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February 1-15, 2016 | Vol. 07 Issue 01 | ` 30

RNI N o . U PE N G/ 2010/ 33798 | PRN: UP/GBD-150/2015-17
w ww .go ve rna nce no w. co m

The epicentre
of drought
Why Bundelkhand is on the verge of the worst-ever famine
p.24
A common man
shows the way,
builds roads out of
waste plastic

Decoding climate
change with world
met body expert
Rupa Kumar Kolli

p.06

p.40

Gov NEXT

Will crores spent

in e-governance
initiatives reach
the farmer?
p.54

people politics policy performance

Ground Report

The
parched
land
Bundelkhand is staring at the risk of the worst-ever famine.
Blame it on misplaced policies and priorities

photos: arun kumar

24 GovernanceNow | February 1-15, 2016

Shubhendu Parth

he sun had just set in

this village of Tikamgarh district in Madhya Pradesh. The sudden darkness engulfed
us as our car was about
to hit the well-carpeted single-lane road at
the end of a nearly 2.5 km dirt track.
Our vehicle came to a screeching halt.

As the dust began to settle, 10, 50, 60

over 100 faces emerged in the yellow
beam of the vehicles headlights. They
were signalling us to stop. While a few
men were standing in the middle of
the road, some were even sitting there
blocking more than half of the road.
Sir, let us move out of this place,
said a local who was traveling with us
as a guide till the nearest main road,
lest we lose our way. They are from
the colony of scheduled tribes from the
village that we just visited. We have already heard them.
Yogendra Yadav, who was leading
a volunteer team of Swaraj Abhiyan
(a political group he and Prashant

Bhushan formed after quitting AAP)

that I was accompanying to study the
impact of rain deficit in Bundelkhand
region, asked the driver to stop.
As he rolled down the window, we
could hear women, children and elderly requesting us to listen to their story. I could easily identify Om Prakash
whom I had spoken barely 20 minutes
ago during our visit to Kodiya village
earlier in the evening. He seemed better off than others and was motivating
others to speak up their concerns without fear during our visit at the village.
They are from two nearby ST
(scheduled tribes) colonies. They want
to tell you their side of the story, Om

Kachula talab of village Mamaun in Chhatarpur district has just a

little water left. Villagers do not expect it to last beyond 15 days.
www.GovernanceNow.com 25

Prakash said. What is it that they want

to tell us now, I thought. Is there more
of drought than what meets our eyes
or is it about the atrocities by the upper caste and the well-off? The man
had pulled me in a corner during our
earlier interaction in the village to inform me that the number of rape cases
and exploitation of the women folk has
gone up recently.
People have deserted their homes
or left their families and moved to cities
and towns for better jobs and work opportunities. A lot of women and young
girls are staying alone. Some people in
the village are taking advantage of the
situation, he had whispered to me.
I am not an officer or MLA or minister, Yadav told the crowd. I cannot do
anything except try to convey your message and write a letter to the chief minister and other ministers. My journalist
friend can write about the drought situation and your plight, he added.

town in Madhya Pradesh for the night

stay after visiting Mastapur and Kodia villages earlier on this hot winter
afternoon.

The great water emergency

The helplessness was all pervasive.
They wanted to grab the only opportunity to get heard to convey their
plight, and their worries that the nearby Jamni river had water just enough
to last two months; they had just one
tube-well that could fill only two pots
in 15 minutes; or the fact that the only
well, located one and a half km away,
had almost dried up with just a months
water for animals. The old pond nearby had completely dried up, despite the
fact that the villagers had silted it.
Every family contributed one man
each day for over a month to silt the
pond and deepen it. But it did not help
much because of scanty rain, said a
villager. Om Prakash had told me that

Despite a formal Manual for Drought Management

prepared by the department of agriculture in 2009,
neither UP nor MP or the centre have taken any step to
mitigate the situation in Bundelkhand.
Kachhu baat nahi, saab. Hamar
mann ke baat to aap sunhai sakat ho.
Shayad aap kachhu kar sako, nahi to
aaj talak kou hamar sudhi naahi lin
(It does not matter, sir. At least you
can listen to us. Perhaps you will be
able to do something. No one else has
even bothered to even ask us how we
were doing), said another villager,
Sundar, in local Bundeli language. He
was around 45 years and I had spoken
with him in the panchayat ground of
Kodiya.
Sahab, mora mori lei kachu nahi
hai khan ko (Sir, I do not have anything
to feed my son and daughter), said a
women as we got down from the car.
The crowd of over 150 people walked
behind us as we headed towards a shed
that had an incandescent bulb at the
door. Soon the villagers spread a sheet
that was made by stitching together
HDPE (high-density polyethylene) fertiliser bags, and under the headlights
of the two SUVs we were travelling in,
it became our jan sabha the third on
our first day of the four-day tour of five
districts across Bundelkhand region.
We were on our way to Tikamgarh

