SOROOR AHMED discusses economics and politics of floods, droughts and food security, and exposes the games our politicians play, not so much for solving the problems but to bolster their political prospects.
Everybody Loves A Good Drought. Nothing exemplifies this statement better than the situation in the country this year. Actually this is the name of the book written about a decade ago by the rural affairs editor of The Hindu, P Sainath. In some parts of north India floods are also loved as they too fill the pockets of many who matter.
Just mark the strangeness of the situation. Some districts of eastern Uttar Pradesh and north Bihar have a unique distinction this year of suffering simultaneously from both drought and flood. No, nature is less to blame for this ‘double-tragedy’.
Let us take the example of Bihar first. Floods in three successive years of 2007, 2008 and 2009 were all man-made and led to the killing of thousands of people and cattle. In 2007 the embankment of river Burhi Gandak was breached, in 2008 Kosi caused unprecedented devastation and this year rivers Bagmati and Mahananda made big holes in their respective embankments. After all what has suddenly started happening to the embankments in Bihar?
All the independent sources blame the bureaucrats-technocrats-democrats (read ruling elites) nexus directly responsible for the floods. Ironically, this year both Bihar and East UP faced flood at the height of the drought.
Uttar Pradesh has declared 58 out of 70 and Bihar 26 out of 38 districts as drought-hit. What is even stranger is that these states, especially Bihar, want to declare all the districts as the drought-hit. May one then ask where has flood struck? It is difficult to convince a foreigner about this unique situation in large parts of north India.
It is a fact that the rainfall has been less in 246 districts of the 10 states of India. And it is also a fact that thousands of people have got displaced due to floods in a large part of eastern UP and north Bihar. Droughts have occurred in the past too yet there were no television channels and other media to sell them for ulterior motives. In the past there were some serious – and some non-serious – newspaper writings, be it on drought of 1966-67 in Palamu, now in Jharkhand, or Kalahandi, Bolangir and Koraput districts of western Orissa in 1990s. However, it is also true that in the name of drought and flood relief money was siphoned off in the past. But now, in the post-liberalised TV era the scope has only increased manifold.
Earlier a state would seek help for one calamity at a time; now both flood and drought can be used at the same time – thanks to the craftiness of the ruling class. If the rulers can catch pliable and friendly media then they can get any story planted.
Once again take Bihar as the case study. When the man-made flood struck the state last year, Bihar government sought Rs 14,000-odd crore from the Centre and when the drought hit in 2009 it asked for Rs 23,071 crore. Does this state government understand the magnitude of the amount it is demanding? The Centre has so far doled out only Rs 1,472 crore for the entire country to fight drought.
May one ask as to how many paise the Centre paid to the same state, when it was devastated by a drought in 1994? No, the then state government of Lalu Prasad could never have dared to seek so much as the entire media and the public opinion-makers would have poked fun on him.
Now turn to Maharashtra, the home state of the Union agriculture minister, Sharad Pawar. A section of Congressmen is rather busy using drought as a weapon to cut to size the stature of the Nationalist Congress Party leader. A large interior part of this state is also drought-prone and this year too a number of its districts find its place in the list of 246 drought-affected districts. The intention of the Congressmen is not to expose Sharad Pawar’s failure, but to settle the political score as assembly election is due shortly in that state. And if Pawar has failed what is the team leader Manmohan Singh doing? No answer from Congressmen.
Talk to agriculture experts and they would simply mock at the very thought of food scarcity in this 21st century and that too in a country which is aspiring to become a global power. These things happen in the sub-Saharan Africa. Here in India the food shortage is artificial and political. There are many short-duration crops, such as moong, soyabean, etc. which can replace rice when monsoon fails. If it rains less, they can be sown by July end or early August and thus there is no need to get panicky. Rice production this year is expected to go down by ten million tonnes. But this can easily be made good by better alternative crops and vegetables.
