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Maharashtra farmers hit by low crop yield

Farmers in rural Maharashtra are bearing the brunt of a low crop yield and less water supply in more than 25,000 villages, specially in the Vidarbha region.

According to a revenue department spokesperson, 20,445 villages have been declared 'scarcity hit' as the yield of both the rabi and kharif crop was below 50 paise. The Nagpur division was the worst hit where the rabi yield was less than 50 paise in 1,354 villages followed by Pune (1000 villages), Nashik (823 villages) and Aurangabad (562 villages).

The kharif crop was affected by unseasonal rain and hailstorms in 16,706 villages with Yavatmal in Nagpur division being the worst hit with 2,044 villages, Buldhana (1,419), Akola (1,792), Amravati (1,979), Bhandara (1,769), Wardha (1,250) and Nagpur (1,376).

More than 2,400 villages/wadis in the state were dependent on water tankers and bullock carts for water supply till the last month, said an official of the drinking water supply department.

According to the official, this year, 6,526 villages/wadis were affected by the drinking water problem. Massive relief work in on, including the digging of new bore wells, piped water supply and special repairs of the existing network. Besides, searches are on for new water supplies to tide over the water shortage.

Tankers and bullock carts were deployed in areas where these measures did not work. However, fewer villages were hit by water scarcity than last year, due to the government's drinking water supply schemes launched over the last three years. The plan is to free all districts from water tankers by 2000. Last year, 7,392 villages were affected by water scarcity.

Water supply department officials said 10 out of 29 districts in the state -- Amravati, Bhandara, Chandrapur, Dhule, Gadchiroli, Jalgaon, Kolhapur, Parbhani, Yavatmal and Wardha -- have not been dependent on water tankers since the scheme got underway.

The official said Akola, Ahmednagar, Buldhana, Jalna, Latur, Nagpur, Osmanabad, Raigad, Sangli and Sindhudurg would be ''water-tanker free'' by 2000. He said this year at least 100 to 200 villages would have been freed from tankers, if it hadn't been for the heat wave.

Despite the scarcity, the crop assessment was satisfactory in 3,111 villages out of the total 6,950, as the crop yield was more than 50 paise. Major crop losses were restricted to Bhandara, Nagpur, Nanded, Osmanabad and Wardha where all the villages failed to yield crop more than 50 paise, the revenue department official said.

The government will now initiate a crop insurance scheme to tackle the scarcity situation where the farmers will be given a maximum of Rs 10,000 under the insurance cover for the next kharif season, the sowing of which has already begun and the harvest of which will begin around Dussera.

Revenue department sources say that under this scheme, farmers will get 100 per cent insurance security, if they have taken loan up to Rs 10,000. Farmers would be given the insurance money under various grants. The state government will bear 75 per cent of the expenditure while the Centre will put in 25 per cent.

Chief Minister Manohar Joshi has also asked state co-operative banks and district central co-operative banks to provide compensation to scarcity-hit farmers in the state. The state government has also asked the Centre to depute a team to review the situation. A meeting was held recently at Mantralaya to review the situation in the state, particularly in Vidarbha.

Various measures are likely to be provided in terms of waiving off loans and converting short term loans into long term loans, the revenue official informed. The government has so far given Rs 1.64 billion as relief to the affected farmers and plans to approach the Centre for more funds.

Representatives of co-operative and merchant banks too are likely to meet shortly to decide the compensation to be provided to the farmers. More than 50 farmers committed suicide after their crops failed.

A state co-operative bank official said there was a sharp decline in the recovery of bank loans in 45 per cent of these areas as a direct fallout of the low yield.

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