On July 1, 2025, Maharashtra’s Relief and Rehabilitation Minister Makarand Patil presented a grim figure to the legislative council: between January and March alone, 767 farmers across the state had taken their own lives. The majority of these deaths were concentrated in the state’s agrarian heartlands, Vidarbha and Marathwada, as per the Indian Express report. In western Vidarbha alone, comprising Yavatmal, Amravati, Akola, Buldhana, and Washim districts, 257 suicides were recorded. In Marathwada’s Hingoli district, 24 more cases were added to the tally.
By the end of April 2025, the total number of farmer suicides had risen to 869, according to divisional-level reports from the relief and rehabilitation department, report Scroll. Amravati division topped the list with 327 deaths, followed by Marathwada with 269, Nagpur with 135, Nashik with 106, and Pune division with 32.
Marathwada, historically one of India’s most drought-prone and underserved regions, is reeling under an escalating crisis. From just January to March 2025, 269 suicides were reported in its eight districts- Beed (71), Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (50), Nanded (37), Parbhani (33), Dharashiv (31), Latur (18), Hingoli (16), and Jalna (13). This marked a steep rise from 204 suicides during the same period in 2024 (TOI, April 2025).
These are not just numbers, they are lost lives, shattered families, and communities pushed beyond endurance. Yet, Maharashtra’s response has been chillingly procedural: of the 767 suicide cases reported between January and March, just 373 were deemed “eligible” for compensation. The families of only 327 farmers received the state’s standard ex gratia of ₹1 lakh. The remaining 200 cases were rejected. The fate of 194 others remains suspended in bureaucratic inquiry limbo, according to a report in the PTI.
A vicious spiral of loss
Each suicide is a family shattered. Families like that of 43-year-old Kailash Arjun Nagare in Buldhana, once honoured with the Maharashtra government’s Young Farmer Award, who died by suicide on Holi by consuming poison in his field, as reported by PTI in March 2025. His suicide note blamed the acute water crisis and government apathy. Nagare had recently led a five-day hunger strike demanding irrigation water for 14 villages from the Khadakpurna reservoir. His body was not allowed to be moved for hours as protesting farmers demanded accountability. “This is not a suicide; it is state-sanctioned murder,” said farmer leader Ravikant Tupkar, according to the Indian Express report.
Or take the case of Sonia Uikey, a 17-year-old from Wardha, who hanged herself on July 4, 2025 because her family couldn’t afford her Class 12 school fees. “We’ve moved from farmers killing themselves to their children ending their lives too,” said NCP (SP) MP Amar Kale after visiting her home, as reported by PTI.
The math of misery
At the heart of the crisis lies an economic model stacked against the farmer. As veteran farmer activist Vijay Jawandhiya explained to Rediff, the government celebrates low inflation, 3.5% as per the RBI, while ignoring the price farmers have paid for it. “Inflation fell because vegetable and crop prices collapsed, not because life became cheaper for farmers,” he said while speaking with Rediff. While input costs like fertiliser, health, and education remained high, prices for crops plummeted due to imports and policy neglect. Soya bean was sold at ₹4,000 per quintal against an MSP of ₹4,892. Cotton fetched ₹7,000 against an MSP of ₹7,500. Tur dal prices dropped disastrously from ₹12,000 to ₹6,000 per quintal.
“Farmers are losing money on every harvest,” said food policy expert Devinder Sharma, according to a report of The Hindu. “It’s not that agriculture is unproductive, it’s that we have made it unviable.” He cited the NSSO’s most recent Situation Assessment Survey, which found that average monthly income from farming stands at just ₹10,218. This boils down to a daily income of ₹27 from agriculture alone, barely enough to buy a meal, let alone repay debts, as reported by The Hindu.
Government Aid: A leaky pipe
Out of the 767 suicides recorded between January and March 2025, only 373 cases were deemed eligible for compensation; 200 were rejected, and 194 were still under inquiry, according to Indian Express. Of the eligible cases, just 327 families received the ₹1 lakh financial aid promised under government policy.
Worse, large sections of vulnerable farmers are excluded from this count altogether. “Women farmers, Dalits, Adivasis, and tenant cultivators are systematically excluded,” says journalist P. Sainath, as per The Hindu. “If a deceased farmer doesn’t have a 7/12 land deed, their death is simply not counted.” After 2014, changes in suicide data methodology, like classifying tenant farmers as agricultural labourers, further diluted the real scale of the crisis, according to People’s Archive of Rural India.
