‘Lies, fake pics’: Meet Marathwada women named in ICAR booklet claiming ‘farm income doubled’

One of the big promises of Prime Minister Narendra Modi was to double farmers’ income by 2022. In 2022, the Indian Council of Agriculture Research published a booklet with a compilation of “success stories of 75,000 farmers out of innumerable successful farmers” whose income had doubled. 

The booklet, with a foreword from Union agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar, to mark 75 years of independence, appeared to validate PM Modi’s promise. It also pointed to a policy push and the implementation of a location-specific strategy by the government.

But Newslaundry found that the ground realities are in stark contrast to the booklet’s claims in several case studies. At Barul in Maharashtra’s Marathwada, which records severe farm distress, we met six women who have been featured in the booklet but do not own farm land or have not doubled their income. 

Sakharbai Sagur, one of the village’s farmers who is in her sixties, is mentioned in the booklet as aged 27. It says her income surged from Rs 67,170 to Rs 1,47,170 between 2017 and 2021 and that she owns four acres of land. 

But Sagur said, “This all seems to be a lie. I don’t have any land in my name. My family has around 15 acres of land, and we have never earned a gross income of more than Rs 1 lakh in the last 10 to 15 years.”

Watch.