Winning elections Telangana style: Pay farm landowners, ignore the tillers

The Rythu Bandhu scheme was perhaps the biggest pre-election cash transfer to owners of land in India but it has failed to address issues of those most vulnerable to farm stress-driven suicide

Ramavath Challi, a widow in her early 20s with three children, recalls the day in August 2017 when her husband drank pesticide to end his life in Mustipally village in Nalgonda district of Telangana. A member of the Lambadi tribe, she shows a copy of the first information report (FIR) which states that her husband took his life “because he couldn’t get a fruitful crop for the last two years on the land he was cultivating and became a debtor and consumed an unknown pesticide, disgusted with his life.”

In May 2018, something unexpected happened. For the half acre