The acute vulnerability of farmers’ widows is expected to be highlighted in India’s new national policy for women. The draft, unveiled last month, said the government would design special packages for them including alternative livelihood options.



Help has also come from other quarters. Actors Nana Patekar and Makarand Anaspure have set up a charity to help farmers and widows in Maharashtra, while Habitat for Humanity has built about 60 homes for widows without land deeds in the state’s Marathwada region.

Still, almost 500 women farmers killed themselves in 2014, most of them probably widows crushed by debt, activists say.

Wandile, the widow forced out of her husband’s home, moved in with her mother for two years before she was asked to leave her home too. Hearing that her in-laws were about to sell the land, she filed a case against them with the help of a charity.

She was eventually given 100,000 rupees as her husband’s share from the sale and now lives in a two-room home she built with a microfinance loan in Alipur village.