26 GovernanceNow | February 1-15, 2016

the villagers were hopeful that the canal which was supposed to bring water from the Jamni and Katraunda dam
would improve the water level in Kodiya but there was no progress on this
since the forest department was yet to
give its clearance. Besides, for reasons
unknown, the authorities had changed
the route of the proposed canal, shifting it a few a kilometres away from the
village.
We are facing a huge shortage of
drinking water. The nearest well that
still has water is one and a half kilometre away. How many times can we
bring water? Do we give it to our kids
or the cattle? said a woman with child
in her lap.
There is no water. The entire pulse
crop was destroyed because of a hailstorm during last season. Had sown 50
kg and somehow just managed to reap
as much. Majority of the rabi crop has
dried up. Whatever is left will come
handy as fodder, said a man who had
informed us that all of his five acre land
is barren because he could not sow
anything. The voices started echoing.
Most households have one or two

cattle. We take them to the nearby well

for water. The water from the well is
not good for human beings. There is a
hand-pump near the house of the Bade
Maharaj (sarpanch). Sometimes we
bring water from there. But it is quite
far. How many times can children and
women go there? another villager
added. Still another chipped in, We
used to irrigate our land by pumping
water from the pond but now it has
dried up. The river is also drying up. It
may last for a month or two.
It was the same story at Mastapur
village and the main Kodiya village.
And there seemed no end to it Lakhairi, Bar and Matguwan in Tikamgarh
district; Papta and Mamaun in Chhatarpur; Rajwara in Lalitpur; Sijahri, Basora, Palka and Majhalwara in Mahoba;
Gehbra, Bhabani, Bhamai, Baijamau
and Garaha in Hamirpur all of them
had tales of economic hardship, water
and food scarcity, large-scale migration, unemployment, distress and crisis written across the villages and on
peoples faces. And then there were elders and cattle abandoned to fend for
themselves because the family and the
owners had no means to buy food and
fodder for them.
Both my sons are away. I dont
know where they are but I believe they
are earning well somewhere in cities,
enough to feed and take care of their
children and wife, said Buddhudin
of Sijahri village in Mahoba district in
UP. He has a few acres of land that has
remained fallow for two years and a
house whose walls may collapse any
day; in fact, except for the external
wall, the main door and a small hallway that now serves as his place of
rest, the internal walls have already
given away to the neglect.
With his age nearing 85, he does not
have strength, and more importantly
courage, to work anymore. Three of his
five sons died, and he lost his wife also
some years back. I manage with whatever my neighbours give me. But it
seems even they will not be able to support me any further. How many times
can I ask someone from the village to
bring me water from the tube-well?
Bahut door hai nalkoop, he says adding that days pass without taking bath
because his one pitcher is not sufficient
for all the water needs of the day.
These villages have a common story to tell, Yadav pointed out later. The

region is going through an unprecedented water emergency. If we go

strictly by rainfall data, Bundelkhand
has seen droughts worse than this.
However, this years drought has hit
the region on top of the long escalating misery of almost 10 years of freak
weather and a series of rainfall-deficient agri seasons.
Bundelkhand and Marathwada
[in Maharashtra] are the two worst
drought-affected areas in the country.
When we set out for the Samvedna
Yatra last year, there was a lot of talk
about Marathwada. And the condition
is indeed very bad there. The ground
water had dipped to 600 feet, and there
is a massive migration of people for
work. But as soon as we reached Bundelkhand, we realised that it was the
real epicentre of the drought in the
country.

