Women in Rohidi village in Rajasthan’s Barmer district walk at least 3 km every day to collect water from a public well. This situation is common in many of Barmer’s villages. In this arid western Rajasthan district, 80% of farms are rainfed despite the Rs 7,000 crore spent over six decades on irrigation projects for the state.

Meghwal had spent Rs 30,000 on sowing bajra (pearl millet), guar (cluster beans) and moong (green gram) on his six-hectare farm, but drought over successive years had laid it to waste.

Pabusari, about 90 km from the district headquarters, was among the 2,741 villages of Barmer’s total 2,775 to be declared ‘drought-hit’ by the Barmer district administration in 2018, based on a crop assessment report for the last kharif (winter cropping) season.

Meghwal, now working as a driver in Barmer city, said repeated droughts, with the resultant crop damage and financial burden, had spelt doom for farmers across Barmer, particularly as they had received no government support such as alternative employment, fair crop insurance payouts, or timely completion of irrigation projects.

Hariram Meghwal, 36, had spent Rs 30,000 on sowing bajra, guar and moong on his six-hectare farm, but drought over successive years had laid it to waste. Meghwal, now working as a driver in Barmer city in western Rajasthan, says repeated droughts, with the resultant crop damage and financial burden, have spelt doom for farmers across Barmer.

With more than 40% of India’s land area facing a drought and pre-monsoon rains during March and April having fallen short by 27%, this is the fifth story in our series on drought, and has been reported from Rajasthan. The previous stories can be read here, here, here and here. As in other drought-hit parts of the country, prolonged drought in Barmer and other parts of western Rajasthan is forcing farmers to abandon their fields to migrate to cities in search of work and sustenance. There is little help from the government, either in terms of immediate relief or long-term efforts such as completion of irrigation projects on time, farmers told IndiaSpend.

Many farmers we spoke to said since no party in government has been able to ameliorate farm distress, in the ongoing general elections, they would vote by caste or community ties. “We have been facing drought for a long time. When there is no crop, do such promises matter?” said farmer Prahlad Ram of Gadara Road area, now a daily-wage worker, of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promise to double farmer income by 2022.

Drought in a desert state

Of Barmer’s total geographical area of 2.82 million hectare, 1.86 million hectare is cultivable. The net sown area is 1.79 million hectare. Of the total cultivable area, about 80% is rainfed, as per a local Krishi Vigyan Kendra (agricultural outreach centre).

In 2014, 1,451 villages of Barmer were declared drought-hit, when the district received 220.79 mm of rainfall against the average of 275 mm. This increased to 2,206 villages in 2015 and 2,478 in 2016.

Rainfall data for the last five years show changing rainfall patterns, and fewer villages were declared drought-hit in 2017–1,925. The average rainfall has since gone up, except in 2018, when 128 mm rainfall was recorded, less than half the average.

This uneven distribution of rainfall is evident nationwide: averages can mask new peaks and lows, as IndiaSpend reported on May 4, 2019.

Pradeep Pagariya, an agricultural scientist at Krishi Vigyan Kendra in Gudamalani in Barmer, explained the paradoxical situation of a drought in a year of more than average rainfall. In 2017, Barmer received 95 mm rainfall in June and 245 mm rainfall in July, but only 18 mm rainfall in August and no rain in September.

More rainfall but for shorter periods is a peculiarity becoming increasingly common–the monsoon period has shrunk from four months to two or even one in some years, Pragariya said, which has sent the largely rainfed crop pattern of the district into a tizzy as it leaves crops damaged during periods crucial for their growth, Pagariya told IndiaSpend.

Complete crop damage in 79% villages

In the 2018 monsoon, as Barmer witnessed 128 mm rainfall against the district average of 275 mm, crops worth Rs 1,200 crore ($173 million) were damaged across the 1.5 million hectare of cultivated land in Barmer.

According to the Barmer district administration’s crop assessment report for 2018, there was 100% crop damage in 2,191 villages in the 2018 kharif season; 503 villages are witnessing 75% crop damage; and 50% of crop damage is reported in the remaining 47 villages.

