60 #Gurgaon Mothers Offer to Help 2 Children Orphaned by Farmers’ Crisis in #Telangana

MEDAK, TELANGANA: 13-year-old Bhanu lives in constant fear, worried by the stream of visitors who frequent his tiny, makeshift house in a small village in Telangana’s Medak district. Most ask for money that his father, a cotton farmer, had borrowed but failed to repay. After a failed crop, he hanged himself two months ago, allegedly after lenders threatened to take away his children.

“There is nothing in the house, even to eat. But they are coming and putting a lot of pressure on us… We get scared. My sister and I go to pick cotton and get up to Rs. 100 rupees a day. But that is only on some days, and that is not enough to repay debts,” Bhanu, who just completed Class 7, says. Orphaned – his mother died two years ago – Bhanu and his younger sister, Vijayalakshmi, have been forced to work in the fields so they don’t go hungry.