Drought or famine?
A survey by the Swaraj Abhiyan and
my interaction with the villagers clearly indicated an acute shortage of potable water for humans and cattle and
other domestic use. The current water
resources can provide water for humans and cattle for not more than 60

days and while 90 of cultivable land has

no irrigation available.
Yadavs fear of an ensuing famine is
echoed by majority of villagers and elders whom I met during my whirlwind
visit to 17 villages. Ask anyone in this
region from a school-going child to
a middle-aged woman or a relatively
prosperous farmer about the problem and one gets the same answer, as if
the crisis has united people across caste
and creed.
My guide in Mahoba, Vijay Kumar,
the newly elected sarpanch of Kabri
Mahoba, pointed out that the 700-yearold lake that was built by the Chandel
king near Sijahri village in Mahoba had
completely dried up for the first time.
This is all because of the governments
wrong policies, alleged Bhavani Din
from the same village. The village hill
surrounding the lake has been given
to miners for stone mining which has
completely destroyed the natural catchment area. If we lose the mountains
how will the rain water reach the lake?
The rain water used to flow down from
the nearby hills to fill up the lake. With
the hills gone, the water gets absorbed
in the soil or gets evaporated, added
Baijnath, another resident of Sijahri.

Umakant Nayak, Raju and Dharam

Das narrated a similar story of the Purana Talab in Papta village of Chhatarpur. The large pond, which is popularly
known as Khajua Talab because its water causes itching, has also dried up
for the first time, as far as the three men
in their mid-20s could remember. This
pond has been the traditional source of
drinking water for cattle and livestock.
A dam one kilometre away from
Khajua Talab, built two years back to
conserve water of the Mamun Talab
a catchment area that gets replenished
with rain water that flows from the surrounding hills and highland too has
very little water. It will dry up by April
or May, remarked Kasturam Adivasi,
who has a five-acre farmland adjacent
to the dam. The dam still has some water left for animals but I cannot pump
it to my fields. It is illegal. My bore-well
has no water. The crop and the land are
fast drying up, he said. Kasturam has
a family of seven. While his father and
two elder brothers have left for Indore
and Ghaziabad in search of work, he
along with his mother and two sisters
looks after the cattle back home.
The impact is there to see: the deficit rainfall and dried-up water sources

In search of work and food: Mass

exodus of people from Mastapur
village in Tikamgarh district.
www.GovernanceNow.com 27

have badly affected sowing of the rabi

crop. Driving through Lalitpur, Tikamgarh, Chhatarpur, Mahoba and
Hamirpur, one could see a series of fallow fields some that had been tilled
but not sown, others that still have the
remains of the last seasons produce,
some with a drying crop that farmers
have now given up on and left for the
cattle, somewhere villagers are playing
cricket or cards.
According to a rough estimate based
on our interaction with farmers and
the village level survey by the Swaraj
Abhiyan, not more that 10 percent of
land in any district of the region had
any cultivation.
But was the situation always as
severe?

From bad to worse

Spread across 70,000 sq km in 13 districts in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya
Pradesh, Bundelkhand region mainly
constitutes non-arable land that has
traditionally been rain-fed with diverse crops. However, experts have
always tagged its topology as complex,
under-invested, risky and vulnerable.
The report of an inter-ministerial central team headed by national rainfed
area authority CEO JS Samra in 2009
on drought mitigation strategy for
Bundelkhand also pointed out that
the extreme weather conditions like
droughts, short-term rain and flooding in fields have for centuries added
to the uncertainties and seasonal migrations here. Scarcity of water in the
semi-arid region, poor soil quality and
low productivity have further aggravated the problem of food security in
the region during the last 30 years.
Historians also point out that what
was once Bundelkhand district of Agra
Province had faced drought in the
autumn of 1895 after poor summermonsoon rains. The Imperial Gazetteer of India (Vol. III 1907, p. 490-91)

28 GovernanceNow | February 1-15, 2016

notes that when the winter monsoon

also failed in the same year, the provincial government declared a famine
early in 1896. The Samra report further notes that the region experienced
a major drought every 16 years during
the 18th and 19th centuries. The frequency increased by three times during 1968-1992.
During 1905-06 Bombay and Bundelkhand provinces were affected
by a severe drought and a cholera
outbreak.
However,
drought-associated mortality is unknown for
Bundelkhand, points out the National institute of disaster management (NIDM) in its 2014 report Bundelkhand Drought: Retrospective
Analysis and Way Ahead.
Historically, the region was thickly
forested but is now characterised by
bare hilly terrain with sparse vegetation. Besides this the region has many
wonders. As a tribal homeland, Bundelkhand is known as a cultural repository of folk dances, songs, festivals, and
for the countless monuments that dot
the landscape including the impregnable Gwalior, Kalinjar and Govind
Mahal forts, the renowned Khajuraho
temples and the exquisite Chaturbhuj
and Dashavatara temples. The region
was ruled principally by the Chandela
and Bundela Rajputs and most of the
architecture (including a number of
village tanks) dates from their reign,
the NIDM document states.
The report also highlights that while
chronically drought-prone regions like
Rajasthan are known for their resilience and coping systems against the
devastating implications of meteorological drought, Bundelkhand has recently become a new hotspot due to