Farmers allege that crop assessment has been delayed despite continuous drought–the district received no rainfall until August 15, 2018, and crop assessment started only from September 15 and concluded on October 15, after which the report was sent to the state government.

Drought relief activities would commence on April 1, Barmer district collector Himaanshu Gupta told IndiaSpend, adding that the state government would set up cattle camps and fodder depots, and has sanctioned a contingency plan worth Rs 4.50 crore.

To implement this plan, the district administration in the first week of April asked gram panchayats (village councils) and gram sewa sahkari samitis (village cooperatives) to send proposals to set up fodder depots where subsidised fodder would be sold. By April 30, 516 fodder depots had been sanctioned, of which 400 had been opened.

Besides, 16 cattle camps have been opened and another 27 will be set up. Authorities have identified a total of 1,308 areas where severe scarcity of drinking water is observed and people are entirely dependent on government water supply. Water works department has been directed to ensure water supply to these areas through water tankers.

Women in Bhachbhar village, about 45 km west of Barmer city in arid western Rajasthan, collect water supplied by a tanker sanctioned as drought relief.

Government measures not enough

The state government, to compensate farmers for crop damage due to drought, has provided agricultural input subsidy to farmers for the 2018 kharif season with an upper limit of Rs 13,600 for up to two hectares of land. Meghwal said this compensation was not enough to ensure his family’s upkeep, particularly as successive droughts have exhausted his family’s savings and food stores.

In the city, he said, he earns Rs 7,000 a month, of which he sends Rs 5,000 back home. This would not suffice to support his four children’s higher education, once they pass out of the village government school, he said.

Alam Khan, a 46-year-old farmer with 12 hectares of land in Panela village, said he had spent Rs 65,000–gathered through a bank loan and from a moneylender–on sowing bajra and moong. He had received a fourth of this amount, Rs 13,600, as compensation for crop loss from the government. Khan was among the fortunate few who received a loan waiver of Rs 25,000. Yet, continuous drought had forced him to work as a daily wager and two of his three sons to take up driving jobs in Barmer city.

Alam Khan, 46, spent Rs 65,000 on sowing bajra and moong on his 12-hectare farm in Panela village in Rajasthan’s Barmer district. Khan received a loan waiver of Rs 25,000. Yet, successive years of drought have forced him to work as a daily wager and two of his three sons to take up driving jobs in Barmer city.

Smaller farmers such as Babu Ram of Jine Ki Basti and Prahlad Ram of Gadara Road areas said they were forced to borrow from moneylenders to sow crops, since bank loans were not available to them.

Forty-five-year-old Babu Ram said he had received Rs 13,600 as government compensation but had spent Rs 25,000 on cultivating his six-hectare farm. Unable to repay, he had moved to Balotra town to work as a daily wager–earning Rs 300 per day–while his wife tried to find work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). He said he saved most of his earnings to repay his debt. His two sons were in school.

Babu Ram, 45, a farmer with six hectares of land, moved to Balotra town in Barmer district in western Rajasthan, to work as a daily wager, earning Rs 300 per day. His wife takes up the occasional work available under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.

Prahlad Ram, too, had turned to daily-wage work to repay the Rs 40,000 he had borrowed to cultivate his seven-hectare farm. He had two children–one studying at the village school and the other working as a driver.

Irrigation projects announced but not completed

Just 20% of Barmer’s farms are irrigated, primarily with tube-wells (63.73%), and some with open wells and canals.

Successive governments over the last six decades have spent more than Rs 7,000 crore ($1 billion) on different water projects to bring canal water to Rajasthan.

The Indira Gandhi Canal Project, conceived in the 1960s and having taken Rs 2,000 crore to bring it to Jaisalmer, is yet to cover Barmer, which is part of its larger plan to provide water to the district along with Ganganagar, Churu and Jaisalmer.

