Image Courtesy:muslimmirror.com
Madhya Pradesh’s Damoh district authorities jumped into action on September 5, 2021 after learning that six minor girls were paraded naked in a village as part of a ritual to appease the ‘Rain God’.
As many as eight people including six women were charged under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, the Juvenile Justice Act and other charges. Superintendent of Police (SP) D.R. Tenivaar told Sabrang India that while the girls were not forced to participate in the ritual, the administration has taken cognisance of the offence.
However, despite this attention to social evil, Damoh officials are yet to talk about the underlying problem of the drought-like situation in their district.
Deficient rainfall in Bundelkhand region
News reports as early as June have voiced concerns about the possibility of scanty rainfall during the monsoon season. Many districts like Jabalpur, Panna, Balaghat, Hoshangabad, etc. Even the Indian Meteorological Department’s (IMD) district-wise rainfall distribution map shows 16 districts (in red) that suffered from deficient rainfall since June 1.
Image Source: IMD
Worse still are the weekly data points that show the Sidhi district receiving only 17.9 mm actual rainfall as opposed to the 70.9 mm normal rainfall between September 2 and September 8.
Image Source: IMD
A September 14 report said that rainfall in Damoh remains in the ‘deficient’ category with 3.6 mm actual rainfall when normal rainfall was estimated at 6.3 mm. Between June and September, the area reported 546.7 mm actual rainfall even though the normal rainfall for the monsoon season was estimated to be 974.3 mm. The report places the district at -44 percent rainfall departure – the worst in the east Madhya Pradesh sub-division.
However, according to Damoh District Magistrate S. Krishna Chaitanya there is no cause for worry. “Damoh received 124 cm rain till yesterday. Right now, there is no drought-like situation. The standing crops are also okay,” he said.
When asked about the Baniya village incident, Chaitanya said that the administration has called for a block-wise campaign in the area to raise awareness among people regarding child rights and crimes but he could not state a reason for the organisation of the ritual itself.
“There is a tank near the village which has enough water for irrigation. I do not think there is a problem with drinking water,” he said.
However, his claims stand at odds with news reports voicing grievances of farmers in the region. On September 4, a day before the Baniya-incident, the Times of India reported how Bundelkhand farmers ran tractors over their damaged crops to flatten the land. The report talked about barren patches of land and perplexed farmers, who were unsure about the next step of survival.
Similarly, The Print on July 20, reported how low rainfall had contributed to the fall in soybean – a major contributor in India’s edible oil – acreage. At the time, 35 of the 52 districts reported rain-deficiency. Some districts were up to 70 percent short on rainfall.
Role of state policies to address droughts
The India Water Portal in 2020 wrote about how the Bundelkhand region has a long history of droughts and famines since the Indian famine of 1896–1897. It experienced a major drought every 16 years during the 18th and 19th centuries. By 2016, as many as 46 out of 52 districts in the state were drought-affected.
For a state widely dependent on agriculture and livestock livelihoods, such scarcity of water spelled doom. This is one of the reasons why drought is considered a state policy in Madhya Pradesh.
Accordingly, the state government initiated two flagship programmes, ‘Bundelkhand Special Package for Drought Mitigation’ and ‘Drought Prone Areas Programme’ to address the issue. However, the two policies seldom connect with each other. As a result, there is still no framework to understand and address underlying vulnerabilities of drought or any other extreme climatic event.
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