consecutive droughts amid susceptibility, poverty and lack of effective mitigation strategies.
In fact, the Samra report clearly
pointed out that despite several central and state government efforts and
schemes on paper and on ground as
well, the risk has been growing with
more and more complexities. Reports
in the local and regional media, on the
other hand, categorically stated that
despite the `7,266 crore Bundelkhand
package, announced by the UPA government in 2009, and the committee
that had been constituted to understand the problems of the region, not
much had changed on ground.
What makes the crisis worse is
the fact that 79.1 percent of the Bundelkhand population (18.3 million as
per Census 2011) live in rural areas and
more than one-third of the households
in these areas have been identified as
below the poverty line (BPL). Lack of
agriculture and employment opportunities has further aggravated poverty.
The insecurity of livelihoods and lack
of supportive governance have led to
forced large-scale migration of the local population over 80 percent of the
menfolk in the villages that we visited
have migrated to work as unskilled labours in cities.
Seventy-year-old Janka Bhasoor of
Kodiya village, for example, has a pension card but he has not been able to
withdraw a penny till date because
he does not have an Aadhaar card. I
have been working with spade and
hammer all my life breaking stones
and doing manual labour. Now
they say they cannot make my
Aadhaar card because the system
cannot take photo of [that is, scan]

my thumbprint, he said, helplessness

turning into anger occasionally.
He has been abandoned by his two
sons one is in Gwalior and the other
in Delhi and a daughter whom he has
not met for five years. Earlier the PDS
shop used to charge me `50 for the ration. I used to beg it from someone, or
take up some work to earn it. Now they
ask for `100. Where can I get so much
money from? If they start paying my
pension, I will not have to depend on
anybody, he said.
People have started using grain substitutes like bahera and pikad, wild
fruits growing naturally in the region.
In a Swaraj Abhiyan survey in OctoberNovember, 17 percent respondents had
said they were surviving by eating rotis
made with fikara, or wild grass. It was
this ghas ki roti which brought Bundelkhand in national media limelight.
No sir, we have not faced such a
situation so far, said Jhagarua Ahirwal. The Kachula Tal that was the biggest source of water for irrigation and
livestock in his Mamaun village of
Chhatarpur district had dried up and
nearly 90 percent of the land is still
brown and barren. However, the village at the moment is not facing too
much of a drinking water crisis. The
bore-well near Kachula Tal still has
water and we are able to pump it to fill
the village water tanks [multiple small
community water tanks] drinking
water. But water level of other borewells and a few wells have either gone
down or dried up and we really do not
think this will last too long, said Nathu

Singh Bundela whose 20-acre land is

lying barren.
Jhagarua, however, maintained that
he has not seen such a crisis in his lifetime (he does not know his exact age
but believes it must be 80-85). Krishna Pratap Singh Bundela, a fairly rich
farmer with 50-acre land, from Matguwan village and Babulal Yadav from
Kashipur village (both from Chhatarpur district), and Udal Singh from Sijahri in Mahoba district and Shivvijay Singh from Beijemau in Hamirpur
agrees to what Jhagarua had to say.
At any rate, people are not getting
enough nutrition in their food in this
situation. There is a general consensus that consumption of dal and other
proteins including the milk (from their
own cattle) in villages has fallen in last
two years.

If we go strictly by rainfall
data, Bundelkhand has
seen droughts worse
than this. However, this
years drought has hit
the region on top of the
long escalating misery of
almost 10 years of freak
weather and a series of
rainfall-deficient agri
seasons.
While we were initially surprised
and amused by their sudden smirk
and laughter at the mention of the
dal and milk, Ramkali of Bar village
in Baldeogarh of Tikamgarh district
summed it up in a pithy one-liner: You
have a good sense of humour, she said
looking straight into my eyes. Chu
chu karti aayi chiriya, dal ka dana layi
chiriya... more bhi aaya, bandar bhi
aaya, kaua bhi aaya... bas insaan ke khilawan ko kachhu nahi laya...