But then we have other problems. Now look towards Uttar Pradesh, where 60 to 70 per cent of pulses are destroyed annually by blue bulls (Nilgai). The number of blue bulls, according to an estimate, is over three lakhs in the state and as per the Wildlife Act they cannot be hunted down. Shrinking forests and sharp decline in the number of tigers and lions also gave a big boost to the population of blue bulls not only in UP, but in other parts of the country too. Uttar Pradesh produces 10 per cent of 15 million tonnes of pulses produced in the country. The annual national demand is 17 to 18 million tonnes. So two to three million tonnes are imported every year. Had they not destroyed so much standing crops, India could have avoided the large import of pulses. All this is happening when the poor are forced to buy pulses at the rate of Rs 70-80 and even more.
Pulses are sown in about 2.2 million hectares in UP. According to experts, they do not need much water and can be rotated with cereals. They also help control pests and diseases.
So far about cattle destroying crops. Do not talk about rodents, which gobble up millions of tonnes of food grains in our farms and godowns every year. And we just watch helplessly.
Now the question arises: Is it true that the stocks of food grains held by government are very limited and it will be enough for 13 months only and the stock of sugar will last for two months only? Only a few years back Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen in his book Argumentative Indian quoted Jeane Dreze, a noted expert, to suggest that India has so much food stock that it can be piled up in the sacks up to the moon. Where has that stock gone?
Some aspects of the flood and drought stories can never be understood by the common people. For example, take the case of our food grains basket – Punjab, Haryana and West UP, especially the first two. In the end of May and June newspapers of north India were full of stories that these two states were facing acute farm labour crisis. They receive a large number of seasonal migrations of labour from north Bengal, Bihar and eastern UP.
NREGA, massive rail and road construction works and other developmental projects in Bihar, east UP, north Bengal were attributed to this fall in the seasonal migrations. Last year too Punjab and Haryana faced similar situation because of the same reasons.
Since Punjab and Haryana have assured irrigation, the rice farmers do not wait for rain and start sowing seeds by the end of May. By late June and early July they start transplantation work.
Reports appeared in May-June that the farmers of Punjab and Haryana were thronging various railway stations with liquor bottles and other incentives to attract farm labours. The wages were increased almost by double.
However, by the end of July news stated coming in that the farm labours were returning to their home states in eastern India as they did not have enough work as Punjab and Haryana were in the grip of serious drought. The common man took the news as Gospel truth. But the fact is that monsoon arrives in these two states, Delhi and west UP by July, that is almost one month after the eastern states and south-western coast. If it is so, why did the farmers in Punjab and Haryana got panicked in July itself and the labours started fleeing? Besides, less rainfall, which has assured irrigation, does not matter too much in Punjab, Haryana and west UP. In fact the average rainfall in this region is almost half of Bihar and West Bengal and one-fourth of North-East and Kerala. So rain does not matter so much in our food-basket.
If Punjab and Haryana annually get 620 to 640 mm rain, Bihar and East UP gets around 1,200 mm, West Bengal, Meghalaya and several north eastern states 2,700 to 2,800 mm and Kerala and Konkan over 3,000 mm.
So if monsoon is not up to the mark this year in the region which already falls in the less rainfall zone and where the entire farming has been dependent on assured irrigation for well over a century then why was there so much panic? Mind it this less rainfall zone is also our food basket.
True, large parts of Andhra Pradesh, UP, West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, MP, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, etc. received less rainfall yet the problem could easily have been overcome in this age of modern farming. What are so many agriculture universities and research centres doing?
Mind it farmers are not committing suicide or starving this year only. Andhra Pradesh alone officially reported 25 in the last few weeks. Even in a year of good monsoon many of them face similar situation. If today they are selling their cattle at throwaway prices – as they are unable to feed them – in the year of good monsoon and overproduction, they have to make distress sale of their crops as they do not get good price – the middlemen simply lower the rate and blackmail them.
What about our rulers? Different state governments try to magnify the crisis not to solve it but to extract more and more money from the Centre. After all everybody loves a good drought and flood.