Grim Reaper Stalks Gujarat

The rising graph of extreme weather events in Gujarat is matched by its mounting agrarian debt. Result: a string of farmer suicides in one month, after one spell of heavy unseasonal rain

- By Jumana Shah

JUST BEFORE THE CALENDAR TURNED to November, Gujarat was lashed by a very heavy burst of un-seasonal rains. Not a code-red climate emergency of the sort in vogue these days, but bad enough. For one, it washed out 4.2 million hectares of standing kharif crop across the state—in as many as 16,000-odd villages, strewn across over 90 per cent of the state's talukas.

Two weeks later, 42-year-old Shailesh Devjibhai Savaliya walked through his devastated groundnut crop with trembling hands. What followed next is not something usually associated with Gujarat: he consumed pesticide, the farmer's hemlock, and died. He left behind two children, a farmland of 6.7 hectares in Junagadh, a mountain of debt and a piece of statistic. He was the fifth farmer in the state who had died by suicide in just three weeks.