While lack of water and budgetary constraints are cited as reasons why the project was stalled in Jaisalmer, in Barmer, it is the new Desert National Park, spread over 3,612 sq km across Jaisalmer and Barmer, that is acting as a stumbling block, according to veteran journalist Shankarlal Dhariwal, who has covered development projects in the region for many years. Infrastructure projects are prohibited in the vicinity of the park.

Other projects planned to relieve western Rajasthan of its water woes–the Barmer Lift Water Supply project, the Narmada Canal project, Pokhran-Falsund-Balotra-Siwana Lift Project and Ummed Sagar-Dhawa-Khandap-Samdari water scheme–are at various stages of completion.
The Barmer Lift Water Supply project was planned in 1992 to provide water to villages in Barmer and Jaisalmer districts. More than half of the sanctioned Rs 2,203 crore has been spent at various phases of the project. Some of the targeted villages are already benefiting, government officials claimed, while requesting not to be named. Initially due in 2016, the project is now expected to be complete by 2022.

A Narmada Canal project, to connect with the Narmada Valley Project in Gujarat, was conceptualised in 2007 to benefit 1,634 villages across Barmer and Jalore districts at a cost of Rs 2,237.87 crore. Its deadline has been pushed from 2015 to 2020 as work has begun on only the first two phases of the five-phase project, though the canal has started providing irrigation water to some targeted villages.

The Pokhran-Falsund-Balotra-Siwana Lift project was planned in 2005 and Ummed Sagar-Dhawa-Khandap-Samdari water scheme in 2007 at a cost of Rs 1,454.20 crore and Rs 575.46 crore, respectively. While work on the Ummed Sagar-Samdari water scheme is expected to be complete by 2020, the Pokhran-Siwana Lift project has exhausted its allocated funds and is awaiting more from the state government.
 

Source: Public Health and Engineering Department data, Government of Rajasthan

Villagers in these areas told IndiaSpend they continue to depend on traditional water harvesting structures called beris, and open wells, most of which are now claimed by individuals who keep the structures locked and sometimes even paint their names on them to declare ownership.

Women in Rohidi village in Rajasthan’s Barmer district collect water from a public well. Most open wells are now claimed by individuals who keep the structures locked and sometimes even paint their names on them to declare ownership.

Almost all the water projects for the region are coming along at a snail’s pace, said T.D. Rathi, a former executive engineer with the public health and engineering department of Rajasthan who currently lives in Barmer. The reason is usually insufficient and non-timely fund allocation, or political meddling. The Barmer Water Lift Canal Project, for instance, was inaugurated by the Congress government in the state in 2003, and expected to be completed by 2007. However, in 2003, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government on assuming power halted the project for almost four years, only to once again inaugurate work on it in 2007, Rathi said.

Delays deprive the targeted beneficiaries, and lead to cost escalation. In 2003, the Barmer Water Lift Canal Project was expected to cost Rs 425 crore. Now, Rs 800 crore have been spent on its first phase alone, with three phases remaining.

Not enough work under MGNREGS

Nearly 1,100 villages in the district face drinking water shortage, with 200 villages dependent entirely on tankers in the absence of any drinking water source provided by the government, according to a recent report prepared by the revenue department based on a survey it conducted to assess the effect of drought.

Shortage of drinking water and fodder for cattle is one main reason why farmers migrate to neighbouring states such as Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab in search of work.

Even the provision of an extra 50 days of employment in drought-hit areas against the regular 100 days promised under MGNREGS has not prevented farmer out-migration. Data on the MGNREGS portal reveal that in Barmer, the government has been able to generate 56 days of employment every year on an average over the last five years, as against the promised 100.

In 2018-19, the state government issued job cards to 534,000 households in Barmer but could provide employment to only 306,000 households–a 42% shortfall–while a mere 14,809 or 2.78% of households worked for 100 days. The average wage rate of the past five years in Barmer has been Rs 152.08 per day.

Crop insurance, loan waivers leave farmers unmoved

The government has made efforts to provide drought relief by releasing funds under the crop insurance scheme, rebranded as Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s tenure, amid claims that farmers would not need to worry about monsoon failure or crop damage anymore.

