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India: Women Living Between A Rock And a Hard Place
By Manipadma Jena
©Women's Feature ServiceFrom WFS Archive
Anantapur, (Women's Feature Service)-
Racing along National Highway No. 7 from the Bengaluru airport towards Andhra Pradesh, the roadside vineyards give way to cragged hills, bald except for a smattering of shrubs around their midriffs. Still further into the suicide belt of Anantapur district, farmers - under an unusually sweltering sun - are digging out, bit by bit, embedded granite boulders, some the size of a Nano car, to create a patch where they can grow groundnut, the less water-hungry crop grown on 85 per cent of cultivated land in the district.
Falling in the rain shadow zone, Anantpur, part of the Rayalaseema region in Andhra Pradesh, is the second-most drought-prone district in India. In eight out of the 10 years since 1997-98 till 2007-08, all 63 administrative blocks were declared drought-affected (Government of Andhra Pradesh's Handbook of Statistics 2007-08, Anantapur District).
As the rain gods get more distant, unpredictable and make the gravelly red soil sulk, the ground water recedes deeper: It can now be reached only at 300 feet in most areas. With only 12.75 per cent of gross cropped area having access to irrigation facilities, farmers take loans to chase water - "Rs 60,000 to get a bore well going," calculates Ramadevi, 36, who works shoulder to shoulder with husband Veera Narayana, in Chinnajalalapuram village, Singanamala block.
In Anantapur the cost of chasing water goes much beyond money; it costs lives. Kandula Laxmidevi, 64, utters just so quietly, "My husband was illiterate." Kullaya Reddy was 65 when he died. He owned no mean landholding - 10 acres irrigated and 20 acres of dry land in Atmakur village (in Atmakur block). Irrigation for the dry land came from two open wells; its water at 40 feet depth began drying in the summer 2000; filling up during the monsoons. But in 2004 even that did not happen.
In 2005, Kullaya, now desperate, dug 17 wells on this 20-acre plot hoping he would hit water. Finally at the 18th attempt he did, but his quest for water had totted up a Rs 10,00,000 (one million) loan, half of it from local money lenders at two per cent interest a month. Farmers who fail to repay a bank loan on schedule are rendered ineligible to apply again. Consequently, they prefer taking loans from private moneylenders, even at three times the bank interest rate.
Kullaya had banked on his 10 acres of irrigated cash crops - curry leaf plants, papaya, groundnut and paddy. In 2006, pre-monsoon hailstorms pelted the crops, rain followed. Mature crops lay torn and ravaged. After this, rains just vanished making it impossible to sow anew. That year, the total rainfall in Atmakur was just 316 mm.
Thereafter, the money lenders came every evening, threatening to take away Kullaya's bullocks, the cart, even his house. A respected elder in the village, Laxmidevi says he found this unbearably humiliating. One morning, he drank a measure of Monoprotophos - a phosphate- based insecticide, acutely toxic and banned in the US but subsidised by the Indian government. His two young sons have since repaid the moneylenders and Laxmidevi wishes her husband had had more faith in himself.
In Andhra Pradesh, the farmer has lost faith. "Farming is now a gamble," pronounces B. Kristappa, 55, a farmer-turned-social entrepreneur with environmental NGO consortium, Anantha Paryavarana Parirakshana Samithi (APPS). Since 2000 till 2009, the total rainfall has been normal in only three of the nine years. However, the pattern of rainfall, its timeliness has swung in extremes, making for a farmer's nightmare and descent into the poverty and the debt trap.
Kullaya's is a typical case study of the impact of desertification in India, which the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) defines as "land degradation in the dry land resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities". B. Chandra Sekhar, Divisional Forest Officer, in charge of the District Water Management Agency of Anantapur, reveals yet another frightening face of desertification in the district: 602 acres of sand dunes in the Kanekal and Bommanahal blocks shift with every summer storm and lay to waste hundreds of acres of arable land.
Unfortunately, Anantapur has lost yet another precious gift it had inherited from its rulers between 900 and 1500 AD - with which it could have fought the onslaught of climate change: The exceptional structures that harvested almost all the rain that fell in the area. Over 300 irrigation tanks able to irrigate over 1,000 acres added to which 2,000 minor tanks, kuntas (small rainwater harvesting structure) and perennial springs were able to store water for two if not three crops a year. This generous irrigation system allowed different local varieties of food crops - rice and millet mainly - to be grown. With deforestation, the tanks silted, bunds collapsed and gradually fell into disrepair. The poorly replenished groundwater only added to the land's aridity.
Irrigation facility is available to only 1.5 lakh hectares. Today, tanks irrigate only 3.5 per cent, while deep bore wells irrigate 68.7 per cent (Government of Andhra Pradesh's Handbook of Statistics 2007-08, Anantaput District) sucking out groundwater as if there is no tomorrow. The government's scheme for free electricity to the farmer and a 90 per cent subsidy on drip irrigation sets have only accentuated this trend. Incidentally, the remaining 10 per cent share paid by the farmer costs Rs 12,500 to drip irrigate one hectare (2.5 acre). The cost of installing a bore well is equally high. Effectively the small and marginal farmer is kept out of most subsidised irrigation.
Nadimamidamma, 55, in Settipalli village is an example of this. Her son Hanumanthu, 33, the eldest of six children, clutched on to a high voltage live wire and ended his life in August this year, seeing no hope at the end of a dark debt tunnel. From the Boya fishermen community, the family cultivated two acres of rocky foothill wasteland, which could be irrigated only when the ancient tank nearby overflowed into his fields, which it had not done in five years.
After Hanumanthu's death, the family stands at the doors of destitution. With a three-month-old baby his widow, Chandramma, cannot go for work. "But I have to" intones Nadimamidamma, emaciated, overworked and pushed to the edge - she earns a paltry Rs 15 a day shelling a measure of 50 kilos of groundnut at a rich farmer's house. The Rs 50,000 she may get under the Apat Bandhu Scheme as compensation for her son's death - if she is able to undertake the numerous frustrating visits to the block administrative headquarters - will go to repay only half the loan; she has to continue paying interest on the rest.
Farmer's widows are not all that cloud Anantapur's horizons today. C. Bhanuja, 46, chief functionary of Rural Environment Development Society, which rescues trafficked victims, observes that the number of girls and women from Andhra Pradesh in the red light areas of the four cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Panaji are high. What is changing is that while earlier these women came from the coastal region, now Lambada tribals and Muslim women from Kadiri block in Southern Anantapur are being trafficked. Comment enough on Anantapur's tragic tryst with desertification.
1,200 words
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