Shivnath Singh, a farmer at Bulakipur village under Riga block in Sitamarhi district is not sure whether he would be able to eke out a good return from his five acres of land where his paddy crops are drying up.
“Some paddy plants have bloomed while others are drying up,” Shivnath had remarked in despair to this journalist recently. He grows paddy crops in around five acres of land.
Although his village is located in north Bihar, Shivanath’s parched land has yet to receive sufficient rainfall. To make the matters worse, floods wreak havoc in several districts of north Bihar every year after heavy downpour in neighbouring Nepal as the Himalayan country has no proper structure to stem it in its areas. On the other hand, central and south Bihar face drought-like situations due to deficient rainfall.
Bihar’s central and southern parts, on the other hand, have been generally dry this year with paddy transplantation remaining alarmingly low in some districts of the state.
Persistent decrease in rainfall
Bihar used to get around 1,200 mm of rain per year earlier, but this average has reduced. Over the past three decades, rainy days in the state have diminished to 37-40 mm from the long-term average of 55, according to Abdus Sattar, agro-meteorologist at Dr Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Pusa in Samastipur, Bihar.
Sattar told The News Porter that there was a dry spell from July 1 and July 19 and when it rained it was already late for long term and medium duration paddy varieties. Only short-duration varieties could be sown but these varieties give low yield, he pointed out.
A senior official of Bihar’s Agriculture department admitted that paddy transplantation was no more than 57 percent in the state due to deficient rainfall, which was around 34 percent as on August 2.
Paddy cultivation
Paddy transplantation was as low as three percent in Jamui, five percent in Banka, six percent in Munger, 10 percent in Nawada, 13 percent in Sheikhpura and 14 percent in Bhagalpur.
In such a situation, uncertainty stares at north Bihar’s farmers as their agriculture fields were inundated due to showers (particularly in Nepal) while cultivators in central and south Bihar are gazing at their parched land in despair.
Certain pockets of the state have received good rainfall creating even flood-like situations sometime back.
Shivnath Singh noted that a drought-like situation was prevailing in the state.
Drought-like situation?
The Bihar government, meanwhile, decided to provide a minimum 16 hours of electric supply in the rural areas so that they could irrigate their fields through tube wells.
However, Bihar Kisan Manch President Dhirendra Singh Tudu said electricity could not be ensured to each agriculture field in the state. “Two lakh farmers have applied for power connections, but they are not able to get them,” he claimed.
Tudu also claimed that 25 kVA transformers installed in the rural areas cannot take the load of five running motors for irrigating fields and ultimately get burnt. Even soybean cultivation, he said, was adversely impacted due to deficient rainfall. “At least 65 lakh hectares of land remained unsown due to the drought-like situation in the state,” he remarked while urging the state government to declare Bihar as a drought-hit state.
Tudu said that both the agriculture policy and agriculture road map had come a cropper in the state and farmers were paying a heavy price for it. Paddy growers, he said, should be given a compensation of Rs40,000 per acre, soybean farmers Rs50,000 per acre and makhana (foxnuts or lotus seeds) growers a compensation of Rs75,000 per acre.
(The main/featured picture from Wikipedia is a representational image and has been used here for illustrative purposes only. The picture is not from Bihar)
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