However, insurance firms in the district have made a practice of releasing a small part of the promised insurance claim, citing late sowing of crops as the reason, state agriculture department officials told IndiaSpend, asking not to be named.

After the 2018 monsoon failed, the insurance firm, TATA AIG Pvt. Ltd, offered to pay only 25% of the Rs 1,034.36 crore (Rs 258.59 crore) claimed by the district administration, according to Kishorilal Verma, deputy director at Agricultural Department in Barmer. This amount was Rs 120.29 crore less than Rs 378.79 crore collected by the company as premium.

TATA AIG said no crops were sown in the district before the August 15 cut-off, so it was liable to pay only 25% of the claimed amount. Deputy Manager for Tata AIG Pvt Ltd in Rajasthan, Shailendra Srivastava, was not available for comment.

Official data reveal that in 2018, 1.52 million hectare of farmland was cultivated, but a bad monsoon damaged crops on 1.22 million hectare and affected 557,000 farmers. Following the report, the state government compensated the losses of 390,000 farmers by issuing Rs 387.60 crore to them as agricultural input subsidy, as per the District Disaster Management and Relief Department. The farmers losing 75% to 100% of their crop got Rs 10,094 on average, those losing 50% to 75% of their crop got Rs 9,373 on average, and the farmers who lost 33% to 50% of their crop got Rs 5,159 on average.

Similar sums were paid out for compensation for crop damage in 2017 and 2016. The compensation is usually just a fraction of the sum farmers have spent, as farmers Babu Ram and Prahlad Ram said.

The state government also opened cattle sheds for livestock and sanctioned contingency plans to supply drinking water by tankers.

Farmers in the state are also entitled to interest-free loans, but continuous drought has kept many of them from paying back previous loans on time. Data accessed by IndiaSpend through sources in cooperative banks showed that around 550,000 farmers were under a combined debt of Rs 2,000 crore in December 2018.

When Rajasthan saw massive farmer protests ahead of the state assembly (legislature) elections in 2018, the then BJP government announced a loan waiver of upto Rs 50,000 to farmers holding up to two hectares of land.

Since a majority of farmers in the region hold five to 10 hectares of land, they did not receive waivers. Taking a cue from this, one of the first decisions of the new Ashok Gehlot-led Congress government that came to power in December 2018 was to waive farmers’ loans of up to Rs 2 lakh each.

During the BJP’s December 2013 to December 2018 term, Rs 415 crore farmer debt was waived in Barmer. The current Congress government’s loan waiver of Rs 683.92 crore is estimated to have benefitted 200,000 farmers in the district.

How will farmers vote?

Despite deep crisis in the farm sector, it is the local issues and caste that decide the elections in Barmer, political analyst Manoj Gujar told IndiaSpend, adding that the national issues or the mass appeal of leaders such as Prime Minister Narendra Modi or Congress president Rahul Gandhi have very little effect on people here.

Barmer voted on April 29 in the ongoing general election. It was untouched by the “Modi wave”, Gujar said, citing the example of the BJP candidate from the district, Col Sonaram Choudhary. The three-time Congress member of parliament switched to the BJP when the latter promised him a ticket, and won the 2014 Lok Sabha polls largely due to the caste-based support he enjoyed, Gujar said. He defeated a BJP-rebel candidate as well as former BJP stalwart Jaswant Singh, who had contested the 2014 Lok Sabha elections independently.

Barmer farmer Alam Khan said he had voted for Jaswant Singh last time, because Singh and his son Manvendra had been helpful to his people and because his community votes as “suggested by our leaders”. Manvendra contested from Barmer on a Congress ticket this time.  

Farmer Prahlad Ram, on the other hand, had chosen Choudhary in the last elections because “they belong to the same community”, a criterion he said he used in every election.

Hariram Meghwal said no government has so far been able to sort out farmers’ problems. With the governments and the rain gods repeatedly failing him, Meghwal said he would rather place his trust in his luck.

This is the fifth report of a six-part series in our series on drought, and has been reported from Rajasthan. The previous stories can be read here, here, here and here.

