- Share This Post
- submit
- 4
-
Sparkle (0)
[Updated to add below new related links to stories about India and climate change]
First it was the killer drought, the worst since 1972, which pushed poverty-and-debt-stricken farmers to the ground and food prices up. Then came the floods, the worst in a 100 years, which claimed more than 200 lives and left over 2 million people homeless and hapless. The crisis this monsoon season -- critical to India's agricultural sector that accounts for a fifth of the country's GDP -- was backbreaking, exposing our lackluster agro sector that feeds an entire nation except those who toil for it; our dependency on weather patterns; our failure to manage millions affected by natural disasters; and the return of a recurring debate on climate change. First came the drought. The southwest monsoon that soaks the country June through September, relieving the summer-oppressed population and farmers alike, came early this year but delivered only about 77 percent of its long-term average. According to the Meteorological Department report, nearly 60 percent of the 500-odd met districts received deficient or scanty rainfall. While reports of mass suicides by debt-ridden farmers -- whose woes were exacerbated by the drought -- came in a steady trickle, the government kept assuring that we had enough food in storage and foreign exchange in the bank to tide us over any shortfall. We finally acknowledged that we were officially drought-ridden. The shortfall followed for sure: our sugar crop wilted, production of staples like rice and legumes fell, and self-sufficient India geared up to import food to cover the shortage. But the monsoons were not done. On their way back, they deluged southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and parts of Maharashtra, damaged crops, left millions homeless, inundated villages, and claimed over 200 lives. It was the heaviest flood the 800-mile-long Krishna river had seen in over 100 years. The Human Tragedy: Let's put aside the figures for a while. That nearly 60 percent of India's population depends on agriculture; that most farmers still depend on the seasonal rainfall to irrigate their fields; that we simply cannot manage disasters although we have lived with them for decades; that India's GDP pretty much remained untouched by the disastrous monsoon this year. It is the incredible human tragedy that is so painful and outrageous. The hands that feed us have to reach for the pesticide bottle to deliver them from their cycle of misery. Our robust GDP seems to have barely touched the majority of people who have made our country self-sufficient in food. Distressed villagers are migrating to cities to make ends meet. We have enough produce but our storage and distribution facilities are so poor ("Monkeys Feed on Foodgrain") that the people who need it most cannot access it. The government doles out sops and banks cut rates on loans to affected farmers, but the help never reaches many, who find themselves indebted to ruthless moneylenders. In this moving story, a drought-hit farmer of the northern state of Bihar tells how he has started seeing sense in all the suicides ['I know now why farmers kill themselves' (via Ground Reality, via Global Voices Online)]:
"We used to wonder what it was. Now we know the pain. There is no bigger trauma than to see our land dry at this time of the year. I feel there is almost no point being alive."
In his blog Ground Reality, writer and food & trade policy analyst Devinder Sharma complains that for a very long time the media missed the human tragedy and tried to figure out the drought by looking at GDP and trade numbers:
I got tired of answering questions about how much would be the fall in GDP from the impending drought. I know how difficult it was to draw the media to the bigger story (as they say in media parlance) of human suffering in the countryside. [...] That such a deadly drama continues to be enacted in the farms despite a number of committees and relief measures speaks volumes about the criminal apathy that prevails among the urban elite and the policy makers. The tragedy is that no one is keen to come to grips with the reasons that lead to this neverending saga of human suffering.
Film-maker and blogger Harini Calamur writes at
