Kamala Markandaya is a woman novelist portrayed the role of rural women in agriculture. Indian culture is embedded in agriculture for centuries. Her novels blame the vagaries of nature disaster and industrialization for crisis in rural India. The most advanced stage of these issues are lead to hunger, poverty, starvation, degradation of land and human life. It ultimately drives away the farmers from rural areas to urban areas in search of better life. Kamala Markandaya observes the Indian agriculture passing through a period of severe crisis. Although some features of these crises in agriculture started manifesting themselves in certain parts of south India during pre-independence period, these crises had assumed a serious dimension since the introduction of tanneries in rural areas. There is a general perception that unbearable burden of debt and starvation augmented as a result of natural calamities is indicative of a crisis in Indian agriculture. In this paper, an attempt has been made to find out the causes of the crisis, problems faced by the agriculture sector and at the end how rural tenant farmers overcome these crises for sustainable living. It is observed that Rukmani had overcome the hurdles through her innate capacity to withstand the exploitation and rise above the poverty. She achieved her identity through self-confidence, perseverance and hopefulness, fight for their rights and protecting the land and nature.