No Food, No Work, Mother of 5 Sets Herself on Fire in Maharashtra

Mangalore Today News Network

Osmanabad District, Sep 07, 2015:  In one of the most tragic farmer suicide deaths, a 40-year-old woman in Maharashtra’s drought-hit Marathwada region, with nothing to eat, no work to do and faced with the reality of feeding five children, has committed suicide.

 

Manisha Gatkal, a farmer in Marathwada’s Osmanabad district, doused herself with kerosene and set herself ablaze last Saturday in her own house, the very day India was celebrating Raksha Bandhan.

At Ms Gatkal’s home in Ambi village, the stench of kerosene she used to immolate herself still permeated the air. On the floor, an aluminum plate with two old chapatis is all the food that there is in the otherwise stark home. The grain containers are all empty: there’s no rice, no flour, no oil; absolutely nothing to eat. What’s worse, the family claims they had no source of livelihood.

 

"We are really very poor. There was no food. I had no work... When I got some work I went out. She latched the door and killed herself," said Ms Gatkal’s husband Laxman.

The family is so poor that unlike other farmer suicide deaths in Marathwada, they couldn’t even take a loan.

"Ration is just too little - 18 kg of wheat and 12 kg of rice. That’s not enough for seven people. Just lasts 12 days," said Sambhaji, a relative of Gatkals.

Almost in no man’s land, on the borders of two districts, Osmanabad and Solapur, villagers claim the situation is acute as there’s just no work even under employment guarantee schemes.

"Had he got work under NREGA, they would have had money and she wouldn’t have committed suicide," said Laxman Gatkal’s brother Balasahab.

Marathwada has seen back to back droughts over the last three years and has so far reported the country’s highest rainfall deficit in the current monsoon season. 2014 recorded 574 farmer suicides in the region; in 2015, 628 farmers have already killed themselves.

 

Courtesy: NDTV