(Mathrani is a Barmer-based freelance writer and a member of 101Reporters.com, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters.) 

Courtesy: India Spend

The post $1Bn Spent On Irrigation For Rajasthan, But Barmer Remains 80% Rainfed appeared first on SabrangIndia.

 
Of the cereals grown in India, rice consumes the most water per tonne of output while delivering the least nutrients–iron, zinc and protein–according to the study published in Science Advances, a global science journal. The suggested replacements for rice are maize, finger millet, pearl millet and sorghum, all of which consume less water per tonne and are more nutritious.
 
In a first, scientists juxtaposed this potential water-saving from an alternative cropping pattern with the nutritional gains that would follow from growing more nutrient-dense and less water-intensive cereals. Replacing rice with a more nutrient-rich or water-efficient crop would marginally improve the production of protein (1%) but considerably increase the production of iron and zinc, by 27% and 13%, respectively.
 
These findings are significant considering that India today faces the worst water crisis in its history and continues to battle iron and zinc deficiencies.
 
The study, ‘Alternative cereals can improve water use and nutrient supply in India’, was published on July 4, 2018.
 
Twenty-one Indian cities will run out of groundwater by 2020, the NITI Aayog, the government’s policy think-tank, predicted last month, as IndiaSpend reported on June 25, 2018.
 
While the common belief is that urbanisation and industrialisation are the reasons for the falling groundwater levels across India, over nine-tenths of groundwater is extracted for irrigation, IndiaSpend reported in November 2016.
 
Roughly one-third (34%) of the 632 cubic kilometre (cu km) of water that India used to grow cereals in 2009 came from various irrigation sources, the new study said. Rainfall accounted for the rest.
 
While India is food secure today, the new study showed that this achievement has come at the cost of water security, and has failed to substantially improve Indians’ nutrition status, particularly iron and zinc sufficiency.
 
Just over half (53%) of Indian women of reproductive age (15 to 49 years) were estimated to be anaemic–a result of iron deficiency–in the fourth National Family Health Survey of 2015-16, IndiaSpend reported in November 2017. More than a third of the Indian population is zinc-deprived, we reported in September 2017.
 
Now it appears a solution is at hand to reverse these deficiencies while achieving water security and livelihood security for farmers. “A massive win-win” is how Mihir Shah, economist, former member of the Planning Commission and co-founder of water and livelihood security initiative Samaj Pragati Sahayog, described the cropping change solution.
 
Using less water for irrigation is key to environmental sustainability
India’s cereal production increased 230% between 1966 and 2009, according to this new study, whose credit goes to the vast improvements in irrigation infrastructure across India. Irrigation sources contributed 86% of the increase in water usage for cereal production during this period.
 
Rainwater used for agriculture on rainfed lands reduced from 300 cu km to 219 cu km. This fall expresses both the expansion of the irrigated area and the decline in average rainfall in recent decades, Ashwini Chhatre, co-author of the present study and associate professor of public policy and academic director at the Bharti Institute of Public Policy at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, told IndiaSpend.
 

Source: Science Advances; Figures in cu km.
 
Average rainfall declined from 1,050 mm in the kharif (monsoon) season of 1970 to less than 1,000 mm in kharif 2015. Similarly, in the winter cropping or rabi season, average rainfall declined from roughly 150 mm in 1970 to about 100 mm in 2015, IndiaSpend reported in June 2018 based on the findings of a new NITI Aayog study. The number of days without rainfall during the monsoons has increased, from 40% in 1970 to 45% in 2015.
 
“Protective irrigation is vital to insure farmers [growing] alternative cereals against dry days and dry spells during the monsoon, both of which are now established outcomes of climate change,” said Chhatre.
 
How foodgrain subsidy has added to water stress and nutritional deficiencies
 
Cereal consumption and cropping data show that the shift towards rice-wheat consumption and cropping has intensified since the Green Revolution of the 1960s.
 
