Telangana farmers caught between a dry spell and despair
Standing in his eight-acre rainfed farm in Aroor village of Sangareddy district in mid-July, P. Narasimhulu gently pulls out a black gram sapling from the parched soil. Raising his hand nearly three feet above it, he says, “By now, it should have been this tall.”Last monsoon, excess rain had washed away nearly ₹3 lakh that the 40-year-old tenant farmer had invested in his cotton crop.
- ▪Standing in his eight-acre rainfed farm in Aroor village of Sangareddy district in mid-July, P.
- ▪Narasimhulu gently pulls out a black gram sapling from the parched soil.
- ▪Raising his hand nearly three feet above it, he says, “By now, it should have been this tall.”Last monsoon, excess rain had washed away nearly ₹3 lakh that the 40-year-old tenant farmer had invested in his cotton crop.
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Standing in his eight-acre rainfed farm in Aroor village of Sangareddy district in mid-July, P. Narasimhulu gently pulls out a black gram sapling from the parched soil. The frail plant barely reaches his ankle. Raising his hand nearly three feet above it, he says, “By now, it should have been this tall.”Last monsoon, excess rain had washed away nearly ₹3 lakh that the 40-year-old tenant farmer had invested in his cotton crop. This year, it is the absence of rain that threatens to leave him counting losses again.“I have spent around ₹60,000 for ploughing and ₹40,000 to sow black gram and redgram (kandi pappu) in eight acres this Vanakalam (rainy) season. There are no rains so far. If we receive good rains in the coming days, I might recover some of the investment.
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