“Truckloads of cattle have left this village,” says Maruti Yadavrao Panghate in Devdhari village of Yavatmal. “Many more will go. There is no fodder or water for them.” Panghate, who owns five acres, feels he has lost “80 per cent of my soybean, 70 per cent of cotton and 50 per cent of all the jowar I’ve sown. Late rains even at this point will retrieve something, though not much. However, it could help with fodder and some water. Without that, the rest of the cattle will go, too. Already bullocks worth Rs.10,000 are selling at Rs. 4,000. It’s the same in other villages.”

The distress sale of cattle is one of the most sensitive indicators of crisis in the countryside. And when prices fall the way they have here, it suggests the onset of unusual levels of hardship. Vidharbha may not be yet as severely hit by the drought as parts of Marathwada or neighbouring Andhra Pradesh. But its situation is fragile. Its farmers have been battered by years of an agrarian crisis that had little to do with drought. Coming atop that crisis, monsoon failure hits a people far more vulnerable than they were in other decades..............Click fore more

Source Web Page: The Hindu