Denied Compensation, Families of 'Invisible' Ryots Fight Back

Kin of tenant farmers excluded from suicide relief for being 'landless'

- B KARTHEEK @Hyderabad

AT the heart of the farmer suicide crisis lies a harsh truth that tenant cultivators are often excluded. When they die by suicide, authorities rule their deaths aren't farmer suicides, because they didn't own the land they farmed. Though they toiled on leased fields, their labour is overlooked, and their families are routinely denied recognition and compensation when despair claims them.

When Madavi Devuji, an Adivasi tenant farmer, died by suicide in November 2020, his family hoped the state's special package for farmer suicides would offer some relief. Instead, rejection arrived, again and again. Officials dismissed the claim four times, saying Devuji wasn't a farmer in the legal sense. He had tilled leased land, not owned it.