours. The doctors said, “We can’t save him.” So we took him back to Pandharkawada. From Pandharkawada we took him to Yavatmal,25 looking for a hospital that could save him. We ended up in Sevagram.26 He was at Sevagram for eight days. We couldn’t talk to him. There was a mask over his face.
My husband died in late November. The postmortem was carried out at Sevagram, and then we brought him to Pandharkawada. There was a gathering of relatives, neighbors. The atmosphere was full of grief. We burned the body.
YOU HAVEN’T GOT ANY BEAUTY LEFT
After his death, I stayed a few months in my in-laws’ house in Andavi. But in every corner, there was a memory of my husband. He used to sleep here; he used to eat food there; he used to sit down there. The grief at that time—it’s hard to describe. When I saw other families that had a man in the house, it was hard to bear. The children had lost their father; my mother-in-law had lost her son. For about a month and a half, all I did was cry.
So I moved permanently to our house in Pandharkawada in 2011, four months after Hanshal died. I came here for my children’s education, and to escape my grief.
It’s still hard, though. On days when my children remember their father and miss him, they feel so sad they don’t even eat. When we see families that are complete, we feel sad. When we’re talking and I mention Hanshal, my son asks me, “Why do you talk about Father? It’s painful to remember him.”
But I have no complaints against my children. They don’t ask for things. They behave sensibly. They eat whatever is cooked; they don’t ask me for money, new books, or new clothes. They just go to school, study, and help me. I am very proud of them. They’re the only ones I can be proud of.
At my son’s school, there are children whose fathers are big businessmen or servicemen. Even among them, he was first in his class this year. He’s studying really well. Other people say, “Even though he’s from a small village and has come to a big school, your son is one of the first in his class.” I called his teacher and I asked her, “I’m not able to look after his studies, so what can you tell me about him?” The teacher told me, “He’s a really sweet boy, answers all the questions, gives proper answers. He behaves nicely, and he studies well.” I was overjoyed. It was like he’d got a job somewhere.
Here in Pandharkawada, it’s just work, eat, live. Widows can’t put on the bindi.27 You can’t wear earrings, or the necklace around your neck. You can’t put flowers in your hair or wear rings on your toes. You haven’t got any beauty left, the way you naturally are.
When I came to Pandharkawada, as soon as I put down my luggage, I started looking for work. I had to do something for my children. Earning 100 rupees per day, I had 3,000 rupees as an income per month.28 For the first few months of 2011, the conditions looked good, looked promising. I didn’t require any help from my in-laws’ side or my parents’ side.
I got work preparing tiffins for four DEd students.29 I prepare rice, dahl, vegetables, chapati. Then I walk to the homes and deliver the meals. Even though preparing the tiffins is not very profitable, it is more profitable than farming.
Then I broke my hip. This was early in the harvesting season in 2011, and it was when I was going to pick cotton as a laborer on other people’s farms. After preparing the tiffins, I would go to the fields. It was a Sunday and I had taken both my kids. On our way home, near the temple, there was a puddle of water. I slipped in the water and fell and broke my hip.
Almost a thousand people from my husband’s village came to see me. Everybody was here, asking, “How did this happen? When did this happen?” My husband was a good person at heart; he used to help anybody. That was the way he behaved with everyone. So people came to see me.
After my hip got fractured, my mother was here for three months. Then I told her, “Why are you here? You go back to your place; all the farmwork is left behind. There are no laborers for work.” Since the time my mother left, my daughter is doing all kinds of work: making tea, food, helping me out. It’s just my daughter who is helping me and doing all the work.
I HAD TO LISTEN TO MY BROTHERS’ COMPLAINTS. THAT WAS INTOLERABLE FOR ME.
My husband had taken a loan of 3 lakh on this house in Pandharkawada.30 The loan on the house was not waived off by the government so the bank told me that I had to pay it off. A lot of bank officials from the private bank were troubling me and my children. They were warning us, “We will seal this house. You cannot touch anything.” They were troubling me, so I told my parents.
My parents and brothers helped me pay off the loan and this house is now okay. The production of cotton that just finished and the cotton that we sold right now, from that money each brother gave me 1.5 lakh. My parents had told my brothers, “She has a right to part of the farm, so what do you want? Should we give her a part of the farm? Or do you want to pay her loan off?”
My brothers also have their own families, their kids to look after. They paid off the loan, but then I had to listen to their complaints about the cost. That was intolerable for me. Sometimes I felt I wanted to commit suicide. One day I went to sleep at eleven o’clock at night and woke up at four in the afternoon. Sometimes I’d go to my relatives’ home and just watch TV, talk to them. It took a lot of courage to build myself back up after my husband committed suicide. But right from when my hip got fractured and they put this rod in my hip, I started to lose what hope I had left. Now I cannot work; I have to sit.
IF ANYONE READS MY KUNDALI, THEY TELL ME, “YOU’RE VERY LUCKY”
I’m the main breadwinner and now I cannot work, so I really feel sad. With the help of the Niradhar Scheme,31 I get 1,200 rupees per month, and then my parents send some help, so I just depend on that. My children go to a government school so the fees are not that much. Till the seventh grade my son got books from the school itself. From the eighth grade onward we have to buy uniforms and books ourselves, so the expenses have increased. My son has major exams coming up next year and what can I do?32 I am crippled at home. What can be done sitting at a place? I haven’t asked anyone to help me. But even if anybody helps, to what extent can they help?
