HarperCollins India announces the release of Ramrao: The Story of India’s Farm Crisis by Jaideep Hardikar

A topical book against the backdrop of the ongoing farmers’ agitation in India. The author, a seasoned rural journalist, having reported from Maharashtra’s hinterlands for many years, tells the life story of one farmer in the larger context of India’s decades-old farmer suicide crisis.

Siddhesh Inamdar, Executive Editor, HarperCollins India, said, “Ramrao is an exemplary work of reportage. Jaideep Hardikar, one of India’s most experienced and seasoned journalists covering rural affairs, has tracked the life of Ramrao, a regular Vidarbha farmer, over the seven years since he attempted suicide and through it presents a window into a decades-old national crisis. Jaideep’s commitment to the story makes this a truly essential biography for our times.”

Jaideep Hardikar, author of the book, said, “Ramrao’s has been a challenging if enriching work of reporting and writing for me. It has also been a work of much learning. I wished not to write the story of suicides, or the dance of death in the Vidarbha countryside, but of the life and living. In the end, I would want to be Ramrao, the good Samaritan always willing to help others, and not the Ramrao, a struggling productive farmer, the food grower, who has been pushed to the margins of our society at the altar of a new economic order. He strives to make his life better, but almost invariably ends up with economic losses. The loss of hope among the peasantry, I think, is a bigger calamity than the continuing spate of suicides or despair that makes this a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions in modern India.”

About the book

ONE MORNING IN 2014, Ramrao Panchleniwar, a cotton grower in Maharashtra’s infamous Vidarbha region, consumed two bottles of pesticide. Had he succeeded in his bid to commit suicide, he would have been reduced to a statistic. After all, a farmer ends his life every thirty minutes in India; in Maharashtra alone, close to 60,000 such suicides have taken place over the past two decades.

But Ramrao miraculously survived. In this book, rural journalist Jaideep Hardikar attempts to put a face to the country’s unending farm crisis with his story. He takes the reader on a journey of the everyday life of an Indian farmer, his struggles and many failings, the quagmire of issues he faces, and how he comes to a pass where he chooses to put an end to it all.

The result of years of committed reportage, Ramrao turns an ordinary life into an essential biography for our times.

Advance Praise

‘Jaideep Hardikar has lived Ramrao’s life for some time to write this searing biography of a farmer in Vidarbha. Through the protagonist, the book, in a sense, projects the everyday tribulations of the agrarian community in India, for whom death, not life, has become the favoured option. It is a resounding answer to a question that we often casually ask: why do farmers commit suicide? Ramrao is a throbbing cry from the ground, the anti-heroic story of an ordinary man who almost succumbs to near-fatal despair but survives to tell the tale.’
– Meena Menon, independent journalist and author

‘Jaideep masterfully narrates a story about the life of the Indian farmer over the past few years, intricately weaving in the string of policy failures on an unprecedented scale that have brought things to such a pass. Even while painting its bleakest moments, the book captures the prevailing rustic humour and spirit in equal measure. It does not pre-judge but allows the readers to figure out for themselves who is responsible for the trajectory of tragedies: the politicians, the bureaucracy or the people themselves for the choices they make at the elections.’
– Ajay Vir Jakhar, Chairman, Bharat Krishak Samaj

‘Jaideep could have easily penned the extraordinary life of the rich and famous. Instead, he chose the plebian tale of an Indian farmer and, through him, the story of India’s rural half. Ramrao survives and continues in the chilling commonness, like countless others, of debt and drudgery. Jaideep’s book is a quietly searing of our billionaire-obsessed nation and tells us that the problem is not with the farmer or farming but with the exploitative system that refuses to allow farmer-friendly policies. It is an important work that must be read by those who want to understand the ABC of agriculture as well as by policy planners.’
– Vijay Jawandhia, farmers’ leader and co-founder of the Shetkari Sanghatna

‘Jaideep Hardikar tells the agonising story of what keeps farmers perpetually indebted. Through the life of a small farmer, he explores the depth and extent of the misery that farmers are faced with—their everyday struggles, untiring efforts, the restless nights and how they hope against hope that tomorrow may turn out to be a better day. Gripping and engrossing, the book takes you deep into India’s agrarian distress.’
– Devinder Sharma, food, policy and agriculture analyst and commentator

 

About the Author

Jaideep Hardikar is a Nagpur-based senior journalist, writer, researcher and a core member of the People’s Archive of Rural India. He has reported extensively from Vidarbha on farmer suicides and the cotton crisis for more than a decade. He has worked with DNA and The Telegraph among other publications.

Jaideep is the winner of several journalism fellowships and awards, including the Sanskriti Award for young journalists, which he received in 2003 for his reportage on rural issues. In 2009, he travelled to the US under the Alfred Friendly Press Fellowship programme and worked with Sun Sentinel in South Florida.

He is also the author of A Village Awaits Doomsday (2013) on the lives of people displaced by government and private projects across the country. It was born of his travels under the K.K. Birla Foundation Media Fellowship in 2001. He won the prestigious New India Foundation fellowship in 2021 for research for his next book.