Mumbai, India – As the results of India’s national elections became clear on Tuesday, Narendra Dabhane felt a sense of achievement and relief.
The farmer from Maharashtra’s Yavatmal district was once an ardent admirer of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who had promised to address the struggles of farmers, including farm debt, in the state’s Vidarbha region. Modi had even visited Dabhane’s village of Dabhadi during his 2014 campaign to first become prime minister. The village was handpicked out of the 15,000 villages in the Vidarbha region for Modi’s outreach to farmers in 2014.
