First the drought, now the flood

Baksh has to support a family of 10 and owes Rs 30,000 to the local moneylender. Last year, his sons migrated to Agra after his village in drought-hit Bundelkhand faced an acute water shortage.

After the June 17 rains, Banda district has so far recorded about 37.2 mm of rainfall and like Baksh’s, several fields are flooded. But farmers refuse to see this deluge as some cruel play of irony: they believe the situation could have been avoided had the Centre and state come up with better water management schemes instead of playing politics over the drought.

Forty-year-old Jagdish, who, like Baksh, has enrolled for the NREG plantation scheme because his field is flooded, said, “There is no way to channel the stagnant water into the wells and the nallas though the Ken river flows barely 15 km away. We had some rain in 2005 and we could have stored that water in our lakes had we channeled it properly. But all the water was allowed to dry up.”

Though Mahoba and Banda together have about 2,830 lakes and ponds, these two districts were among the worst-hit districts of Bundelkhand in UP last year.

According to a study conducted by Delhi-based NGO Development Alternatives, “most of the traditional (water) structures have fallen into disrepair or have completely been destroyed.” The study, ‘Developing water sustaining livelihoods’ says that in recent times, over the last 20 years, canals and tubewells have become the predominant sources of irrigation in Bundelkhand.

Indiscriminate mining and bad servicing of irrigation canals are also responsible for the crisis, said Uma Shankar Mishra, the pradhan of Murhari village in Mahoba district, where, last year, a 15-year old boy was arrested after a fight over water.

“Farmers have been traditionally dependent on reservoirs and the rains. Traditionally, the community was responsible for the servicing of lakes and water reservoirs. Now we have to depend on the irrigation department for water and the results are visible,” Mishra said. So while Baksh works on the plantation drive announced by Mayawati—she wants 10 crore trees to be planted in Bundelkhand under the NREG scheme—he can’t stop thinking of the Rs 1,000 he spent on buying seeds this season. He will have to wait—till next season.

While the 13 districts of Bundelkhand were officially declared drought-hit in December 2006, it was Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s tour of the area in January 2008 that brought the region into focus. The Congress leader had accused the Mayawati government of failing to implement the rural job scheme and Mayawati, in turn, had said that the Centre had failed to provide Bundelkhand with a drought relief package.

(Next: Madhya Pradesh has plans for Bundelkhand but farmers say they are out of it)