The first round of floods that hit Lakhimpur district in eastern Assam last week has already wreaked havoc on the farmers of that district, with the authorities estimating that standing crops on approximately 25,000 hectares have been damaged. The resultant loss to farmers is estimated to be around Rs 5.5 crore. The monsoon, in fact, is yet to set in fully in the Northeast, and though the meteorological department has forecast a normal monsoon in Assam this year, the state agriculture department has decided against sitting assured.“The Met officials have forecast a normal monsoon. But going by what has happened in Lakhimpur district last week, we have decided not to remain complacent. Instead, we have drawn up a detailed contingency plan to tackle any eventuality, be it flood or drought,” Assam Agriculture Minister Pramila Rani Brahma told The Indian Express. Her department, in fact, has submitted a Rs 6-crore emergency budget to the state Government in order to tackle any emergency situation arising out of excessive rainfall in the next couple of weeks.Last year, the rains continued to play havoc in Assam from early June till late September, shattering repeated efforts of farmers to resume transplantation of paddy saplings in some districts even up to three times. “Past two years have been really bad. In 2006, it was a drought-like situation that affected over 11 lakh farm families who cover about seven lakh hectares of farmland. And last year, it was the same havoc story of the floods,” the minister said.“We have already kept a sum of Rs 50 lakh ready to procure and supply sali paddy saplings if the floods come and go in the next two or three weeks. But if the fields lie submerged till late August, then there is no use asking the farmers to resume sali paddy cultivation. In that case we will provide them with directly sowable ahu paddy seeds,” said Mrigen Kalita, secretary in the state agriculture department.For the department, sowing seeds centrally in one or two places and distributing the saplings across the state has been a difficult task. Going by past experience, the department has already launched a new scheme called ‘seed village’ programme, through which 50 farmers each in over 2,000 villages have been already provided with seeds of high-yielding paddy which they will sow once the floods are over.“These farmers will be also required to distribute the saplings to their fellow farmers in their respective neighbourhoods so that the process of sowing seeds and distributing saplings becomes faster,” Kalita said. Right now, however, barring Lakhimpur, the rainfall has been highly favourable to the farmers. “But you never know, forecasts may always go wrong,” he added. While Assam has a net cropped area of about 24.9 lakh hectares (state’s total area is 78.44 lakh hectares), roughly 4.75 lakh hectares, which is about 19.08 per cent of the net cropped area, is chronically flood-prone. This apart, the state also has about 0.94 lakh hectares area that is considered chronically drought-affected, Kalita pointed out.
