V. Venkat Rao, a 65-year-old farmer with eight acres in Konakamitla village, has no option but to fend for himself in the evening of his life by enrolling under the wage employment scheme as the western parts of the Prakasam district have been in the grip of severe drought in the last 11 of 15 years, triggering migration to cities and towns in winter itself.
The farmer’s two sons and an equal number of daughters, who had been growing dry crops like red gram and tobacco, are among the 100 families from the village that had given up all hopes of leading even a hand-to-mouth living and migrated to Vijayawada, Hyderabad and other places to eke out a living by doing sundry jobs after joining their children in State-run residential schools.
"I very well know that I cannot purchase the milch animals again. But there is no other go," he laments in a conversation with The Hindu after selling his two heads of cattle bought at ₹50,000 each a couple of years ago for less than ₹15,000 each.
"I am no longer in a position to ensure fodder for the poor animals," he adds staring at the bone dry water tank at Musi Nidamanuru village, where large tracts of land had been left fallow.
It is not just the landless labourers who have enrolled under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in the village, but even small and marginal farmers have turned labourers after losing
all hopes of saving the tobacco crop raised much against odds in the Podili region as the field needed more than 50% gap filling with transplanted seedlings withering due to increase in the day temperature.
The situation is no better in any of the villages in 22 of the 56 mandals in Prakasam which received scanty rainfall(-60% to -99%) and another 31 mandals with deficient rainfall(-20% to 59%), says Ground Water and Water Audit Department Deputy Director Nagamalleswara Rao.
The ground water table had gone down during winter itself in 14 mandals to more than 20 metres, a level normally seen during May.
Usually migration starts in March after winter crop and ruralites return for work in their respectively village once the southwest monsoon sets in late July/August.
Showing the withered sweet lime orchard, Srinivasa Reddy from Gollapalle village near Tarlupadu says "I raised the orchard with great hopes for the last five years. But I am no longer in a position to save it any more as all the four bore wells sunk have dried one after another. We are unable to see water even after drilling to a depth of 600 feet," he laments. The loan waiver scheme implemented in phases had not benefited them so also the belated release of input subsidy for the crop lost last year as the bankers had adjusted whatever amount credited to their accounts towards outstanding loans of all types including crop and gold loans, he adds.
"I cannot recover even the cost of cultivation this year too," says yet another farmer Narayan Reddy from Devarajugattu village while showing the withered cotton crop in an acre plot in the Peedaraveedu mandal. Input subsidy was far less than the amount spent by them to grow crops, adds the farmer upset with ₹4,000 credited to his bank account while the actual cost of cultivation was more than ₹30,000 per acre.
Farmers, who have taken up cultivation of winter crop in 1.15 lakh hectares (44% of normal cropped area) thanks to cyclonic storm Gaja-induced rains, are a worried lot as the overall rainfall deficit has shot up to 74.5% by the last week of November, according to a report prepared by the Agriculture department.
Human Rights Forum leader V.S. Krishna, after touring some of the drought-hit villages, feels that only when drought relief act is enacted people as a right can get a fair and timely compensation and drought mitigation support from the Union and the State governments.