She pulled her veil over her face,

as if to hide her shame and said, I
had cooked dal on diwali. Her confession drew others to join in. Nobody
cooks dal here, said Kanti Razak the
mother of 13-year-old Bhagwan Das
and 15-year-old Devideen adding that
everybody in the village knew about
it but they did not want to make their
personal matter public. Yeh ghar kae
baat hai. Ramkali bol gayi to hum bhi
kabulat hai... sabhu ko pata hai par
parda rakhan zaruri hai, she said
making her point. Even I have not
cooked dal for last few months... I do
not even recall when we last had dal
perhaps before diwali, she said.
We have exhausted our stock of
moong and urda (urad). How long can
it last if your crops get damaged for
more than two years? We sometimes
buy a quarter kg from the market,
said Ramkalis husband joining in the
group that we are sitting with. Milk is
only a dream. We had to abandon our
cattle since we do not have fodder or
water for them.
Pushpa and Usha from Mastapur
village in Tikamgarh district narrated
almost the same story. They manage
to buy 250-500 gm dal a month. Their
husbands have moved to Kanpur for
work and are able to send money once
in two months. They are married to
brothers and the crisis has forced them
to go back to a single kitchen. We put
in some dal with potato or spinach and
spread it over months. We cannot afford to buy milk so boil wheat flour
in water and feed it to children, said
Pushpa, elder of the two. Children get
milk and egg once in a week at school,
adds Usha saying Sudha Jain and Rajkumari, the accredited social health activist (ASHA) workers have been very
helpful for women like them.
Munna Lal Yadav of nearby Lakhairi village blames the government for
his plight. We have to pay `10,000 to
get a BPL card made. The MNREGA
card costs another `5,000-8,000. How
can I afford to get this, he said. In

www.GovernanceNow.com 29

any case there is no point of getting the

job card. There is no work in the village
and even if there is they pay just `161. I
can earn at least `200 if I go to Indore.
Is rural India only about agriculture
and penury?

Man vs Nature vs Mis-governance

When elders say this is the worst
drought it may not be because this
is the worst rainfall year. This is because they have never seen a river
or the pond dried up or because they
have never faced such a long spell of
crop failure that has completely dried
up their kitchen, including the grains
that they usually save for use as seeds,
not to talk about the lack of fodder for
cattle and dal and milk for children,
points out Yadav.
Blaming the government policies for
pushing farmers to adopt ecologically
unviable cash crops in the region Arvind Kishore, the head of Ma Chandrika Mahila Vidyalaya in Mahoba, makes
his point rather philosophically: Agriculture is meant to provide food for
the mankind. It is not meant to make
someone cash rich. Kishore is also a
social activist who is trying to motivate
farmers to get back to traditional farming. He added that the push towards
cash crop like wheat, soya bean and
peppermint can only be a short-term
game. If you want a fancy car, dont
think of getting it by selling farm produce. Supplement your income with a
business or a job.
A 2009 WaterAid report on the
drinking water crisis in Bundelkhand
had highlighted that till as late as the
1970s the region was meeting its domestic and irrigation water demands
through traditional methods of water harvesting despite being drought
prone. It has termed the regions ecology as fragile, but one where the forests
helped in recharging and regulating
rainwater flow and the vast network
of tanks and ponds captured water for
use during leaner period. The ponds
and tanks also worked as recharge pits.
Local communities managed the water
sources thus making them equitable
and sustainable, the report noted.
It pointed out that deforestation
clubbed with neglect of the traditional
systems of water harvesting had distorted the equation. Now Bundelkhand
conserves less rainwater than earlier

30 GovernanceNow | February 1-15, 2016

She makes one cane basket

a day that sells at `30 in the
local market.

