The monsoon beats a menacing retreat in Marathwada

Bhimabai Ujjan Pawar stands in the slush, as her goats look for leaves. She is a single woman from the Pardhi community, a Scheduled Tribe that has been socially discriminated against. She has never been to school and does not know her age, though people in the village say she must be about 55. Wielding an axe, she moves through a rain-ravaged farm in Warapgaon, a village in Beed district, Maharashtra, hacking at branches so her goats can feed on leaves they cannot reach. She seems indifferent to the thorns.

“This is all I have left now,” she says, calling out to the 15 grazing goats, four of them still young. “I used to sell them and then buy my rations from Kalamb (a village with a marketplace accessed by the hamlets in the region). But I have lost 7 kids and four goats in the floods. I had to just throw them away. What to do?” she says.

Since her childhood, she has never seen such heavy rains, she says. The rains began in July and continued for days, halting in between. While the worst came in September, what aggravated the situation were the concentrated heavy bouts of rain. On September 16, 2025, for example, Beed received 143.7 mm rainfall, making it the highest in the region for that 24-hour period.

“We got over 130% of the total precipitation this monsoon. Beed is otherwise a semi-arid region,” says Beed Collector Vivek Johnson. Marathwada, a region comprising eight districts, is known for being drought-prone with low and irregular rainfall during the monsoon season. This was the first time in recorded history that the entire region had seen floods, says Marathwada Divisional Commissioner, Jitendra Papalkar.

In Marathwada alone, there were 108 deaths. Over 54 lakh farmers have been affected and 41 lakh hectares of farmland have been ravaged. The Maharashtra government announced a package of ₹31,628 crore for flood-affected farmers in the State before Diwali in October, but the disbursement is still on. Several farmers are under the burden of institutional and non-institutional debt, with little means to repay them.

River forces

“Historically, this is the first time that all the rivers were flooded at the same time. There was high discharge from all the dams and 1.5 lakh cusecs of water was discharged at the same time. All the rivers were flowing above the danger mark. We had more than 70 severely affected villages in Beed alone. We had to carry out a chopper rescue in Ashti (a city in Beed),” Johnson says.

Johnson says that in several places, rivers changed course. “This was observed with the Sindphana particularly,” he says. Though Sindphana is a minor tributary of Godavari river, it is an important river in Beed as its drainage basin covers 80% of the district.

On the banks of Manjra river too, life was disrupted. The Manjra is a significant tributary of the Godavari, India’s second longest river. It originates in Beed’s Balaghat range and flows through Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Telangana before joining the Godavari. It is a major waterway for the region.

Workers in Beed district are cutting the ruined soybean crop in a field after the recent floods in Marathwada.
| Photo Credit:
Emmanual Yogini

“My field is not on the river banks, yet it is completely damaged. I have 2 acres of land and had cultivated soybean. But look at what the rains have done this time,” says 32-year-old Vikas Mahadev Shinde, standing on a damaged bridge on the Manjra river in his village Bhopla. The village is on the boundary of Dharashiv and Beed, both the districts battered by rainfall. Villagers recall how a man was swept away by the strong currents before their eyes in September, when the river had swelled. Mangled solar panels speak volumes about the strength of the currents.

A few kilometres away, at the confluence of the Bobhati and Khatkal rivers, two tributaries of Manjra, is Hanumant Bhosale’s farm. He had cultivated soybean on two acres of land. Today, he can’t even walk to his field. “I am 60 years old. Not just me, even generations gone before never described such floods. We couldn’t have imagined seeing so much water! The rains started on May 7 (2025), and didn’t stop,” he says.

Sleepless nights

Several villagers recounted how they spent sleepless nights as heavy rainfall lashed their crops and homes. “The rains were so violent. We were scared that our homes will be blown away. Water would rise within hours,” says Ramraje Prabhu Gond, 39.

In Borgaon, another village on the banks of the Manjra River, which wreaked havoc in the district, lies Ramkrushna Rajendra Gavhane’s partially collapsed house. The 31-year-old farmer says he hasn’t yet received any government aid. The government had announced ₹10,000 immediate aid for those whose houses had collapsed. He worries about how he will take care of his family. His ageing mother has an injured hip and finds it difficult to move around. His wife will soon return from her parents’ house, after giving birth to their child.

