In Kherda village of Maharashtra’s Dharashiv district in the Marathwada region, Manisha Jadhav limps into a low-ceiling meeting hall that can barely accommodate 20 people. She favours the leg she injured while working in her soya bean field a few days earlier.Her eyes drift towards the banyan tree near the entrance. Its trunk is wrapped in layers of white threads tied by married women during the Vat Savitri (Vat Pournima) festival, seeking blessings for an enduring marriage across seven lifetimes. Before joining the other women waiting on the veranda, Manisha walks to the tree and gently runs her fingers over one of the threads.“Baghat hote ajun dhage rahilet ki nahi. Sann sampun pandhra-vis divas zalet (I was just checking whether the thread is still intact. It has been nearly 15-20 days since the festival),” she says with a faint smile.For Manisha, certainty and permanence have become precious commodities. She was pursuing her graduation when she married Chandrasen, a farmer cultivating the family’s rain-fed land. She began building a life with him and their two daughters. But years of crop failures and mounting debt pushed Chandrasen to end his life. Suddenly widowed, Manisha found herself fighting another battle when her in-laws threw her and her young daughters out of the house.She survived by working as a farm labourer, simultaneously fighting for her legal right over the family land. Rumours spread that she wanted to grab the land, abandon her daughters, and elope with someone. When she approached villagers for help, some demanded money while others offered sympathy in the hope of sex, she says.Today, as Manisha sits among a group of four other farm widows in the village, the other women listen to her with quiet respect.Over the past two decades, they say, she has battled every uncertainty with remarkable resilience. She married off her older daughter after she completed higher secondary education while her younger daughter is now pursuing graduation. They have gathered to discuss the Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana, which translates as the Chief Minister’s My Favourite Sister Scheme. It provides direct benefit transfer of ₹1,500 per month to vulnerable women in the State, but is now surrounded by doubt.After providing short-lived relief to women, the State government has been deleting the names of beneficiaries based on certain categories that are excluded: government employees, taxpayers, and existing beneficiaries of welfare schemes. According to local activists, the State government has removed more than 92 lakh women from the beneficiary list so far.This has reduced the original beneficiary base of 2.4 crore women by nearly 38%, raising critical questions about the scheme’s future.Manisha had never availed herself of any pension or welfare scheme for women or farm widows until the then Chief Minister Eknath Shinde announced the monthly aid scheme for women on June 28, 2024.For her and many other farm widows across Marathwada, the ₹1,500 monthly assistance is not merely a welfare payment, but an essential lifeline. “Many women here have a monthly household budget of hardly ₹3,000 to ₹4,000. If this ₹1,500 stops, managing the household will become extremely difficult,” she says.Working on a farm and a budgetManisha now cultivates soya bean on the two acres of dry land that she secured after a prolonged struggle with her in-laws. Although the fight for land is over, her battle with nature and the market continues relentlessly. “When there are good rains, prices crash. When the rains fail, market prices rise but there is hardly any crop to sell,” she says, summing up the paradox that defines dryland farming in Marathwada.Manisha’s story mirrors that of thousands of farming families across the mostly rain-starved region. Despite lying largely in the Godavari basin, the region has few perennial rivers.The Godavari itself skirts much of the region while tributaries such as the Purna, Sindphana, Bindusara, and Shivna
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