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DEVELOPMENT:
CROP FAILURE
Harvest
of Despair
It's raining
in Orissa but it's too late-the crops are dead. The dry spell of the past
months spells starvation and ruin for farmers.
By
Ruben Banerjee
Finally,
his prayers have been answered. Having sown his paddy field some months
ago, the elderly Chaturbhuja Patel of village Ghess in Orissa's remote
Bargarh district had made it his habit to scan the horizon for clouds-with
folded hands. At last, a few days ago it began to rain. But there's little
joy here, for the rains have come too late. The crops are withered. Orissa
stares drought in the face.
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| Chaturbhuja
Patel: His daughter's marriage stands postponed since the rains failed |
"I am
ruined," laments Chaturbhuja. With a daughter to be married off next
year, he urgently needed money for the customary dowry. But with the crops
failing, the planned marriage is no more a certainty; neither is the family's
immediate future. Thanks to the last remnants of the stored food following
last year's reasonable harvest, no one in the family is going hungry yet.
A month from now, the stock will be exhausted and there will be nothing
to eat. Patel's family, like a million others, will face starvation.
"There
is no escape. We are finished," rues Sudarshan Kisan, a marginal
farmer of village Malimnda in neighbouring Jharsuguda district. With rains
being scanty throughout the state, and more than half of Orissa in the
midst of a drought, crops have failed all over. Besides Bargarh, Jharsuguda,
Bolangir, Kalahandi and Nuapada districts in rocky western Orissa, even
the relatively more fertile coastal districts like Kendrapara, Jagatsingh-pur,
Jajpur and Cuttack-which were hit by the cyclone last year-have been left
high and dry this time.
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| Ghasiram
Patel: He predicts the death of men and cattle after the crops fail |
"The
situation is grim," admits Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. "We
have a serious crisis at hand." For the farmers the unfolding tragedy
is compounded by the manner of its happening. The onset of rains was timely
and the state received near-normal rainfall of 216.4 mm in June. But between
then and now, it didn't rain at all. Rainfall this time has been deficient
by 23 per cent in the entire state. In areas like Jharsuguda, it is up
to 62 per cent less than normal. Minus proper irrigation facilities-less
than 1 per cent of Jharsuguda is irrigated-the severity of crop loss has
been uniform. By government estimates, crops in more than half of the
38.2 lakh hectares under paddy have suffered irrevocable losses. The loss
so far in terms of money, the Government says, is Rs 622 crore.
All this
means more misery. A severe food scarcity is likely, according to S.K.
Bandyopadhyay of the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United
Nations, based in Bhubaneswar. According to estimates, the shortfall in
cereals would be 68,000 metric tonnes in the districts of Jajpur, Cuttack,
Jagatsinghpur and Kendrapara alone.
"Both
men and cattle will die of hunger together," predicts farmer Ghasiram
Patel. Convinced that the crops are lost for good, the farmers have let
the cattle loose in the fields. Once they are through with the withered
crops, though, there won't be much for them to eat. Without adequate paddy
harvests, there will be little residual straw. And there is little naturally
occurring fodder because the state's forest cover, according to unofficial
figures, is down to 12 per cent.
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| Sudarshan
Kisan: He stands beyond hope knowing that there is no escape |
The Harsh
Realities: To mitigate the advancing disaster, the Government is doing
what it does best: it's making a lot of noise, unrolling plans and pressing
the Centre for funds. A memorandum is being drawn up and the chief minister
will be leading a delegation to Delhi. Schemes have already been announced
in plenty: Rs 3 crore has been sanctioned from the Chief Minister's Relief
Fund to construct cross bunds and Rs 2 crore has been given for starting
lift-irrigation points. More money has been or is being released under
heads ranging from subsidies for buying diesel sets to initiating integrated
watershed works.
Meanwhile
realities remain harsh on the ground. At Loisingha in Bolangir district,
ponds have dried up and the water level in village wells has sunk so low
that it's getting increasingly difficult to fill buckets. Less and less
water is trickling out of the tubewells that are still working, serving
reminders with every jerk on the handles that the water table could be
down drastically. "If hunger does not kill, thirst certainly will,"
predicts Bhakta Charan Das, former Union minister from Kalahandi.
The doomsday
predictions look more real in the face of official incompetence. All of
Sundergarh Sadar division's 89 minor irrigation projects (MIPs) are non-functional
since there was no water to start with. Of its 354 lift-irrigation points,
no less than 88 are defunct. In neighbouring Jharsuguda, 52 of the 87
MIPs are defunct. Another 80-odd of its 117 lift-irrigation points aren't
working. In Nuapada 30 of the district's 40 MIPs are not helping the farmers
in any way.
Back in
Ghess, Chaturbhuja is planning to visit his daughter's would-be in-laws
to postpone the marriage. Many in Nuapada and Bolangir are beginning to
migrate in search of jobs and food. Ghasiram is planning to sell his cows
to buy meals for his family. For a God-fearing man, this is tantamount
to sacrilege. But a desperate struggle to survive calls for desperate
measures.
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