The Maharashtra Drought: Telling the Untold Stories
The Maharashtra Drought: Telling the Untold Stories Elizabeth Divya Puranam | Al Jazeera English Correspondent – India
A few months into the searing hot Indian summer of 2019, it became clear that large parts of the country were suffering from a severe drought. In some places, it was the worst dry spell in nearly 50 years. The earth was cracked and parched, and the rains were late. Al Jazeera decided it was a story that we needed to cover and in depth. At the time, I was still working as a presenter in Doha, but I was sent to India to report on the impact of the drought for our news bulletins and to make a 30-minute edition of Talk to Al Jazeera, where we heard from those worst affected. Environmentalists blamed the severity of the drought on climate change and decades of farming practices which had exacerbated its impact. Climate change is one of the biggest issues of our time, and one that Al Jazeera covers extensively. But it does so much more than report on the United Nations Climate Change Conferences. Al Jazeera sends its teams to hear from the people who are already being affected by the changes to the earth’s environment. It was a difficult deployment. We went to the worst affected place in the country at the time – the district of Beed in Maharashtra. We filmed for a week in temperatures of more than 40 degrees Celsius. We walked with villagers to their nearest well and watched them climb down steep dried-
up water holes to collect the muddy water at the bottom. We heard from families about how they were rationing the few buckets of water they could get each day. We saw the scenes of jubilant celebration when the water tanker would arrive and then the desperate scramble. We spoke to farmers who had spent months in relief camps with their cattle. The camps provided fodder and water for the animals so that at least one of the farmers’ sources of income would survive the drought. All day, farmers would wipe their buffaloes with a wet cloth to try to keep them cool. It was when we were filming at one of these relief camps, sweating profusely in the midday heat, that a farmer asked us to take a break. He had walked for kilometres to purchase water and Sprite for us. I couldn’t believe that someone who was experiencing such hardship would spend the little money he had on strangers. One of the great joys of reporting from the field is seeing the best in people even in the worst situations. In our jobs as journalists, it is easy to become negative and cynical, but there are kind people everywhere, and they value those who allow them to share their stories.
My grandfather was a farmer in the state of Telangana, and the plight of Indian farmers is one that I have been interested in for many years. India’s agriculture sector has been in crisis for decades for many reasons, including the failure of crops due to climate change, and high indebtedness by farmers. More than 300,000 Indian farmers have killed themselves over the past 25 years, with a fifth of those deaths put down to crop failure because of climate change. But the individual stories get lost in the numbers.
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