Seeds of Exploitation: The HTBT cotton crisis
Even Maharashtra’s cotton sector is now undermined by an unregulated seed market. Speaking to The Hindu, Jawandhia warned that nearly 1 crore of the 2 crore cotton seed packets in use this year are unauthorized F2 (second-generation) seeds. These genetically inferior, unofficial hybrids are being sold for ₹2,000/kg despite production costs of just ₹40/kg, creating a grey market that exploits desperate farmers. He urged the government to introduce pureline cotton varieties, allowing farmers to replant without buying from private firms every season.
Uneven burdens across regions
The reasons suicides are higher in Vidarbha and Marathwada, compared to Konkan or western Maharashtra, lie in systemic neglect. Vidarbha’s agriculture is largely rain-fed and high-risk. Landholdings have shrunk drastically, families now farm barely five acres each. In contrast, western Maharashtra enjoys access to horticulture, subsidies, and better irrigation. Konkan’s rural economy is cushioned by remittances from Mumbai (Rediff, July 2025).
The state government continues to announce schemes like the ₹1,500 per month Laadki Bahin Yojana for women and ₹6,000 PM-Kisan aid. But when compared to the ₹45,000 monthly salary a peon is expected to draw under the 8th Pay Commission, these figures seem paltry. “There are two Indias,” Jawandhia says. “A peon in the government earns ₹45,000 per month, while a farmer gets ₹1,500 under Laadki Bahin Yojana. What’s ₹1,500 for a woman managing an entire farm household?”
Forgotten families, drowning in debt
The effects ripple across generations. In Pali, Beed, Meena Dhere works in onion fields for ₹250 a day while her elderly mother-in-law watches over her children. Her husband Ashok died by suicide in January 2025 after accumulating a ₹3 lakh debt. In Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, 45-year-old Sadhana Kalaskar lives under a tin roof, trying to pay off a ₹6 lakh wedding loan after her husband’s suicide in November 2024, as reported by The Hindu.
“Government policies speak of relief, but the ground reality is abandonment,” said social worker Nitnaware. “After a suicide, the family is left with not just grief but also loans, unpaid school fees, and hungry mouths.”
A Political Hotbed, But No Long-Term Solutions
Farmer suicides became a central issue during the 2024–25 election cycle. PM Modi promised MSP of ₹6,000 per quintal for soya bean, while Congress’s Rahul Gandhi vowed ₹7,000. But beyond these headlines, little changed. On July 3, opposition parties staged a walkout in the Maharashtra assembly, accusing the state of ignoring the non-payment crisis for soybean farmers, as reported by PTI.
Rahul Gandhi’s reaction to the suicide figures summed up public frustration: “767 families shattered in three months. Is this just a statistic? Or a stain on our collective conscience?”
सोचिए.. सिर्फ 3 महीनों में महाराष्ट्र में 767 किसानों ने आत्महत्या कर ली।
क्या ये सिर्फ एक आंकड़ा है? नहीं। ये 767 उजड़े हुए घर हैं। 767 परिवार जो कभी नहीं संभल पाएंगे।
और सरकार? चुप है। बेरुख़ी से देख रही है।
किसान हर दिन कर्ज़ में और गहराई तक डूब रहा है – बीज महंगे हैं, खाद… pic.twitter.com/uDzFpYoMrG
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) July 3, 2025
A death every few hours
Farmer rights groups like Kisan Putra Andolan estimate that Maharashtra now loses 7–8 farmers every single day. These are not mere economic failures—they are policy murders, born of wilful neglect, rising input costs, collapsed MSPs, and mounting debt. In over two decades, Maharashtra has recorded 39,825 farmer suicides. Of these, 22,193 were confirmed to be due to agrarian distress. The government has paid ₹220 crore as compensation, an average of just ₹55,000 per suicide.
The numbers are terrifying, but they only tell part of the story. Behind each death is a voice that went unheard, a protest ignored, a loan unpaid, a dream deferred. Maharashtra’s farmer crisis is not seasonal, it is structural. Until that is acknowledged, the state will continue to bury its farmers and their futures, one suicide at a time.
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