Troubled by drought for the second year in a row and the debt that has piled up against loans, 300-households of Taktoda village in Sengaon Taluka of Hingoli district in Marathwada, put their village up on sale. ‘CM, this village is for sale’ said a huge banner outside the Panchayat office even as 300 members sat down to draft a letter to CM Devendra Fadnavis on Friday, demanding the right to ‘mass euthanasia’ to escape the despair if the state won’t allow loan waiver or, crop insurance.
Taktoda is like any other village in water-starved Vidarbha region, but here, the 3,000-odd population holds the government to be ‘the biggest defaulter’, not the monsoon, which has failed them time and again.
Namdev Patange, 39, said, “The wells have gone dry. Crops have failed despite high input costs. With no water, investment in crops cannot be redeemed or loans repaid. What do we do with such land?”