Farm suicides, anger haunt Indian villages that Modi promised hope

Family members of Vithal Rathod, the farmer in Dabhadi village who took his own life, stand outside their home in Yavatmal. It was in Dabhadi that Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched his farm outreach in 2014. A decade later, crosses losses, debts and deaths are mounting [Kunal Purohit/Al Jazeera]

Yavatmal, India – Like everyone else around him, Vithal Rathod was excited for what the future held for him and their village when Narendra Modi became India’s prime minister on May 26, 2014.

Just two months earlier, on March 20 that year, Modi had picked the 45-year-old farmer’s village of Dabhadi from the more than 15,500 villages in the Vidarbha region of the western Indian state of Maharashtra to launch his outreach to the country’s farmers. The visit was important for Modi, eyeing the PM’s chair at the time, to be able to reach out to the 65 percent of India’s population that is engaged in agriculture.