Drought in the delta

The failure of the monsoons and the insufficient flow of water in the Cauvery lead to a drought of calamitous proportions in the Cauvery delta in Tamil Nadu.

T.S. SUBRAMANIAN in Thanjavur Photographs: K.V. Srinivasan

FROM a distance, the fields look green, and the paddy looks almost full-grown and healthy. But on a closer inspection of the vast paddy fields at Alakkudi village, near Vallam in Tamil Nadu's Thanjavur district, one gets a rude shock. The earth is dry and cracked. Weeds have spread amorphously from the fissures. The paddy has started withering. About 200 metres away, a herd of cattle is gorging on the blighted paddy stalks.

T. Azhaguraj, a farmer, points to the nearby canal from the Pudu Aru, a tributary of the Cauvery. The Pudu Aru has turned bone-dry. "There should be four inches of water in these paddy fields now. But the earth is cracked," he says.

The scene is similar all over Tamil Nadu - be it at Vallam, Tirupuvanam, Kudikadu near Mannargudi, Tiruvaiyaru, Tirukattupalli and Nagapattinam, all in the former composite Thanjavur district, or in the villages in Tiruchi, Salem or Madurai districts. The crop has started withering even in the fertile areas of Srivaikuntham, Harikesanallur and Veeranallur in Tirunelveli district, fed by the Tamiraparani river in the Cauvery delta districts of Thanjavur, Tiruvarur, Nagapattinam and Tiruchi. The 80- to 90-day-old `samba' paddy crop, is in its "final lap", that the magnitude of the disaster hits one hard. At Tiruvaiyaru, where the Sri Thyagaraja aradhana music festival is held every year (this year it was on January 22), there are only pools of water in the Cauvery. Urchins play cricket on the dry riverbed. M.R. Panchanadham, trustee of the Sri Thyagaraja Brahma Sabha, says the Cauvery at Tiruvaiyaru should be brimming with water now. At Kallanai (the Grand Anicut, the first dam across the Cauvery built by Karikala Cholan circa first century A.D.), about 20 km from Tiruchi town, the big reservoir is now a small lake. At the Mettur dam in Salem district, the water spread has shrunk so much that the fish are dead. And the "parisals" (circular, basket-like boats) that ferry people across the reservoir are now used to carry the fish.

In Thanjavur, Tiruvarur and Tiruchi districts, crowds did not jostle in the textile shops to buy clothes for Pongal, which fell on January 15. There were no celebrations either on January 16 and 17, when cattle and carts are decorated and worshipped. There were few passengers in buses plying between small towns. On "Kanum Pongal" day (January 17, when people in thousands go out), the picnic spots were empty. There were not many takers for the sugarcane, an essential part of Pongal.

Life came to a halt in Thanjavur, Tiruvarur and Nagapattinam districts on January 9, when various political parties and farmers' associations called for a bandh to protest against the "inaction" of the Centre and the Tamil Nadu government on the Cauvery issue, and to pressure Karnataka to release the Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu. K. Madhavan of Alakkudi, a student, said: "We normally use the newly harvested paddy to cook pongal. Last year, we used old rice. This year, we have no rice. Next year, we will use the rice from ration shops."

IT is a terrible drought that is stalking the State. Eleven farmers have so far lost their lives. They died of starvation or committed suicide; some died of shock on seeing their withering crop. There are stories and pictures of farmers eating rats, crabs and snails.

Three calamities hit the farmers in 2002. In January 2002, unseasonal rain washed away the newly harvested paddy on the threshing floor. The result was that there was no rice for people or hay for the cattle. The `kuruvai' paddy crop could not be cultivated on three to four lakh acres owing to a deficient southwest monsoon and the Karnataka government's refusal to release the Cauvery water despite orders from the Supreme Court and the Cauvery River Authority (CRA) headed by the Prime Minister. The northeast monsoon also failed - it did not bring rains after mid-November. But farmers had started raising samba on about seven to eight lakh acres, hoping that Karnataka would release Cauvery water and a good northeast monsoon would follow. Both did not happen. As a result, the standing samba crop is withering. When Karnataka Chief Minister S.M. Krishna agreed on January 13 to release "some water" to Tamil Nadu, it turned out to be a case of too little too late.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa squarely blamed the Karnataka government for the catastrophe. She said the tragedy the Tamil Nadu delta farmers were experiencing "is an artificial one, forced upon them by the upper riparian neighbour which has been persistently denying them their rightful share of water". In a statement on January 13, she said there was "a massive deficit of 109.62 tmc ft" in the quantum of water that was due to Tamil Nadu. As per the interim award of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal, Karnataka should have sent down 194.45 tmc ft from June 2002 to January 10, 2003 but only 84.83 tmc ft was realised at the Mettur dam. According to the distress-sharing formula worked out by the Central Water Commission, the shortfall was 60.22 tmc ft.

On the other hand, Jayalalithaa said: "Karnataka continuously drew its full requirements for its crops." Its withdrawal from its four major reservoirs during the season up to January 7 was 116.3 tmc ft whereas its withdrawal for the same period during the six years considered by the tribunal was only 88.3 tmc ft. Jayalalithaa said: "Nowhere in the world has an upper riparian State in an inter-State river basin held the lower riparian downstream State to ransom in this callous fashion. The intransigent attitude of Karnataka has driven the Tamil Nadu farmers to ruin." In her assessment, Tamil Nadu required at least 45 tmc ft more to save the standing samba crop.

