Droughts in Thar Rajasthan: need for a ‘vulnerability index’

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The signs of deficient and erratic rains could be seen vividly inscribed on the face of the desert. Different hues of sand, the dramatic play of the bright sun illuminating the moist grainy patches on the otherwise dry surfaces of the dunes strike the eye. Saplings struggling to survive, stunted growth of crops, abandoned fields, dried up ponds are telling signs of a period of prolonged scarcity and a winter of misery that is in the offing.

For most of the villagers, the process of assessment of drought finally culminates in the state asking for assistance from the Central Calamity relief Fund a fat sum of money, a whooping figure of around 12691 crore rupees for responding to drought in 26 of the 32 districts of the state. The narrative about destitution and misery is cemented with impressive display of statistical evidence garnered during the visits of different teams of experts during drought assessment. What is developing is being already termed as the third worst scarcity in twenty eight years, out of which twenty six were drought years anyway. In districts of Barmer, Jasialmer, Bikaner, Churu there is almost hundred percent drought in most villages. On 3^rd September the team from the GoI visited the Bikaner district and assesses the damage drought has wreaked. The press release by the Divisional Commissioner stated that in Bikaner and Churu districts, almost all villages face scarcity. The Commissioner further informed that more than six thousand families have already been earmarked as those needing assistance in Churu district. The state declared that it would have no option but to open drought relief works from October to March next year. This completes the chain of events that is repeated every year with its own share of farces and tragedies. The final salvo to inaugurate the infamous and manipulative politics of drought relief has been fired.

Apart from the criteria used by the state to assess and declare ‘drought’, there are many other indicators that are useful for measuring the impact of long -term processes as well as the short- term precipitating factors leading to a ‘drought’. Even after five decades of development planning, that has seen many area- specific (like the DPAP & DDP) as well target group specific (like the IRDP) development schemes the assessment process still takes into account ‘drought’ as a natural disaster. The drought assessment process mainly relies on the measuring the extent of ‘rainfall failures’ & ‘crop losses’.

There is a need to broaden the assessment processes for ascertaining ‘drought’ in western Rajasthan. We propose the need to develop a ‘vulnerability’ index for assessing the long- term processes at work in the different regions in the Thar. Apart from factoring macro variables of well being, the vulnerability index has to be firmly rooted in regional contexts, as impact of droughts is highly variable in different micro regions. Then there has to a segregation of local data along different communities factoring their historical role in facing droughts in Thar.

In the making of the vulnerability index the following two processes are very critical:

• Inclusion of new criteria to cover many communities left out by the current assessment process like the pastoralists, migrating workers, cultural workers like craftspeople, musicians, etc.

• Take into account the long-term processes that enhance vulnerability to ‘drought’ not only of a region but also of different communities.

Photo: Village Bandhali, Kolayat tehsil, 1994, Bikaner