In India's Drought Crisis, Suicides Increase Among Farmers Deep In Debt

"Tukaram Jadhav was barely surviving off of his tiny cotton farm when he killed himself last September. His widow, a petite mother of two, pulls her purple sari tightly around her, and says she discovered her husband as he lay dying.

"I was the one who found him. I was sleeping and woke up to the powerful smell of pesticides that we use to farm," Bhagyashree Jadhav says. She says she thought there had been a spill. "I asked my husband if he smelled it, then I realized he couldn't speak. He'd swallowed the pesticide." Tukaram languished in the hospital for two days before dying.

Bhagyashree is one of the new widows of Beed on farms in the western state of Maharashtra. They face life with no water and usually no inheritance of their husband's land in this deeply conservative culture."

Julie McCarthy reports for NPR May 15, 2015.