MOUNDHALA (BULDANA): His clothes remind me of him,' wails Leelabai, clutching a bundle of clothes in front of the dilapidated structure she calls home, as younger sister Kalabai wipes away her tears. In front of their hut, lay a vast, barren patch of land. On this one-acre plot in Moundhala, on the Vidarbha-Marathwada border, their brother Kashinath Dagdu Waghmare (38) worked for more than 22 years to make both ends meet. But, finally, the debt-ridden farmer ended his life on the first morning after the Centre's loan waiver announcement. Although Kashinath's loan burden was just Rs 10,000, a waiver would not have helped much. He was deep in debt. "He had taken Rs 5,000 from the Bank of Maharashtra a few years ago. The amount had gone up to Rs 10,000. He also used to borrow from others, we don't know from whom and how much. He never told us that,' says his 75-year-old father Dagdu. Kashinath is the third farmer in the village who has committed suicide in the past five years. The answer to their woes is not a waiver: they need better irrigation, a good price for their produce and some kind of a back-up job. Kashinath lived with wife Kamal, 35, son Dnyaneshwar, 16, and daughters Pushpa, 12, and Sneha, 4, in his farm hut that has cotton stalks for walls and a thatched roof riddled with innumerable holes. Unlike the rest of Vidarbha, Moundhala has a percolation tank that provides irrigation to 50 per cent of the farmers, enabling them to get two crops in a year. But the area received scant rainfall the last season, leaving the tank completely dry. Kashinath's tragedy began in 1990, when three acres of their land was acquired for the percolation tank. The family was left with just one acre. "We got a measly Rs 7,000 per acre as compensation,' says Dagdu, adding that marrying off his three daughters also took a toll on his finances. "Each daughter's marriage cost at least Rs 50,000,' he says. He calculates that the funeral expenses will cost at least Rs 5,000. "At least 500 will have to be invited for the Tervi Prasad,' he says. A little distance away, a shining white temple is being built at a total cost of Rs 20 lakh. The farmers raised half the funds through individual contributions. However, none of the 30 self-help groups are operative. Local leaders start squabbling when asked why they couldn't raise funds to help themselves. "If I do something, the other party leader will see to it that it fails,' says Rajendra Jadhav of the Congress, husband of Sarpanch Lata Jadhao. Like Kashinath, the loan waiver hasn't made much of a difference to the 275-odd farming families in the village. Patilba Jadhav, 65, is left with two unmarried daughters and a daughter-in-law. Both his sons committed suicide in a gap of eight years. While the reason for his younger son's suicide is not clear, the elder one killed himself in 2006 for agrarian reasons. Patilba is not eligible for the loan waiver since he holds six acres of land. Then there is Santosh Waghmare, whose outstanding loan amount is Rs 42,000. But he, too, is ineligible for the waiver since he has over five acres of land. Villagers point out that many of them have taken loans from urban banks which don't fall in the ambit of the waiver. As a mark of protest, they have all decided not to pay their loans.