Even as this exercise happened, I wondered what would happen to the one acre of land that belongs to Venkatesa? Will the family transfer it to Renuka and her daughter? Or will they retain it for themselves in the guise of repaying the loans? Assuming that the government considers this a 'genuine' drought-related death (technically the Rs. 50,000 that Venkatesa had borrowed was for seeds and fertilisers) and offers a compensation of over a lakh of rupees, will the men of the family allow that money to reach the young, illiterate widow and her daughter? Would they take that away to repay the loan? What would be her future in a feudal set up? Is the family appearing to be united only after Venkatesa's death? Was there no difference among the brothers? Venkatesa had apparently been talking to all the family members a few hours before he had hung himself from the ceiling. Did the fact that they lived in a joint family give him the confidence that his wife and child would be cared for after his death? Didn't he know that there would be a huge cost for such care giving in the course of time? Do our family structures still retain such humanity?
As these questions were spinning in my head, the villagers forced a tour of the farms to show us stunted crops, slowly acquiring a golden hue from green. But they were distracted for a while. At a distance they showed us some 50 acres of land that belonged to the local MP's son-in-law. They are almost certain that the alignment of the irrigation project wouldn't gobble up that piece of land. With deep cynicism, a villager said: "The rich and influential can change alignments, what can we do?" The village has 3500 acres of cultivable land and how fair was it to take away all of it for the project, they ask. If the government is hell-bent on taking away our land then they should consider giving us land at a place called Nudimala Kancha, they insisted. It is 5000 acres of government land with rich black soil, they informed. I was surprised at the alternatives they had worked out. The anxiety was palpable.