“I haven’t been able to sleep,” he says, standing outside, on the rubble of his house. In the partially collapsed house, his four-month-old nephew gurgles. His sister is home for her delivery. He is asking her to go back home. “I don’t want to live with the guilt of hurting their baby.” She responds saying, “When you are in distress, how can I leave you alone and run away?”

Their ailing mother frets at the cost of everything: her daughter’s delivery, her daughter-in-law’s delivery. “The crops are lost. It will cost a lakh (rupees) for a C-section (Cesarean),” she says, looking at the idols of the gods and goddesses.

Dark Deepavali

Farmers have slowly started getting compensation, but many still await it. Ramkrushna Gavhane, for example, hasn’t got a single rupee so far, he claims. The government had promised to disburse funds before Deepavali in October, but that didn’t happen in many cases. The entire region runs on an agrarian economy, and the effects are felt in the markets too. The footfall in shops has reduced.

“Earlier, you would not find space to stand on this road for a minute. And today, look at the empty road. All the small shopkeepers who ran their shops on credit have had to shut down. We are the biggest and the oldest shop here, but even we find it difficult today,” says Subhashchandra Gaurilal Samadaria, the owner of Marathwada Textile Store in Beed’s main market. The three-storeyed store, established in 1972 employs nearly 60 people. “I have started losing my cool over the smallest of things. Business has not picked up this festive season. We are all dependent on the farmers here for business,” he says, adding that he doesn’t know how he will pay salaries.

Atul Porwal of Porwal Shoes, a 25-year-old business, says the whole infrastructure is geared towards farming. “We have no MIDC (Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation) here, no industry. There is no other employment opportunity apart from agriculture. So our economy is still rural, agrarian-based,” he says. He says his friend who sells appliances told him that people aren’t buying refrigerators, air conditioners, or any gadgets. He himself generally gets high footfall during the change of season, when people come in to buy shoes, but that is minimal this year.

Debt-ridden farmers

Udaysinha Navnath Shinde from Borgaon village has received ₹9,500 in two instalments so far. He owns 6 acres of land. The government deposited ₹6,500 in his account before Diwali, and ₹3,000 on October 29. But he is a worried man. “Just the cost of clearing my field is six times this compensation. Since the soil had been completely washed away, I will have to re-silt my farm after clearing the rotting crop. The rabi (winter) season of sowing seems to be a distant dream,” he says. He shows his well buried under the debris, saying pumps and sprinkler sets have stopped working because of the water.

He is already in debt. “I have a ₹10 lakh loan on me. I got my daughter married just a few months ago. I took loans for it. I thought that I would sell this soybean and repay the loan, but look at what remains in my field now,” he gestures around, standing in ankle-deep slush. He says the moneylenders have started calling. “My daughter’s in-laws have asked for some gifts. How will I give anyone anything? I haven’t even been able to clear the rotting crop from my field,” he says, angrily uprooting the rotting soybean plants, throwing them away.

Dattatray Bhagwat Shinde, another farmer in the village, says that the cost to clean out the field is ₹10,000 per acre. Most farmers lost cattle, and cattle feed was drenched and had to be thrown away.

Ismail Sheikh from Daithna, in Ambajogai taluka of Beed district asks, “Why are we farming? To sustain the tractor seller, to sustain the fertiliser shop, or to run my own house? Farming seems more and more unsustainable. We had sown the rabi season a fortnight ago. But the severity of the retreating monsoon has wasted it.” He says education and healthcare costs have grown, and floods and droughts lash them. He speaks of a villager in the neighbouring village who received ₹3,500 per acre for his 10 acres of land. “The cost of cultivation for soybean per acre is ₹20,000. The cost for cleaning the land due to the previous damages is not even counted. Is this a joke?”

This week, the Maharashtra government announced that it had distributed ₹8,000 crore to around 40 lakh farmers in Maharashtra. Small and marginal farmers have called for a complete loan waiver. A nine-member committee has been constituted, and a loan waiver will be granted, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis announced this week.

vinaya.deshpande@thehindu.co.in

Edited by Sunalini Mathew