ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

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Performance of the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana

The Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana was launched as the fl agship farm insurance scheme in 2016. In Maharashtra, the coverage under the scheme shows a skew, with the drought-prone districts in Marathwada and Vidarbha showing higher coverage under insurance as compared to the districts in Konkan.

Suicide by Maharashtra Farmers

The present paper relies on the census survey of the suicide-affected farmers’ households from the two most vulnerable districts of Maharashtra from 2014 to 2017 when the largest number of farmers’ suicide cases was reported after the 2008 farm debt waivers. A complex mix of social, economic, and psychological factors
play their role in translating into farmers’ suicide. The study covers the districts of Usmanabad from Marathwada and Yavatmal from the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, respectively. 

A Jatra of the Wandering People: Beyond the Registers of Criminality and Deprivation

Through the study of rural fairs, the article challenges the picture of the “rural agrarian universal” and highlights the mobile and dynamic flows of life and livelihood that constitute the Deccan region. Beyond the registers of criminality and deprivation, the article illustrates the central role that fairs play in the life of nomadic/pastoral/peripatetic communities and the constituent role these communities play in the occurrences of these fairs in particular and regional landscape at large. It concludes with sets of possibilities that the study of fairs can open up to deepen our engagement with nomadism in its contemporary implications.

Farmer Suicides in Maharashtra, 2001–2018

Farmer suicides are an unfortunate result of the agrarian distress plaguing the rural economy of many states of the country. Marathwada and Vidarbha regions in Maharashtra have recorded very high numbers of farmer suicides, and an attempt to calculate the number of suicides and the suicide mortality rate is the first step towards gaining an in-depth understanding of the prevalence and seriousness of the issue. An analysis of the data reveals the relationship between farmer suicides and issues such as monsoon failure, water shortage, drought, absence of social security, robust crop procurement mechanisms and increasing debt burdens.

Scapegoating Climate Change

Atul Deulgaonkar and Anjali Joshi have described the drought exp- erienced in Marathwada in their article “Agriculture Is Injurious to Health” (EPW, 7 May 2016).

Agriculture is Injurious to Health

Farmers in India could be forgiven for assuming that bureaucrats, political parties and their representatives want them to quit agriculture. In fact, without actually announcing that agriculture in any form is injurious to health and only death can end the agony of the disease, these sections do their best to communicate this message subtly.

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