Homeless Maharashtra farmer widows want govt to acknowledge their existence

Maharashtra's fiscal priorities--it has made cuts in social spending--could have compounded the distress of farmer widows, according to a report

On November 21, 2018, close to 80 women widowed by farmer suicides across Maharashtra gathered at the Azad Maidan grounds in south Mumbai with one demand: That the government acknowledge their existence as women farmers with rights to the land that they had once tilled with their husbands.

Anitatai, whose husband had killed himself five years ago because he could not pay off mounting debts, travelled 400 km from Osmanabad in central Maharashtra to join the protest here. When she was widowed, her in-laws refused to give her a share of the family land and threw her out of the house