I am Shankar Darekar, a 47-year-old farmer from Vimchur, a remote rural village in India’s Maharashtra province. Maharashtra is known for its rich heritage, the generally prosperous lifestyle of its people and fertile lands. But behind that lustrous shroud, penury and unremitting suicides fester, defining the lives of us peasants.
The coronavirus pandemic, which erupted in India in early March, has spelled doom for us. It was the harvest season. I cultivate grapes on five acres of land bequeathed to me by my forefathers. Grapes are an expensive cash crop, requiring a whopping investment of up to $3,000 per acre of cultivation. There are no yields for the first three years.
The Modi government arranged special jets to fly back the rich [but] was unwilling to run the railways to transport our crops.
Every year in March, I sell part of the crop to merchants in Kolkata, in India’s eastern province of West Bengal, from where it is sent to Bangladesh. The remainder is sent to Delhi and Punjab, for export to our western neighbours. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the lockdown from midnight of 24 March, he gave India’s 1.3 billion citizens barely four hours’ notice. It was a cruel joke that had a huge effect on millions of farmers.