with the results that the regions overall irrigation water availability has
came down. Secondly the availability
of drinking water has been impacted.
Over a period of time, this has resulted
in less recharge of groundwater as the
main sources of recharging like tanks,
ponds and the forests have vanished.
This has left thousands of hand-pumps
defunct. It has made the region more
vulnerable to drought without the capacity to conserve water even a small
deviation in rainfall causes drought.
According to experts and various
studies, the Bundelkhand crisis and
the possibility of the famine is purely
an outcome of this cycle of ecological
degradation for which both the locals
and the myopic rural and agricultural policies of the central and the state
governments are to be blamed.
According to the Samra report,
the average annual rainfall of Bundelkhand in UP is 876.1 mm with a

range of 786.6 to 945.5 mm. In the MP

portion, the average rainfall is 990.9
mm with a range of 767.8 to 1,086.7
mm 13 percent more than what UP
receives. The report also indicates that
the region receives about 90 percent
of the rainfall during the July-September monsoon season, which is usually
spread over 30-35 events or spells.
The report also points out that the
UP part of the region experienced rainfall deficit of 25 percent in 2004-05
and 33 percent in 2005-06. This went
up to 45 percent deficit in 2006-07 and
56 percent in 2007-08, with five out of
seven districts reporting more than 50
percent rainfall deficit during the fiscal. Besides, all the districts in the UP
part of the region experienced a severe
meteorological drought.
In the MP part, however, rainfall
was almost normal during 2004-05
and 2005-06 except in the districts of
Tikamgarh and Datia that experienced

With 80 percent of residents of Palka village in Mahoba

district migrating to cities, Ravindra Kumar Saxenas
earning has dropped from `1,000 a day to `200.

Jalaun
Hamirpur

Datia

meteorological drought. In 2006-07

the region experienced overall 37 percent shortfall in five out of six districts,
with the deficit rainfall ranging 27-47
percent across the region. The overall
shortfall in precipitation went up to 46
percent during 2007-08 with all six districts in MP part of Bundelkhand having more than the threshold deficit of
20 percent for declaring meteorological drought. This was followed by another spell of drought in 2010, floods in
2011, a late monsoon and deficit rain in
2012 and 2013.
Experts point out that rainfall variation within the season is important
for crop production and the rain in
September is crucial for the maturity
of kharif crops and the sowing of rabi
crops. Hence, delayed onset of rains,
early withdrawal or long dry spells in
between can also lead to a drought-like
situation.
According to a report in the Mint
newspaper in April 2015, the chronic drought during 2003-10 and then
again in 2014 prompted farmers to
shift from growing a mix of dry crops
like millets and pulses during the
monsoon-dependent kharif season
(June-September), to input-heavy and
irrigated winter rabi crop of wheat
alongside cash crops such as chickpea
(gram) and mustard in the NovemberApril season.
This led to a 60 percent increase in
area under wheat cultivation in the
seven UP districts of Bundelkhand
from 5,50,000 hectares in 2007-08 to
8,77,000 ha in 2013-14. This means
that today, the irrigated winter crop
and not the rain-fed kharif is the main
cropping season in Bundelkhand. For
a region bypassed by the high-growth
years of Indian agriculture beginning
in the new millennium, the change
in the cropping pattern was the only
option available to farmers at least
those among them who chose to stick
to their land, the report noted.
Unfortunately, the alternative crop
plan that the farmers had opted for was
ruined due to untimely rain. In 2014
and 2015, the rain from end-February
through March destroyed crops across
the region, it said. The kharif crop of
2014 failed in the region because of
drought, while the rabi crop of 2015
was destroyed because of hailstorms
and unseasonal rain. And this was the

Jhansi

Banda

Bundelkhand: factsheet

Mahoba

Chitrakoot

Tikamgarh
Chhatarpur

Area: 70,000 sq km (slightly bigger than Sri

Lanka that is spread across 65,610 sq km)
Population: 1.83 crore (as per Census
2011); Population growth rate: 18.06
percent

Lalitpur

Uttar Pradesh
Panna

Sagar

Madhya Pradesh

Damoh

Economic profile
Approximately 60 percent of the
population is workers. Of these workers,
almost 60 percent are working in the
agricultural sector as cultivators and
agricultural laborers.
The landless in the region primarily earn
their living as agricultural labour and as
workers in mines and quarries.
There is a large-scale migration to bigger
cities and metros as well.
About 46 percent of net sown area of
Uttar Pradesh and 45 percent of Madhya
Pradesh Bundelkhand is irrigated with
poor and erratic supplies.
Ground water over utilisation is
predominant and open dug-wells provide
much needed water for irrigation and
drinking.
Over 58 percent of credit in the region
was raised at high rate of interest
ranging from 3-8 percent from noninstitutional sources. Cooperative banks
served only 7-10 percent of loans, catering
majorly to big farmers.
Average 96 percent farmers depend on
earning from crop and livestock.

