Barren lands and broken farmers

A parched land at M. Kannanur village near Tiruchirapalli (Photo courtesy : The Hindu)

North-east  monsoon's failure has strangled Tamilnadu to its extreme side of scarcity not seen in the last 140 years.

All water reservoirs in Tamilnadu currently have only 20% filled of its capacity. It is then inevitable to face severe water scarcity even for drinking purposes in the upcoming months. Even smaller countries (e.g. The Netherlands) than us are developed in water management.

Farmers have chosen the way they'd usually go by to tackle these intense situations---Suicide.  Neither central government, nor the state government can do anything effective in this regard against the fierceness of nature. Of course, the drought compensation given to farmers did something to make up the loss but nowhere near sufficiency. Also the central budget presented by Arun Jaitley on February 3 didn't give any loan waivers which would have been highly relieving to those who depend on land, because Situational Assessment Survey of Agricultural Households (by NSSO) estimates the average Indian farm household monthly income to be Rs.6426 and expenditure estimate for the same is Rs.6223. What this means is most of the earnings are spent on meeting consumption expenses itself and they have to rely on loans for expenses for next cultivation. 

A loan waiver would have got the farmers out of their neck-deep debt.

While facing nature, nothing much can be done afterwards than sensing and preparing for the worst ahead of time. We are asking other states not to build dams holding back water we desperately need on hard times but conveniently forget them when we are left with abundance. Why not first equip ourselves with high-end canals and storage infrastructures for routing and saving water in reservoirs and lakes without wastage? There are already many plans renowned agriculturalists had proposed for the country's water resource management, why not form a technical committee to revise these newer alternatives and suggest working plans to the centre? For all these, the need is not a sudden large scale refurbishment works on water-related infrastructures but a permanent solution and it can be a regulation alone for it has to be sustaining.

 A regulation that sets up a River and River Water Management authoritarian within the Public Works Department and that frames guidelines for the authoritative body to work on. Those guidelines must be subjective to change with time  and  more importantly the body has to be in the hands of collectors of all the districts along with a qualified team.

Water scarcity and agricultural catastrophe are inseparably linked with River sand mining over legal limits. Over mining of river sand causes the reduction in underground water level. It also leads to dwindling of essential minerals. Over-mining also results in deepening of river bed which in turn delays and reduces water available at the end of the chain and that unfortunately happens to be a delta in the case of Cauvery--the  artery of Tamilnadu. During olden days, the water taken out from a flowing river for agricultural, drinking water and other purposes was very low and the deltas and other agricultural lands at the end flourished with whatever the TMC of water they received. Now the scale at which agriculture is practised and the growth of population in cities is incredibly high that the same river struggles to meet demands and seems to run dry all the year, leaving the true decrease in rainfall due climatic changes apart. 

Also due to erratic nature of monsoons, the river bed receives no regular and fast water flow to replace the mined alluvial. 

Precopis Juliflora (Seemai Karuvelam)

An invasive plant specie which has been spoiling our environment for years contributes to drought. It just gasps huge volume of the underground water with its mighty root extent. If underground water runs out beyond its reach, it starts absorbing water from the atmosphere thereby lowering the humidity. One more unfortunate thing is that it can germinate and get growing quickly. Thus necessary steps must be taken to wreck this species both from the people front & the government. 

Tamilnadu has been subjected to continuous injustice compared to other states. We can list from Koodankulam nuclear plant, methane extraction scheme, granting permission for pepsi & cola factories, GAIL pipeline installation & extraction of hydrocarbons from Neduvasal (Pudukottai), etc. whereas IITs & AIMS have been established in northern parts of India. Tamilnadu's wealth has been severely vandalized both by the central & state governments. No dams have been built over the past 50 years. 

To pinpoint some unrevealed examples, we want to put on view about two places - Tiruppur & Oragadam (near Chennai).

Tiruppur - The depth of water table beneath most of tiruppur has gone to the lowest ever in the history. We are depleting our precious resources in the name of development. What can we do with FDI without water & food?? To make a T-shirt, it consumes 2700 litres of water. We invite production firms from foreign countries to produce goods here. Don't those countries have the capacity to produce goods in their land?? They're using our resources, pollute our land & import the finished product alone to themselves. The goods which requires high volumes of water to produce have been always imported by them. We are manufacturing those products in the name of FDI losing our resources.

Oragadam - The area has been changed terribly in the past 5 years. Both the land and water resources are being depleted. An article from Vikatan compares the scenario of its 2017 & 2011 satellite view and clearly explains the situation.

We have no answers to the suicides of our farmers other than these long explanations and mournings. Simply by providing redressal to the died farmer's family not at all solves the problem.The government should:

✔ Provide loan waiver for farmers at least in the times of droughts instead of compensation.

✔ Set up an independent body for rivers and riverwater management and curb/regulate Riversand mining strictly.

✔ Be open to newer technological leaps in agriculture like building several smaller check dams instead of one big thing.

✔ Form technical committee and make suggestions to centre time to time

✔ Work over the ambitious plan of interlinking rivers & canals.

✔ Remove Precopis Juliflora.

✔ Harvest rainwater (By individuals also).

✔ Be with nature instead of running behind developments.

That's all we have to say. This is just an attempt to spread awareness.

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