On January 13, Jayalalithaa and Krishna separately met Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee. A CRA meeting scheduled that day had to be called off because the Chief Ministers of Kerala and Pondicherry, A.K. Antony and N. Rangasamy, were absent. The CRA consists of the Prime Minister and the Chief Ministers of the Cauvery riparian States of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Pondicherry. A quorum of three Chief Ministers is necessary for a CRA meeting. On that day, Karnataka agreed to release 1,200 cusecs every day at Mettur till February-end. This worked to a paltry 6 tmc ft.

S. Ranganathan, general secretary, Cauvery Delta Farmers' Welfare Association, reacted angrily to Karnataka's offer . He wrote to Krishna: "This release, we hasten to confirm, is not only inhuman but an insult to us, the delta farmers. While our daily requirement is of the order of about one tmc ft of water, your offer is a minuscule of our needs. The water will not even reach the Upper Anicut, leave alone the vast stretch of the delta."

While Jayalalithaa blamed the Karnataka government for the crisis, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Communist Party of India (CPI) launched a fierce offensive against her and the Centre. N. Varadarajan, secretary, State committee of the CPI(M), faulted her for finding time to attend the swearing-in ceremony of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi but not for the CRA meeting on November 29. She made no efforts to hold discussions with Karnataka either, he said. K. Balakrishnan, general secretary, Tamil Nadu unit of the All India Kisan Sabha, said that if Jayalalithaa had taken part in that CRA meeting, Tamil Nadu could have received some water and the withering crops would have been saved. G. Veeraiyan, president of the Tamil Nadu unit of the All India Agricultural Workers' Association, said the dire situation had come about because of the "Kumbhakarna-like slumber" of the Tamil Nadu government.

V. Duraimanickam, general secretary, Tamil Nadu Vivasayigal Sangam (CPI), alleged that Jayalalithaa's actions had harmed Tamil Nadu. "She said she would boycott the CRA and take recourse to the Supreme Court. She should have used both the CRA and the Supreme Court. Her irresponsible approach has led to this situation," he said.

THE loss of three successive crops has hobbled the State's economy. According to the Chief Minister, the State had already suffered a loss of Rs.1,080 crores because of the reduction in the kuruvai and samba cultivation in the delta region. "If we lose the standing samba crop as well, the total loss would be about Rs.2,360 crores," she said.

The loss of crops has had a cascading effect. Twenty-seven hulling mills in Thanjavur region have no work. A mill near Vallam which can husk 1,500 tonnes of paddy a month has work for only 150 tonnes now. The operators have been laid off. There is only one accountant in place of the three earlier. Loadmen (labourers who carry bags of paddy from trucks into the mill) have work only for three days in a month. They were trying to get jobs at construction sites. A huller said: "Life used to be so busy at this time of the year. But there is no work now. There is no money rotation. If the government does not procure paddy and give it to us for hulling, we will have to close down our mill."

A haggard and distraught V.V. Ranganathan, a lorry owner, said he had returned his lorry to the moneylender because he was unable to repay the Rs.1 lakh he had borrowed from him. His vehicle was lying idle. He said: "I have 30 years of trucking experience. I have reached a stage where I don't want to continue in this profession."

At Vadukkusethi, 60-year-old Singaram was tending his cattle grazing in a paddy field overgrown with shrubs. He said: "I am surviving by selling my cattle. If the cattle were not there, I would have drunk poison and died. There is no work. People are languishing at home." There was no hay for the cattle. There was no water in the wells even to wash the cattle, he said.

At Alakkudi, young farmers Azhaguraj, S. Selvaraj and V. Thangavel take us to the fields and show the drying blades and blanching paddy. Selvaraj pulls out one paddy stalk and shows the dying roots. The farmers reckoned that two big wettings, each lasting 15 days separated by a gap of one week, could save about 25 per cent of the samba crop.

According to O.V. Panchapekesan, a land-owner at Ombathuveli village, near Tirukattupalli, samba crop was raised on only one-third of the normal acreage this season. If Karnataka released enough water even at this eleventh hour, about 10 per cent of samba could be saved, he said. "Where there are (borewells) and pumpsets, we could cultivate samba 100 per cent. But the groundwater is going down because there is no water in the river," he said. Panchapekesan alleged that no cultivation was possible on 280 acres around Ombathuveli because sewage from Tirukattupalli was let into the canal passing through the village and a bund had been constructed. The matter is sub judice.

At Tiruvaiyaru, while preparations for the music festival were on, the mood was sombre. Panchanadham, P. Arumuga Konnamundar, former vice-chairman, Tiruvaiyaru panchayat union, and G. Srinivasan, a land-owner, were emphatic that the samba crop that had not so far withered, could be saved only if Karnataka released water continuously up to March 10. And enough water should flow down the Cauvery to course through Thanjavur and Tiruvarur to reach the tail-end areas in Nagapattinam district. Only then the water table would go up and the borewells would get recharged. "If water does not reach these three districts within 10 days, the districts will face a calamity", they said.

CPI(M) State secretary N. Varadarajan and his CPI counterpart R. Nallakannu insisted that the government declare the State as drought-affected and immediately undertake relief measures. They wanted the government to pay farmers a compensation of Rs.5,000 an acre where the samba crop had withered, Rs.3,000 an acre for fields left fallow, and Rs.1,000 for each coconut tree affected by disease. Nallakannu and Varadarajan wanted a compensation of Rs.5 lakhs to be paid to the farmers who died of starvation, shock or committed suicide.

Bowing to the repeated demand of the CPI(M) and the CPI, the government, on January 23, announced the State as drought-hit. In his address to the Assembly, Governor P.S. Ramamohan Rao said Tamil Nadu was experiencing "one of the worst droughts in its history". Based on the latest assessment of the situation, the government had decided to declare all districts except Chennai as drought-affected. This would enable comprehensive relief works to be taken up in the 28 districts, he added.