Floods in Punjab, Haryana and UP, but farmers in Bihar stare at drought conditions; paddy sowing affected

Patna, Bihar

Dhirendra Kumar Birana’s angry helplessness is palpable. The farmer from Kumhrar village in Sheohar district is at his wits end as the seeds he had sowed on his 11 bighas of land failed to germinate (1 bigha = 0.25 hectare).

“I feel I am a sinner who has been forced to do agriculture,” Birana fumed.

“I wanted to sow paddy on eleven bighas of land, but could manage to do so only on about 2.5 bighas due to shortage of water. And even that sowing I did has gone to waste as more than half of my seedlings have withered away, despite me watering it copiously. Now there is no more water to irrigate what has survived,” he told Gaon Connection.

Birana is not alone as paddy farmers across most of Bihar are reeling under the severe lack of rainfall this monsoon season. As of July 17, the state has recorded a deficient rainfall of minus 34 per cent.

Whereas states in north India — Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Punjab and Delhi — are facing massive destruction due to large scale floods, in Bihar farmers fear a drought. Last year also the state had deficient rainfall throughout the four months of the southwest monsoon season from June to September.

By mid-July, agricultural lands ideally should have been covered in tender green paddy shoots of the kharif crops. But the situation is grim in Bihar.

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According to information by the department of agriculture in Patna, paddy should have been sown on 3.6 million hectares of land in the state, but as of July 15, the transplanting of the saplings has happened only on 0.8 million hectares. Despite 80 per cent of paddy sowing already being done, only 22.22 per cent of it has been transplanted.

Predictably, farmers are worried as paddy is their main crop which feeds their families and also helps earn them a living.

Vinod Kumar Sharma of Belahi Lachcha village in Muzaffarpur is in grief too. “I had prepared 18 bighas of my land to plant paddy. I had already faced a lot of damage to my wheat and maize crops due to hailstones. My hopes were on paddy,” he told Gaon Connection.

Sharma said that he had sown paddy seeds on 18 bighas of land, but most of them did not take root. “I once again sowed seeds on 10 bighas of land, but due to no rains, everything has been destroyed,” the farmer complained.

As per the India Meteorological Department’s (IMD) monsoon rainfall data, Muzaffarpur district is reporting a deficient rainfall of minus 53 per cent (between June 1 and July 17).

“The target for paddy planting is 147,940 hectares, but only 95,400 hectares have been planted, which is only 64.09 per cent of that. But if the rainfall stabilises and we get enough rain in July, we should be able to meet the target,” Rajan Balan, agriculture officer of Muzaffarpur district, told Gaon Connection.

Parched Bihar

Of the total 38 districts in the state, only seven have had normal rainfall this monsoon season. Rest all the districts have deficient rainfall (minus 59 per cent to minus 20 per cent). Three districts — East Champaran, Sheohar, and Sitamarhi — have ‘large deficient’ rainfall (minus 99 per cent to minus 60 per cent).

The 38 districts of Bihar are divided into nine divisions of which the Purnia division has seen the maximum paddy planting with 55 per cent of the transplanting already done.

Bhagalpur division brings up the rear with only 1.5 per cent of the transplanting having been completed so far. Tirhuth division has planted 50 per cent of its paddy, Saharsa 45 per cent, Saran 27 per cent, Magadh three per cent, Patna nine percent, Munger three per cent, and Darbhanga 15 per cent.

Last year also, Bihar received deficient rainfall during the southwest monsoon season forcing the government to declare drought in 11 districts. Paddy crop was affected last kharif season as well. And now farmers are again staring at drought conditions prevailing in the state.

Also Read: 'The government should declare a drought' – Gaon Connection's ground report from rain-starved Bihar

“There was a time not so long ago when we were proud of being farmers in an agricultural state. But now there are so many of us who are thinking of selling off our ancestral lands,” said Birana from Sheohar district that has reported minus 68 per cent deficient rainfall.

The farmer feared that if it did not rain sufficiently soon, there would be many farmers who would take their own lives.

“Our maize crops had only started growing when hailstones damaged them. No one went out to harvest the wheat crops either. Then we thought paddy would come to our rescue but…,” he trailed off.

Tubewells no good

According to Birana, none of the government tube wells set up every five to seven kilometres, works. They have not worked for nearly 15 years, he complained. “If farmers had to depend on them for water, we would not get even one bundle of grains,” the farmer complained.

Not a single government tube well works, reiterated Rajaram Rai from Khararu village. "Not just in my panchayat, I don’t think the tube wells work anywhere else in the division either. We dig our own borewells and manage. But the groundwater has depleted so much that we hardly get any water,” Rai told Gaon Connection.

Rai said that he had bought 28 packets of seeds to sow, but nine packets of seeds withered away due to lack of rains. “What remained also did not do so well,” he added. He had planned on planting hybrid paddy on 20 acres of land. “I have managed only 25 per cent of the planting,” he said.

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Kamlesh Prasad, district agriculture officer, Sheohar, told Gaon Connection, “In Sheohar, the target for paddy has been set at 24,894 hectares. In June, we received 49.9 mm rainfall and in July so far we have received 73.4 mm. It is much lower than the average rainfall we should have had.”

According to him, farmers had managed to cultivate 11,147 hectares of land with the help of pumpsets and some scattered rainfall. “But, we are confident that by the first week of August the district’s target will be met,” said the district agriculture officer.

The monsoon has been bleak this year, said Gulab Singh, meteorologist at the Dr Rajendra Prasad Agriculture University, Pusa, Bihar.

“There was a heatwave in May in Bihar and that was followed by poor rainfall in June. This has adversely affected paddy cultivation, but there is a possibility that in the next few days there will be adequate rainfall that may help matters,” he told Gaon Connection.

The monsoon season has so far not brought any great rainfall to the state, said Ghanshyam Singh, associate professor at the Mandan Bharti Agriculture College, Saharsa. “Barring a couple of districts, the rainfall has been insufficient across the state and though it has rained in the last couple of days, farmers have suffered considerable losses,” said Singh.