In the 1980s, “Hiware Bazar, a village tucked deep inside the western Indian state of Maharashtra, was a crime-ridden backwater, desperately poor and largely abandoned by government agencies,” writes Puja Changoiwala in FERN’s latest story, published with Grist.
But a new village leader, elected in 1989, convinced residents to rebuild and revitalize the community. “Through effective watershed management, the rebuilding of natural resources, and a shift to more sustainable, less water-intensive crops — all of which hinged on the participation of residents — the village turned itself into a national ‘model of development.'”
Today, Hiware Bazar is known as the “village of millionaires,” and its model is being replicated in thousands of villages across India, where the “failure of the agriculture sector is blamed for the epidemic of farmer suicides in the country.”
Between 1995 and 2014, more than 300,000 farmers and agricultural workers took their own lives. “According to the latest government figures, more than one agricultural worker dies by suicide every hour in the country. Maharashtra, the state where Hiware Bazar is located, reports the highest number of such suicides in the country. Last year, Maharashtra recorded more than 4,000 farmer suicides, or over 11 each day.”