History of drought
1873-74: The panic famine
18961897: The all-India famine began
in Bundelkhand early in 1895 and

third successive failure. Marathwada

saw some post-monsoon rains in 2015,
but Bundelkhand had none so their
rabi crop was also destroyed. The lack
of rain has also forced the farmers to
avoid sowing rabi as there is no possibility of the crops to mature. Hence
we are looking at the fourth successive
drought in Bundelkhand, explained
Yadav. He warned that if it does not
rain this year and urgent preventive
measures are not taken by the centre
and states, the region would soon face
the worst-ever famine.
It is sad to note that despite a formal Manual for Drought Management

spread across many parts of the country,

including the United Provinces, Central
Provinces and Berar, Bihar, parts of the
Bombay and Madras presidencies, and
the Hissar district of Punjab. The princely
states of Rajputana, Central India Agency
and Hyderabad were also impacted.
1895 (autumn): Poor summer-monsoon
rain triggers drought in Bundelkhand
district.
1896: Famine in the region after bad
winter monsoon that followed 1895
summer crop failure.
1905-06: Bombay and Bundelkhand
provinces were affected by severe drought
and cholera outbreak.

Recent droughts
2002-03: Six districts of MP and three
districts of UP affected
2004-10: Below average and erratic
rain reported in most part of the region
during the period with the UP part
of Bundelkhand suffering 25 percent
shortfall in monsoon rains in 2004-05.
The rainfall deficit increased further to
43 percent in 2006-07 and 56 percent in
2007-08, leading to severe metrological
drought conditions. Drought affected all
six districts of MP Bundelkhand and five
districts of UP Bundelkhand in 2009.

prepared by the department of agriculture in 2009, neither UP nor MP or the

centre have taken any step to mitigate
the situation in Bundelkhand for more
than a decade now. While both the UP
and MP governments have taken note
of the situation and have initiated relief measures, Governance Nows effort
to get details from office of the chief
secretaries of the two states and the
district magistrates of the region fell on
deaf ears. The officials just hanged up
the phone as soon as they heard Bundelkhand drought. n
parth@governancenow.com

www.GovernanceNow.com 31

Interview

Yogendra Yadav, leader, Swaraj Abhiyan

Farmers survival is one

of the biggest issues
Its a disturbing sociopolitical vacuum
that he is trying to fill a void that
has been created after the demise of
farmer leaders like Charan Singh and
Mahendra Singh Tikait. For Yogendra
Yadav, former Aam Aadmi Party
member, this is the moment in history
when farmers need to be organised
more than ever. In an interaction with
Shubhendu Parth he talked about the
severity of the drought in many parts of
the country, especially in Bundelkhand,
and why he is not ashamed of taking
the farmer politics route to electoral
politics.

The supreme court decision to seek

response from the central and state
governments on how they are dealing
with drought shows the criticality of
the issue. How bad is the situation?

It is shocking to see the contrast between how bad the drought situation
is and how little it is known. In terms
of sheer statistics, we know that this
is the second consecutive drought nationally. Last year we suffered 12 percent deficit rainfall across the country,
this year the deficit is 14 percent. And
what is still not appreciated adequately is that post-monsoon rain has been
worse. Even after taking into account
the excessive rainfall in Tamil Nadu
and Andhra Pradesh, the overall postmonsoon deficit in the country is 23
percent. For most parts of north and
east India, the deficit is in the range of
40-60 percent, which is having a debilitating consequence for the Rabi crop.
So we are looking at the fourth consecutive crop damage, and in some cases
fourth consecutive crop failure. That
is what makes the situation so bad.
In fact, the impact of these consecutive failures is for anyone to see.
There is a drinking water shortage
ranging from severe to emergency.

32 GovernanceNow | February 1-15, 2016

There are many places in Marathwada and Bundelkhand where we are

looking at water emergency. In other
parts it is not a drinking water problem but it is still a serious problem
for irrigation. But the real epicentre
of the entire drought in the country is
Bundelkhand. And if you were to ask
me to point out even further, I would
say the districts of Mahoba, Hamirpur, Tikamgarh and Chhattarpur are
the worst hit.

Is Bundelkhand facing a famine?

