State declared drought hit

By Ramesh Upadhyaya

PATNA,AUG.11. In a belated move,the Bihar Government has declared the entire State as a drought area.The step has been likened to locking the stables after the horses had fled.

No steps had been taken earlier to combat the calamitous drought, which in its magnitude and severity is being compared to the drought that hit the State in 1966-67.

The State Government was all the while magnifying out of proportion the floods- a perennial affair-in a few pockets of some north Bihar districts bordering Nepal.The flash floods were caused by heavy rains in the catchment areas of the Nepal rivers, mainly the Gandak, the Bagmati and their tributaries.

Ironically,the floods,described as the fourth crop, are welcomed both by the Government and the farmers as they give an opportunity to siphon off funds for relief and enable the latter to raise a bumper rabi crop as the receding flood waters leave behind a thick silt deposit which considerably enhances the soil fertility.

The floods have now gone as quickly as they came, but have given the State Government an opportunity to demand an astronomical sum of Rs.387 crores for flood relief measures.

But it is the prevailing drought which has brought unparallelled misery to the farmers as well as farm labourers with the kharif crop,mainly paddy,totally destroyed in the whole State.There was a little pre-monsoon rain in the last week of May and early June.Thereafter the whole of June and July passed without a drop of rain.And now it is too late.Paddy seedlings and the little paddy that was transplanted with the help of tubewell water have withered away.Now, with the water table plummeting, tubewells,hand pumps and wells have dried up, causing severe scarcity of drinking water in the rural areas.

`` The situation is grim and would be worsening day by day with the rural populace left to fend for themselves by the Government and its comfort-loving officials whose sole preoccupation is to swindle government funds and fatten themselves on the life blood of the people,''says Mr.Subodh Thakur,a marginal farmer.With the fields cracked and parched,the countryside looks deserted.The verdant countryside, usually lush with green paddy at this time of the year, now presents a desolate and barren look.Here and there spindly cattle are seen chewing stems of withered grass in the fields.

The current drought has also totally marred the prospects of rabi crop as there is no moisture in the soil which has become so hard that even tractors cannot plough the field.As a result of the deepening misery, the impoverished landless peasantry,which subsists on farm operations, has begun migrating on a large scale to other States in search of work.

It is noteworthy that even the small pockets of north Bihar, hit by flash floods caused by the surging waters of Nepal rivers, have had no rains.

According to the weather man,so far four monsoon systems had developed in the Bay of Bengal.The first system passed through Bihar,precipitating some rain .Two subsequent monsoon systems skipped Bihar and moved to Orissa,eastern Madhya Pradesh,Chhatisgarh and eastern Rajasthan, causing heavy rains in these States and floods in Orissa.The recent and last monsoon system also skipped Bihar and moved to Nepal, causing a heavy downpour there and floods in a few north Bihar pockets bordering Nepal.Bihar has thus fallen in the rain shadow area.

How responsive is the State Government to the suffering of the people in the present calamitous situation can be judged from the fact that on Monday,the police opened fire on a crowd of relief seekers alleging swindling of relief funds and favouritism in the distribution of relief materials,killing at least six persons and injuring over four dozen in the Orain block in Muzaffarpur district of north Bihar.

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