There are problems in my life due to Shani causing troubles—the loans, then my husband’s suicide, then coming here.33 For the last month, I haven’t been happy at all. It’s all tension and I’m not feeling good.
I just stay at my place, don’t go anywhere, just lock up the main doors. I feel my husband is still here with me and I remember him always. It’s like I’m not a widow, like I’m still married. I still feel the same way that I felt before. My husband always used to say, “Never go on the wrong path. Always do good deeds.” So I always tell my son to do the same.
If anyone reads my kundali,34 they tell me, “You’re very lucky.” I tell them, “How can I be lucky? I have so much trouble in my life.” Then they say that I always have help whenever I’m in trouble. So yes, I’m lucky. My son is there to make my faith glow, make me more lucky. I am completely dependent on him. He says, “I will go to America and sell tea there because here, in India, it’s too cheap, but in America, it’s costly. So I’ll go there and make money by selling tea.” I say to him, “Do whatever your heart says. Let’s see what happens.” With my children, it depends on their hearts, what they wish and what they want to do in the future.
I just want to educate my children, for them to get a job, make their father’s name proud. If they get a good education, then they’ll get a good job and get a respectable place in the community. If my son studies well, he’ll grow up and join the civil service, get a government job. Then people will say, “See how he is just like his father was.”
1 India is the world’s second largest producer of cotton, and the top exporter of cotton to the U.S.
2 Pournima was born in a village in Vidarbha, an eastern region of the central Indian state of Maharashtra. The exact name of her village has been changed (here, to Kolai) to protect her identity. Vidarbha is rural and poor compared to much of the rest of relatively prosperous Maharashtra.
3 Pandharkawada is a town of nearly thirty thousand in Vidarbha.
4 A tiffin is a packed lunch or a light meal. It often consists of rice, lentils, chapati, and a vegetable curry.
5 Jowar is a variety of sorghum, a grain.
6 For more on the dowry system, see glossary, page 348.
7 A lakh is an Indian unit of measure = 100,000. One lakh is 100,000 rupees, the basic unit of currency in India. 1 lakh rupees = approximately US$1,600. 75,000 rupees = US$1,200.
8 Paan is a kind of snuff or chewing tobacco that also contains ground betel nut (another stimulant) and spices.
9 Andavi is not the real name of the village. The name has been changed to protect the identity of the narrator.
10 Bhoodan was a program instituted a few years after India gained independence from Great Britain in 1948. The movement evolved into a series of land reform acts passed state by state in the 1950s and 1960s. The Maharashtra Agricultural Lands (Ceiling on Holdings) Act of 1961 limited the number of arable acres that a family could own. Surplus land was donated to landless poor on the condition that the land had to be used for agriculture and could not be resold. Over four million acres were donated throughout India, though rarely would landowners part with their most fertile property. Land acquired through Bhoodan and the agriculture land ceiling acts was often rocky, barren, or otherwise difficult to farm.
11 A quintal is 100 kilograms, or about 220 pounds. At the time, 500 rupees = approximately US$30.
12 At the time, 10,000 rupees = approximately US$590.
13 At the time, 2,000 rupees = approximately US$80.
14 Bt crops have been genetically modified to produce a substance naturally found in the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis that is toxic to insects but not to humans. For more information on the introduction of genetically modified crops to India, see Appendix III, page 355.
15 500 to 750 rupees = approximately US$8 to US$12.
16 Adilabad is a town of nearly 125,000, located thirty miles south of Pandharkawada.
17 500 to 1,000 rupees = approximately US$8 to US$16.
18 1.5 lakh = approximately US$2,400.
19 Many farmers initially take a loan anywhere from 5,000 to 15,000 rupees from a bank as well as additional loans (usually for greater amounts) from moneylenders. The consequences of not paying the loan from the bank are minimal; if the loan from the bank remains unpaid then the farmer usually cannot take out additional loans. Interest rates on loans from private moneylenders are generally much higher than interest rates on bank loans.
20 10,000 rupees = approximately US$180.
21 Similar to a wedding ring, these gold chains are the symbol of marriage for women in this region.
22 30,000 rupees = approximately US$480.
23 90,000 rupees = approximately US$1,440.
24 Bori, or Butibori, is a fast-growing industrial suburb of Nagpur, a city of nearly 2.5 million. Bori is located seventy-five miles north of Pandharkawada.
25 Yavatmal, a town of 120,000, is located about forty-five miles northwest of Pandharkawada.
26 Sevagram is about fifty miles northeast of Yavatmal and is home to the Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences, a research institute that also serves the region’s rural community.
27 A bindi is a cosmetic dot worn between the eyebrows. In Hindu tradition, the bindi may symbolize wisdom and introspection. Bindis are popular across various religions and cultures in South Asia, however. In rural India, wearing a red bindi generally signifies that a woman is married.
28 3,000 rupees = approximately US$50.
29 DEd stands for diploma in education, the degree needed to teach in schools in India. It is equivalent to a teaching certificate in the United States.
30 3 lakh = approximately US$4,900, or twice the original cost of the property.
31 The Sanjay Gandhi Niradhar Anudan Scheme is a government program that provides monthly financial assistance to the destitute, the blind, the disabled, orphaned children, persons suffering from major illnesses, divorced women, abandoned women, women freed from prostitution, and others living below poverty level.
32 In India at the end of the tenth grade, there is an exam called the Board Exam that students must pass to continue their educations. A small fee is required to take the test.
33 Shani is the planet Saturn in Hindu astrology.
34 A kundali is a horoscope.