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.
His story was not an exception. Over 140 families across the state were denied compensation, not because their pain was any less, but because the system refused to recognise tenant farmers as farmers.
For a while, families resigned themselves to this silence. That was when a collective stepped in.
Under the banner of Rythu Swarajya Vedika, a group of activists quietly took up their cause, not with slogans, but with resolve. They approached the Telangana High Court with a public interest litigation, seeking justice for 141 families. Most were tenant cultivators, long ignored in policy and protection.
Their fight wasn’t just for compensation. It questioned the very definition of who qualifies as a farmer, and what counts as a farmer’s death. The court agreed, ordering a reinvestigation into all 141 cases.
The findings were stark. These were farmer suicides.
In January 2025, the government responded, issuing a Government Order sanctioning `9 crore in ex gratia. But justice, once again, lingered on paper. For six months, no money reached the families.
Refusing to let silence settle, petitioner B Kondal Reddy filed a contempt petition. The court stepped in again — with sharp words and firm deadlines. Only then, in July, did the aid finally reach the hands it was meant for.
“This was, in many ways, an experiment in hope,” says Kondal Reddy. “We believed that justice, even when delayed, must not be denied.”
Now, with the same quiet determination, Rythu Swarajya Vedika is fighting for 200 more families, continuing a persistent movement for those erased from the official record.
When TNIE contacted Telangana Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare Commission chairman M Kodanda Reddy about the delay in disbursing compensation, he blamed the previous BRS government for neglecting farmer suicides. He assured the grieving families that the current government would release the arrears. He added that he has held several meetings with officials, farmers’ organisations and psychiatrists to draft a comprehensive plan to prevent further farmer suicides.