While it would be harsh and hasty to

conclude that famine has arrived, we
need to recognise that we are closer
to it as far as water is concerned. We
have moved a couple of steps closer to
famine in terms of availability of food
and nutrition for humans. However,
for the animals, in large parts of the
country, famine has indeed arrived.
The fodder stocks have been exhausted, and because of the widespread nature of the drought, fodder
is not available in nearby areas. There
is also a drinking water problem for
the cattle. Millions of cows are just being let off in the stretch starting from
Bundelkhand and up to Rajasthan.
These animals are on the verge of

If the government
can set up the seventh
pay commission for its
employees why cant
it set up a farmers
commission with
statutory powers to
monitor and safeguard
farmers income?

hunger and are destroying whatever

is remaining of the existing crop.

What is scarcer water or food?

There are two or three major concerns. Beside the water scarcity of
both drinking water and irrigation
there is a severe dal crisis. The dal
crops failed so it did not reach the
farmers home. The prices went up
so they cannot buy it. It is important
to note that this is the only source of
protein for a large section of the Indian population. No one seems to be
thinking about it. When we travelled
in Bundelkhand, I asked this question
to every woman I met and not a single
woman said she cooked dal every day.

Your PIL has sought court

intervention for implementation of
the National Food Security Act (NFSA)
in drought-affected areas. Does that
mean failure of NFSA so far?

Formal acceptance of NFSA is not

what matters. What matters is whether food grains have reached the people. The fact is that it has not, except
in some cases. I was told that Madhya
Pradesh and Bihar have done comparatively a little better on this front. But
in most states, despite the new NFSA
coming into being, the old APL (above
poverty line)-BPL (below poverty line)
distinction persists. Also a substantial
chunk of poor people in every village
who have no ration card old, new,
white or yellow and they are completely excluded from the existing system. They have no access to ration. Almost no governments in the drought
affected areas have provisions for dal
something that we have requested
the court to order. I would say that
other than claiming that they have the
new NFSA, no government has introduced any new measures to provide
food to the people even after discovering that there is drought.

Arun kumar

Yogendra Yadav
meeting distressed
villagers at Mastapur
in Tikamgarh district.

From raising the drought issue in

rural India to a tractor rally and the
Samvedna Yatra in villages, as well
as the Jai Kisan Andolan are you
taking the farmer politics route to
electoral politics?

Without any hesitation and shame I

would say that this is what we want
to do. Farmers survival is one of the
biggest issues facing the country today. If there is one moment in the history when farmers need to be organised, this is the moment. There was
a time when we had a strong farmer
voice that the government could not
ignore. Today there is a void. So some
people need to come together to fill it.
If Jai Kisan Andolan and Swaraj Abhiyan can do anything in that direction we would like to take it forward.
This is the need of the hour; call it by
any name farmer politics or farmer
movement.

What are the key farmer issues that

you are taking up?

The most critical issue for a farmer is

assured income. Price of farm output

has not gone up, but price of everything else has gone up. So farming has
become an unviable profession. If the
government can set up the seventh
pay commission for its employees
why cant it set up a farmers commission with statutory powers to monitor
and safeguard farmers income? We
are also pushing for crop loss damage
and crop loss insurance. Next, there
is a need to create adequate irrigation facilities because majority of agriculture in India is still rain-fed. Then
there is the issue of land holdings,
especially for the dalits who are deprived of land for agriculture which
can happen only through land reforms. This calls for redistribution of
land to poor agricultural households
from ceiling surplus and other lands.
There is a need to restrict ownership
by absentee landlords and non-agriculturists to ensure that lands should
not remain fallow.
There is also the need to provide
sources of employment in rural areas
beyond agriculture. In our country,

rural areas were not merely about agriculture. This is one fallacy. Today we
have reduced rural to just agriculture.
Instead we need to supplement agriculture. Rural areas need industries
but not the modern factories. Service,
handicraft work, small industries are
also needed for rural areas. If you denude rural areas of all employment
opportunities how do you expect human beings to live there?

Is it farmer politics that made you

test waters by contesting the Punjab
by-election?

We are yet to get into electoral politics but have decided to support Bhai
Baldeep Singh for the Khadoor Sahib
assembly by-election. He is not our
candidate but contesting independently. Bhai Baldeep Singh is a unanimous choice of many organisations
and Swaraj Abhiyan has also decided
to extend its support to him since he
has devoted himself fully to the sociopolitical revival in Punjab. n
parth@governancenow.com

www.GovernanceNow.com 33