NREGA, Drought and Thar

A cavernous layer of looming drought reveals itself when we left the Bikaner city on 29 August towards the interior most areas of the IGNP canal Stage II in Bikaner district. The sublime yet brittle formations of clouds, fast tricking news about erratic rains sets the stage for prognostications about times to come. After crossing the main canal at 682 RD near Pugal, you enter what would perhaps qualify as one of the worst patches of human settlement, deficient in water and endowed with very poor sandy soils. The canal network dried up, clogged with sand, buried underneath it as if it had never existed before, speak of the triumph of the pre canal geography of vast chain of imposing sand dunes. Human intervention with all its grand pretentious design of remodelling and greening the desert seems so trivial and grossly misplaced.

The signs of 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.

Every year during these months in the Thar the unfolding of daily events becomes dramatic in the otherwise monotonous routines of the desert. Cloud gazing becomes the obsessive and impulsive engagement of all, men, women and children alike. Everyone watches with keen interest white tufts of clouds, floating in the vast blue sky whose imposing horizons merge with the sea of sand. In no time the sun gets stronger and the sand is blazing hot. Slowly the tufts congregate, and the formations assume a faint hue of brown that darkens over time. Evening sets in, and the harsh sunlight mellows down into cool soothing light.

At Naju khan’s dhani in Bijeri in Kolayat tehsil of the Bikaner district as we sat in the moon lit night watching keenly the dramatic play of clouds, dark brown with life giving water, approach us with the regal light and sound show of lightning with sharp streaks of silver surrounded by an orange glow, wind took the clouds to a different side. Dinu Khan with his head up in the sky exclaimed with despair, it would not rain here somewhere else, may be in Bikaner’. Rains have slipped us again…

When clouds play truant, they are telling signs of another story…of anguish, collective despair. The marusthali dotted with sandy deserts and marshes, has been a stalking ground of droughts and famines. Naju Khan sang the couplet about the omnipresent expanse and presence of drought in the Thar:

“pag pugal dhad kotda

udaraj bikaner phirto ghirto jodhpur, thavo jaisalmer”

Feet in Pugal, Neck in Kotda (Barmer)

Stomach in Bikaner, a frequent visitor to Jodhpur,

permanently resides in Jaisalmer.

In the new folklore invented by the pseudo-agrarian context of the IGNP canal command area the specter of drought had metamorphosed into a demon with expanded evil powers, of corruption and profit maximization and the rapacious greed of monster devours everything. Laxman Singh Soda from Bandhali tells how the brick kilns and the gypsum mines guzzle up hundreds of quintal of fodder that is the lifeline of cattle. Prices have doubled from 1500 rupees for a thousand bricks now you have to pay 3000 rupees for the same number. Gemi bai from 2BM said in her characteristic robust voice, ‘there is no firewood left, first the canal area took all the trees, and now all the phog and other bushes have also disappeared’. More and more people want brick houses. Bricks are in great demand everywhere, even in the state sponsored schemes like NREGA, where the Sarpanchs in the area have taken a special fascination for brick laden tracks and roads.

Why are you fighting among each other?, so a stock phrase would catch a typical morning scene in a canal area settlement in Stage II. Come closer they all tell you that they are bothered about job cards and how would they be included in the muster rolls, that are soon to be opened by the govt. Jodh Singh and Binjarsingh, two elders who can barely see are also in the fray for job cards. Finding means to fight hunger and destitution is everybody’s preoccupation.

These speculative gestures slowly engulf the daily routines in a context when the bazaar of manipulations heat up, nefarious deals that transact survival get struck. Let us make the job cards, some people are still left there must be a reason why you guys got left out, declared Guman Singh Soda in his sobering and rational voice. Talking about Bandhali and the adjoining villages of Bhaluri, Dandkalan, Bijeri, he stresses on the need for checking the whole process of issuing job cards. Many people have not got it…and on the other hand there are others who have as many as three to four job cards.

To ensure that every needy person is included in the list whether of job cards or muster rolls certainly is a daunting task as the structures of nepotism, corruption and profit maximization are deeply rooted in the very substratum of Thar. We could only wish good luck to the cyber accuracy of the UIN (Unique Identification Number) championed by the Infosys computer wizard N. Nilekanti.

There is little doubt that failure of monsoons has its role to play in precipitating 'drought', but changes in the government policies and availability of livelihood opportunities for rural communities play an important role in exacerbating its impact. Gorakh Singh of 3 GM explains how a majority of those who have worked in NREGA have not got their payments for over three months. The job card is a time pass, it makes us creditworthy, the village bania gives us credit easily, says Adu ram of Bhaluri, where many have not got paid for more than four months. In the name of providing people with employment what the state is finally giving them is an option of state sponsored indebtedness.

The IGNP canal command area has its own peculiar water woes. Till the first week of August the farmers got sufficient water and went ahead with sowing. The crisis started around the 10^th august when the water levels in the Masitawali head dipped to only 3700 cusecs as against the promised water of 5300 cusecs. On 24^th August the water estimates at Masitawali Head were not even one third of what was to be expected in a normal year. The Bhakra reservoir and the Pong reservoir that feed the IGNP system were filled to not even half of what they would have been. The water deficient standing crops have aggravated the anxiety of the farmers especially in the IGNP Stage II after 682 RD. Finally as August was ending the Chief Engineer of IGNP canal makes a press release that there is no water for irrigation. The agriculture experts eruditely advice on using the stunted crop as green fodder only. That water, let out only once in a fortnight, is to be only used for drinking is enforceable by law and monitored by police. Declaration of drought in the IGNP canal areas has questioned the pompous assumption, originating in the colonial times, about the role of the perennial irrigation schemes in liberating regions and communities from 'drought'. Still to keep the lure of water intensive agriculture alive, the canal authorities are thinking of constructing only cemented ponds and covering water channels as one of the hot favorites in the menu of drought relief, be it from NREGA or otherwise.

For most of the villagers, the spectacle of foretelling 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 . It invokes emotional statistical display to justify its demand- third worst scarcity in twenty eight years, out of which twenty six were drought years anyway, hundred percent drought in almost all the 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 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.

These events of state response are part of a ritual that rehearses itself everywhere with remarkable duplicity bringing in occasions for ‘profit maximization’ (associated with corruption, hoarding, wage exploitation etc.) by the well- entrenched nexus of rural elites-contractors-bureaucrats and politicians. Surely an exorbitant price for averting starvation deaths by piecemeal employment generation works and distribution of sub standard, rotting food grains in the land of parched earth and dried water sources.

Drought, especially the widespread and lasting destitution it causes, has to do with long term processes triggered by changing development policies; nature of the State and the forces of the market especially after the economic liberalization influenced by globalization. May be it is this drought of the mind, of perspectives, that is a permanent, solidified veil, a lethal and heady mix of anti poor policies that sanction a rapacious plunder of fragile ecology and human dignity, that needs to prefigured instead of simply getting befuddled by cloud gazing and hoodwinked by the piecemeal responses of the state.

For seeing a version of this article in HARDNEWS, October 2009, click