Drought in Bundelkhand Brings a Tide of Farmer Migration

As ever-lengthening drought becomes the new normal, Bundelkhand is clearing out.

Villagers carry drinking water near Manikpur village in the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh.

(Photo: Reuters)

Khuba Chand increasingly finds himself alone in Iglas, a drought-parched village in the Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh.

Unable to sow a crop without rain, his son and older brother left last winter for New Delhi, to work as labourers.

But Khuba has remained with his wife and daughter, unwilling to abandon his four cows and a buffalo.

Khuba Chand sits in his increasingly deserted village of Iglas in the drought-parched Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh.(Photo: Reuters)

There are very few people left in the village,” the 53-year-old said. “Many have moved with their families. They sold their cattle at cut-rate prices. But some of them didn’t sell mainly because there were no buyers.

Khuba Chand, a 53-year-old villager

He hopes to hang on. "But keeping the cattle is not easy now. There is hardly any greenery left in the village. There is a severe shortage of fodder and water for cattle," he said.

As ever-lengthening drought becomes the new normal, Bundelkhand, a parched region split between Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, is clearing out.

The central Indian region of nearly 70,000 square kilometres (27,000 square miles) once received about 800 to 900 mm (31-31 inches) of rain a year, according to India’s Meteorological Department (IMD) . But over the last six to seven years, in particular, that total has nearly halved.

According to DK Dubey, a scientist with IMD, the number of monsoon rain days have fallen from 52 to 24 during the June to October monsoon period.

That has caused repeated and widespread crop failures – and a growing tide of farmers abandoning their land to try to find work in nearby cities.

Emptied Out

Around half of the four million farmers living in the region have migrated temporarily or permanently since last year, according to Bundelkhand Jal Manch (the Bundelkhand Water Forum), a non-governmental organisation working in the area.

In Chand's village, in Tikamgarh district, out of around 70 farmers 10 years ago, only a quarter of them now remain.

Chand's 80-year-old neighbour Milan Khan remembers when farmers were able to produce enough grain and milk to make a reasonable living. But that has become increasingly difficult over the last 15 to 20 years, he said.

Due to successive droughts, most of the villagers have exhausted all their savings and now are not in a position to invest in agriculture this year. They have no money to buy seed, fertiliser and pesticides.

Milan Khan 80-year-old resident of the village.

Milan’s wife, Roshani, blames the changing weather.

“Now, in Bundelkhand, the weather has become erratic and unpredictable. We get very little rain during monsoon, as a result, vegetables, wheat and other crops have been failing regularly,” Roshani, resident of the village said.

Hulas Prajapati, a farmer in Ater village, in neighbouring Chhatarpur district, is similarly losing hope.

"When I was young, we used to have enough production both for our consumption and sale in the market. But during the last decade production has been continuously decreasing," the 40-year-old said. As a result, "villages have emptied out", he said.

Most of his neighbours have headed out to the cities last year after their rainy season crop failed, along with the dry season crop following it.

Now uncultivated fields surround much of the village.

According to a study carried out in May by Bundelkhand Jal Manch, up to 55 percent of farmers once living in rural areas of the Bundelkhand region have migrated at least temporarily to other places since last November.

The study, conducted in about 200 villages in the region, found that most of those migrating were 15 to 45 years old.

District magistrate's offices in the region and the Madhya Pradesh Minister for Revenue's office said they did not collect or release figures on such migration.

The Madhya Pradesh government announced last year, for instance, that it would no longer include work to de-silt and deepen water ponds in the MGNREGA scheme. Drought-hit families in MP, who relied on that work, now have lost it.

The state government said last year that villagers can dig new ponds themselves and use the rich, extracted soil to boost their farming efforts, but said the state was unable to pay for the work as it lacked budget to do so.

Emergency Work?

The government runs a national employment guarantee scheme under which those in need of work in rural areas can be paid for 100 days of it each year.

The measure works as a social safety net for villagers like those in Bundelkhand, who may find themselves struggling for an income in tough times.

But the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act is not proving sufficient help in Bundelkhand, local people say.

It provides employment to just one adult member of each family - and with so many people seeking help some are not getting a full 100 days of work, they say.

Once a region rich with forests and fields, Bundelkhand today is now becoming increasingly barren, with only a few irrigation facilities in place to compensate for disappearing rainfall.

Many areas are relying on groundwater for drinking and limited irrigation, but the underground water table is receding alarmingly, farmers say.

According to a report by the government’s Central Ground Water Board, water levels have fallen by 10 to 20 feet in almost all the districts of Bundelkhand in the last five years.

A water pump and small stream of water in Ataria, a drought-parched village in the Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh.(Photo: Reuters)

Banwari Lal, 59, a farmer in Ratanpur, a village in Sagar district, said the region's main rivers – the Ken and the Betwa – also are now reduced to sluggish streams much of the year.

"The rivers flow when there is good rainfall during the monsoon season. Otherwise they don't have enough water to maintain the flow," Lal said.

“Due to the disappearing rainfall most of the dams in the region have run dry. Large numbers of cows, oxen, buffaloes and other animals have died in this and the nearby villages.The situation is grim.

Banwari Lal, 59, a farmer in Ratanpur, a village in Sagar district, MP

Centre’s Relief Packages

Nearby areas of Bundelkhand, in Uttar Pradesh state, have been declared drought areas by the National Institute of Disaster Management.

Crop failures and migration are also common there, with even drinking water disappearing in some villages.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said the state is constructing wells, farm ponds and water tanks in many affected villages.

The national government has provided about 13 billion rupees ($192 million) to the state government under the National Disaster Relief Fund to disburse among farmers as emergency aid.

But the measures have not been enough to stop large-scale migration of rural villagers to urban areas.

The Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan also in January announced a $20 million relief package for farmers in drought-hit areas, including supplies of drinking water and fodder for animals.

On a positive note, the India Meteorological Department has said there is low probability that 2018 will be a drought year. Parched villagers are now looking to monsoon rains, which have fortunately started in Bundelkhand, bringing much needed relief.

(Published in an arrangement with Reuters)