Telangana’s tenant farmers, who form the backbone of its agriculture, continue to fall through the cracks of state welfare schemes despite repeated political promises and mounting debt-driven suicides.
Kuruva Manjula is one of thousands of tenant farmers left unrecognised, unpaid and unheard in the state. The 29-year-old, a mother of three young children aged 11, 10 and 7, lost her husband to farm suicide five years ago. Despite mounting debts of Rs 9 lakh, she continues to persevere.
Manjula has approached every government official she could over the years and even met Indian National Congress leader Rahul Gandhi during his 4,000-kilometre march in 2023 called Bharat Jodo Yatra.
This season, she cultivated cotton and maize on three acres, two of which she leased. However, she did not receive any government assistance, as the land her husband farmed was in her mother-in-law’s name. Consequently, she was not eligible for compensation under the Rythu Bima, a Farmers Group Life Insurance Scheme launched by the Telangana government in August 2018. The scheme offers Rs 5 lakh to land-owning farmers aged 18 to 59 who die due to natural or unnatural causes.
Manjula has managed to repay Rs 2.8 lakh of her late husband’s Rs 5 lakh debt on her own. Her parents contributed Rs 2 lakh, which helped her secure a Rs 6 lakh loan to build a house with a concrete roof. “I have not been able to plaster it with cement,” she said. “I still haven’t received any assurance under the Indiramma Housing Scheme.” Her husband died after repeated crop failures caused by untimely or excessive rains.
A resident of Tondapalli village in Parigi mandal, Vikarabad district, Manjula spoke at a press conference organised by Rythu Swarajya Vedika (RSV), a farmer advocacy group, in Hyderabad on May 12, 2025. She said her name had been removed from the double-bedroom housing allotment list in the final days of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) government.
RSV activist J Narasimhulu said she was eligible for Rs 6 lakh in compensation under Government Order (GO) 194, which mandates a visit by a three-member committee from the revenue, police and agriculture departments to determine if a suicide was farm-related. “The process is not being followed anywhere in the state,” he alleged. “If implemented, this can help her break the debt cycle.”
Manjula has received no support even under the Congress-led government, despite being seen as a Congress supporter by the previous BRS regime. Her photo with Rahul Gandhi had been published during the Bharat Jodo Yatra. She met him as part of a civil society delegation advocating for tenant farmers’ rights to be included in the Congress agenda, said S Ashalatha of the Women Farmers’ Rights Forum.
Chapala Sujatha, 35, a tenant farmer from Garla mandal in Mahabubabad district, expressed shock after being told the Indiramma house sanctioned in her late husband’s name might be cancelled. Her husband, Chapala Venkanna, 39, died by suicide on January 8, 2024 due to a Rs 3.5 lakh debt incurred while cultivating chillis.
“The Congress government came to power promising benefits for tenant farmers like us. But tenancy rates have risen to Rs 30,000 per acre. My husband, a BEd graduate, turned to farming after failing to secure a job,” she said.
Sujatha had to leave her own one-acre plot fallow this season for lack of funds. She said she relied on daily wage labour to survive and received only four weeks of work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, despite being eligible for 100 days. Even those wages were yet to be paid in full.
She has neither received Rs 5 lakh under Rythu Bima, since her family lacks ownership of the land, nor had any official visited the family under the GO 194 protocol. Her father-in-law said they had benefitted from a loan waiver during the first BRS tenure, but stopped receiving any such relief after former Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao opposed recognising tenant farmers in the Assembly.
Sujatha said she was planning to transfer her children — currently in Classes 7 and 3 — from private to government schools next year as she could no longer afford the fees.
Kiran Vissa of RSV criticised the Congress government for failing to act on its promises to tenant farmers. “If they don’t implement the Land Licensed Cultivators Act, 2011 and extend benefits such as Rythu Bharosa (Rs 12,000 per acre input subsidy), crop loans and other entitlements by the next kharif season, this government would have failed halfway into its five-year term,” he said. Revanth Reddy, now Chief Minister, had addressed tenant farmers directly with an open letter when he was state Congress president.
Justice for tenant farmers had also been a key promise in the Congress’s Warangal Declaration and its election manifesto. Reddy’s letter acknowledged that 80 per cent of farm suicides involved tenant farmers and pledged to implement the 2011 Act passed during an earlier Congress government.
Responding to state Agriculture Minister Tummala Nageswara Rao’s comments downplaying the issue, Vissa said, “The state must take the lead in dispelling landowners’ doubts. It boasts of spending over Rs 20,000 crore on farm loan waivers but excludes tenant farmers. Reports show that 30-40 per cent of Rythu Bharosa subsidies are going to absentee landlords. This must stop.”
Ravi Kanneganti of RSV allegedthat all political parties had shown disregard for tenant farmers. He said BRS chief K Chandrashekar Rao, while criticising the Congress at the party’s 25th foundation day in Warangal, did not mention the plight of tenant farmers — a reflection of his own track record on the issue.
RSV demanded that loan waivers and all other support schemes be extended to tenant farmers and called for immediate implementation of the Land Licensed Cultivators Act, 2011.