Perspectives’ Visit to Drought Hit Bundelkhand

This season, a total of 246 districts have been identified as drought hit. In this context a 13 member team from Perspectives went to villages of Hamirpur and Mahoba districts (Uttar Pradesh) and Chattarpur district (Madya Pradesh) of Bundelkhand region to study the impact of drought on agriculture and livelihood of people. The visit gave us helpful insights into some factors affecting agriculture in Bundelkhand which are never discussed during mainstream policy making.

Various programmes initiated by the Central government in the name of drought relief and sold to the public as immediate alleviation measures to deal with the crisis were found to be deceptive. The government relied entirely on the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) as a solution to the crisis. Treating drought simply as a natural calamity has overlooked and bypassed a deep problem.

The fund received as part of the drought relief package is a meagre Rs. 250-750, distributed according to the size of land holdings, to compensate for the loss of crops. This is given through a bank cheque.
The idea that the rains in mid September would assure a good Rabi crop and cover the shortfall in income from the kharif season was also untrue. Farmers suffered losses due to the untimely rains as tilli which had been sown, was destroyed by the rains. Due to these losses, farmers do not have funds to sow the rabi crop even if the soil has gained some moisture.

The drought situation in Bundelkhand is not new but has only now become prominent in the wake of the recent shortfall in rains all over the country. According to the local sources this situation has persisted over the last five years, only getting progressively worse.

Drought in this region is not only due to natural causes but a large scale ecological disturbance, leading to reduced rainfall all over the area. Over 70% of the forest cover has been wiped off by illegal felling of trees. Rampant mining on mountains for stone violating all environmental laws only aggravates the situation by degrading the land fertility in surrounding areas. This large scale destruction of natural resources viz. cutting of mountains and forest area manifests itself in declining rainfall and reduced fertility of land. With less forests and water, local people are forced to abandon their cattle due to lack of fodder.

With no occupation other than agriculture people are forced to migrate. A farmer with 10 hectares of land also has to do labour in order to survive. Migrants have to labour in construction projects and brick kilns under inhuman conditions.

NREGA was supposed to check migration and provide relief at time of crisis so that a person does not lose his/her entitlements. But the majority of people who actually need the NREGA are unable to find jobs despite having job cards. It was evident that this failure was due to lack of micro level planning and corruption at all levels. 

Drought relief policy should not focus entirely on short term fire fighting policies but look at the root causes of the failure of monsoon and its impact on the livelihood of people. In Bundelkhand one of the dominant problems understood was ecological i.e. due to massive mining and deforestation.

Ritesh Jain

 M.A. Economics, SIS

Jawaharlal Nehru University