Induri Chandramma of Gadipeddapur village is inconsolable. Both her cotton and maize crops have withered due to lack of rains and an erratic power supply that has left her farm borewell dysfunctional.
The dry and arid conditions stare starkly at me as I tour Telangana's Medak district, a district that has been the worst hit by drought. Maize, rice and cotton crops... all have wilted under nature's wrath. Farmers with moist eyes recount their tales of woe as I stop to take pictures. They mistake me for a Government official and reel out the spend and borrowings they made on the cash crops.
Induri Chandramma of Gadipeddapur, on the way to Narayankhed, 80 km from the district headquarters of Sangareddy, is in tears and bemoans that timely power could have saved her crop of maize and cotton.
"We voted a popular Government in Telangana and this is what we get - no power," her husband Kistaiah rues, holding the withered cotton flowers.
''There is no grass for our cattle, no water for our crops and no one (politicians) to listen to us, as the severe drought in the region (43 per deficiency) has made me a pauper,'' laments Vanni Shankariah of Kansanpalle, a nondescript hamlet near Andole Mandal.
And as I drive back to Hyderabad, the sky darkens and clouds hang (following a deep depression in the Arabian Sea) but the damage is already done.
Photos and text: PV Sivakumar
A dried up maize farm at Narasanapalle near Andole.
An ox grazes on the dried rice field at Kasanpally, beyond Jogipet Mandal.
Mangari Pentiah and his family dehusk jowar at Alladurg, 55 km from Sangareddy. He got just five bags (50 kgs each) from five acres, against 100 bags he had earlier reaped.
The village tanks have dried up as milch cattle graze for dry fodder at Shankarampeta, 15 km from Narayanked in Medak district.
Induri Kistaiah of Gadipeddapur in Medak district with his withered cotton flowers.
I. Chennamma in her dried up maize fields between Jogipet and Andole in Medak district.
Farm labour at Narayankhed, 80 km from Medak district, have no work for the last 40 days.
Published on October 26, 2014
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