Software professionals come together to settle loans of Vidarbha farmers

Nagpur: After Manohar Banerkar, a farmer from Pimpre Khurd town of Akola, committed suicide, his wife Panchkula was left starving with her children. Lalita Gudadhe from Samudrapur in Wardha district was struggling for survival after her farmer husband Santosh ended his life. Sukhdeo Somkunwar, an aggrieved farmer from Karanja Ghadge in Wardha, was planning on taking the extreme step as he was handicapped.
Both Manohar and Santosh ended their lives, like thousands of other farmers in Vidarbha and Marathwada, due to continuous crop failure and ever mounting debts. Some software professionals from Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur have now come together to do something about it. Instead of giving money directly to farmers, they have devised a unique way of repaying the loans farmers had availed from various banks.
They operate under under the banner of NGO Apulkee and have named their campaign ‘Jagriti’. “We have identified 121 farmers and their families who really needed help. They had a total outstanding of Rs83.64 lakh. We took help of Apulkee volunteers, who had vast experience of working in such areas. Of them, we would be ending loans of 29 farmers by paying Rs9 lakh in the first phase,” Abhijit Falke, who runs Abyz Infotech India, a software firm in Pune, told TOI.
Falke is associated with Apulkee established in 2012 by the team of young engineering professionals primarily hailing from farming families. With over 5,000 members across globe, the NGO aims at developing agricultural sector through various means.
The idea of repaying loans was initially mooted by Mayuri Dhavale, who works as consultant for many companies in Pune, and is a member of Apulkee. She initially thought of mobilizing corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds of many companies. When that did not materialize, she approached Apulkee members, who helped her to reach out to donors with help of social networking platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp.
Their efforts helped raise Rs9 lakh that would help end the debts of 29 farmers from Amravati, Yavatmal, Washim, Akola and Wardha. Falke would be coming to hand over cheques directly to bank from Monday. “I would be visiting Wardha and Akola to give cheques to bank managers regarding loans taken by Gudadhe, Somkunwar and Banerkar families,” Falke said adding that he had got many enquiries from countries like Singapore for help.
Banerkar failed to pay Rs35,000 taken from ADCC Cooperative Bank in Hiwarkhed in Akot while Gudadhe could not repay Rs38,000 crop loan of Samudrapur Cooperative Bank. Sonkunwar had an outstanding of Rs46,829 from Wardha District Cooperative Bank. Of the 121 financially distressed farmers identified, 19 have already killed themselves.
Falke and other members of the team are trying hard to garner more funds for remaining families and have appealed to companies, NGOs, social workers and common citizens to help them save lives of farmers.