In order to personally meet families of poor and distressed farmers, All India Congress Committee (AICC) vice-president Rahul Gandhi will be walking through a few of the richest villages in Adilabad district.
His padayatra on May 14 and May 15 will witness contrasting scenes — vast expanses of freshly harvested paddy fields and other agriculture-related activity juxtaposed with poverty and problems of the kind faced by the farmer families in question.
Farmers’ suicide
The five farmers who had committed suicide during the last eight months in Laxmanchanda and Mamda mandals were actually odd men out given the flourishing agriculture in the area.
Unlike the cotton farmers of the interiors of the district, farmers in these mandals lying on the banks of the river Godavari have made it good over the years by cultivating paddy, maize and turmeric in kharif as well as rabi every year.
The better economic condition of villages Vadial, Rachapur, Laxmanchanda in the same mandal and Kortikal in Mamda mandal, which would be part of Mr. Gandhi's 14-km Sandesh Yatra, is evident from financial strength of village development committees in the places. The Laxmanchanda VDC even helps in running a degree college, a rarity for a mandal headquarters village.
The layout of the habitations and the quality of connecting roads also reveals a lot about 'development'. Though the connecting roads are single-lane carriageways, the actual width available including side berms is about 20 ft which will even be convenient for the large number of Congressmen likely to follow the AICC leader on his walkathon.
Barring a few, houses in all these villages are comparatively large and in a very good condition despite being half-a-century old in many instances.
