In 2018, when Rekha Waghmare was 39 years old, her husband died by suicide. Namdev, 42, was among over 12,000 farmers who died by suicide in Maharashtra from 2015 to 2018, struggling with five years of crop failure. He left behind Rekha, their two children, a 3.5 acre farm, and an unpaid loan of Rs 4 lakh.
Rekha, who lives in Nandusa village in Hingoli district, turned to farming and daily wage work. But she wasn’t too worried about feeding her children three meals a day because she received rations under the National Food Security Act. Under the act, the state government provided grains at subsidised rates to farmers in 14 suicide-prone districts: Aurangabad, Jalna, Beed, Nanded, Osmanabad, Parbhani, Latur, Hingoli, Amravati, Washim, Akola, Buldhana, Yawatmal and Warda.
