In India, a farmer commits suicide every hour. In Maharashtra alone, 15,000 farmers killed themselves between 2015 and 2018. Yet India does not have a unified policy to compensate families of these dead farmers. Some states offer monetary compensation to their families. Andhra Pradesh now pays Rs 7 lakh as compensation to the families .Telangana has subsumed its Rs 6 lakh suicide compensation scheme with the farmer insurance scheme Rythu Beema Padhakam.
But Maharashtra, with the highest farm suicide rate, pays only Rs 1 lakh ex gratia. In Punjab, 919 farmers may have taken their lives (2017-2019). But the state government has turned a blind eye to their families. Now women farmers have demanded a one-time settlement mechanism,

So that they can be free of debt once their husbands die. They want the finance minister to include a relief and rehabilitation package. So that the women can continue farming debt-free after their husbands death.

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