Between the mid-1960s and 2010, an urban Indian’s wheat consumption almost doubled, from 27 kg to 52 kg. This plate-share gain came at the cost of the consumption of sorghum and millets, reducing their average annual per capita consumption from 32.9 kg to 4.2 kg.
 
As a result, since 1956, the area under millets and sorghum has shrunk–23% for pearl millet, 49% for finger millet, 64% for sorghum and 85% for small (or minor) millets.
 
This dietary shift is typically believed to have been demand-led, as wheat is seen as superior to millets and sorghum, and the cereal preferred by the more affluent Indians. This study, however, showed that the shift is significantly supply-driven, reflecting “a substantial influence from the country’s Public Distribution System”, the food security programme for low-income households.
 
By providing a guaranteed minimum support price to producers and placing heavy subsidies on rice and wheat at the consumer end, this system “has also served to influence cropping and dietary choices away from more nutrient-rich alternative cereals and is an important factor contributing to the persistence of widespread nutrient deficiencies”, the study noted.
 

Source: Indian Food Composition Tables, National Institute Of Nutrition, quoted in Science Advances.
 
“Chief minister N.T. Rama Rao’s promise of rice at Rs 2 per kg in 1982 in erstwhile Andhra Pradesh changed the dietary preferences of the last two generations, from millets to rice, without any commensurate improvement in health,” Chhatre added by way of more examples to show this supply-side push.
 
Partly as a result of this, anaemia in women of reproductive age–a key indicator of the health status of a society–has increased in Telangana (part of erstwhile Andhra Pradesh), from 49.8% in the first National Family Health Survey (NFHS) in 1999-2000 to 55% in the latest NFHS in 2015-16.
 
Shah advocated introducing healthier millets and pulses into the Mid-Day Meal scheme and Integrated Child Development Services scheme, to create sizeable demand for these crops and to create a structure of incentives for farmers to grow them. This could be followed by the decentralised procurement of the crops by the government for supply to these schemes.
 
“At present, we only incentivise the growing of water-intensive crops because those are the only crops we procure,” he said.
 
This study has also found that swapping rice for an alternative cereal would not entail a fall in production, which could have implied a shortage of food grain. For instance, switching from rice to maize in 38 rice-growing districts in Madhya Pradesh would actually increase the yield, as would happen in 22 rice-growing districts in Maharashtra. Swapping rice for sorghum in 31 rice-growing districts in Madhya Pradesh and in 14 districts in Maharashtra would produce a higher yield, it added.
 

Source: Science Advances
 
Decentralising nutrient production would protect from local climate shocks
 
Punjab, with 97% of its land irrigated, and Haryana, with 84%, vastly improved their irrigation facilities between 1966 and 2009, the period of this study. In becoming key producers of rice and wheat for the country, these states have also become the largest sources of agricultural water demand.
 
The irrigation needs of wheat–a rabi crop–have driven 69% of the increase in demand for water for agricultural purposes. Rice, meanwhile, is the most inefficient crop in nutrient production as well as water usage, in both the kharif and rabi seasons.
 
Consequently, replacing the rice grown in the northern grain belt alone with alternative crops would deliver substantial water saving, and “about half of total water savings from replacement would come from just 39 districts, most of which are in Punjab and Haryana”, Chhatre said.
 
The study has found that in the last 40 years, the burden of water stress has shifted away from southern districts, some of which have experienced a decrease in agricultural water demand, towards Punjab and Haryana.
 

Source: Science Advances
 
Changing the cropping pattern across India would effectively decentralise nutrient production, thereby reducing the impact of local climate shocks such as droughts or floods to national grain production, Kyle Frankel Davis, the lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow at The Earth Institute, Columbia University, USA, as well as a NatureNet Science Fellow at The Nature Conservancy, told IndiaSpend.
 
“While India has done well to prioritise calorie production to avoid widespread hunger, now, considerations like nutrition and environmental impacts cannot continue to be side-stepped if the country wants to achieve better health for all and environmental sustainability,” he said.
 
(Bahri is a freelance writer and editor based in Mount Abu, Rajasthan.)

Courtesy: India Spend
 

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