Maharashtrian Widow Letter to Indian PM

9 May9, 2007 in agrarian, bt cotton, campaign, children, commerce, companies, congress, cotton, data, davos, debate, democracy, demographics, development, disaster, english, farewell, farm, farmer, farmers, figures, food, forum, fuel, funds, human, hunger, husbands, imf, india, indian, inflation, stories, struggle, studies, sueddeutsche, sufferings, suicides, tracker, training, urban, vidarbha, video, visual, voice, widows, women, world, wto, yavatmal, zeitung, zubani

(THIS IS TRANSLATION OF LETTER OF ONE OF WIDOWS HAS WRITTEN TO INDIAN PRIME MINISTER FOR HELP)
To,
Dr. Man Mohan Singh,
Indian Prime Minister, Government of India
New Delhi-1100011

REF : YOUR HEALING TOUCH TO VIDARBHA FARM WIDOWS IS MISSING
SUB : PLEASE ARRANGE TO SAVE VIDARBHA FARM WIDOWS

Respected sir,

1. My husband Shivaji Betwar of Kelapur in Yavatmal district, Maharashtra, had killed himself by hanging to tree in August of last year after your announcement of package and you specially asked District Collector to give healing touch to farm widows of west Vidarbha.
Please see this photo below :

He was a cotton farmer, and he was forced to commit suicide as local bankers Bank of Maharashtra, Pahapal branch had failed to give him crop loan even though he was not defaulter.
2. Then since after the his sad death, I was told by local administration that as per promise made by you, the relief aid will be given to me as I have two small kids one age 4 and other age 7. After the death of my husband, nobody is there to look after me here at my in laws place. Nobody is there to look after our land too.
3. To day local Tahsildar has told me that Yavatmal District Collector has rejected my case as there was no crop loan, against by husband’s name when he committed suicide. It was matter of surprise that when local bank has not given us loan and credit crunch has been reason of distress to commit suicide, I am being refused the compensation.
4. In order to avoid my kid’s starvation, I went back to my mother’s place in Andhra Pradesh mandal Besa in Adilabad district. But it was very difficult for them to feed my family as my brother is farm labor and I was forced to return back to dead husband’s place in Maharashtra.
PRAYER :
Dear Prime Minister, it has been very difficult to live in these pathetic condition where as babus in local administration have not giving any help to me, I am writing to you that after your Vidarbha visit more than 1000 Farm Widows compensation claims have been rejected, in order to show the effect of your package, that suicides have declined, and we are innocent victims of your administrative politics.
You are kindly requested to save my small kids and help me.
Yours sincerely,
MANGALA SHIVAJI BETWAR

German Women join hands with Vidarbha widows

9 May9, 2007 in aid, andhra, article, bengal, bureaucrats, channel, charity, children, congress, courts, deutsche, development, german, government, husbands, indenhilfe, intellectual, kerala, kolkata, legal, ncp, ngo, office, orphans, prices, property, software, struggle, sueddeutsche, training, widows, zeitung

The readers of a leading German ( Deutsche )news paper, “Sueddeutsche Zeitung” have given relief aid to Vidarbha Farm Widows.
They were moved by Karin Steinberger’s article based on the struggle of farm widows, after the suicide of their farmer husbands, when local Maharashtra govt. turned blind eye towards the plights of these widows.
This amount was collected by news paper “Sueddeutsche Zeitung” was transferred to INDENHILFE, an NGO working for the Indian people.
Their Kolkatta base office is arranging a function for Relief Aid disbursement at Pandharkawada in Yavatmal district of Vidarbha, Maharashtra in India on 17th March. INDIENHILIFE office in charge, Kumar Roy and Shibani Bhattacharya have been touring in rural part of Vidarbha to identify the widows who are working hard to save the surviving family, from agrarian crisis.

Karin Steinberger, is with the German news paper, “Sueddeutsche Zeitung” since 2000, writing features from all over the world, but most of stories are from rural parts of India. This article was based on the hardships faced by Farm Widows of Vidarbha and their “struggle to remain live“, without any meaningful and coordinated government aid.
It was published in 2006, and the article has been read by the thousand of readers in Germany, but relief aid programme, has just coincidently matched with the timing when one of Indian media, TV news channels, has been running a premeditated campaign, to run fabricated stories of Farm widows and has been evoking very strong response from Vidarbha and all over the world.

This German relief aid distribution programme, will boost morale of these farm widows, at last, after the sheer apathy of local Congress and NCP government, and top local bureaucrats of Maharashtra, who are more interested in book keeping and making media statements, debating the reasons for farm suicides in cotton belt of Vidarbha.