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Rangareddy & Medak Districts, Andhra Pradesh

The twin problems of drought and a fear of displacement have claimed 15 lives in the last couple of months.

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Rangareddy & Medak Districts, Andhra Pradesh
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Urella is a tiny village with a population of 5,000 in the Chevella mandal of Rangareddy district. It’s just 70 km from Hyderabad and is represented in Parliament by S. Jaipal Reddy, the Union urban affairs minister. Villagers here say that the twin problems of drought and a fear of displacement have claimed 15 lives in the last couple of months. Most of them, especially the elderly, have suffered heart attacks over the impending loss of cultivable land to an irrigation project. In the last fortnight alone, two young men committed suicide quite possibly due to drought conditions.

The family of one of them—Venkatesa Goud—has about 6 acres in Urella and was cultivating cotton, maize and some flowers. For his one acre in this family plot, Venkatesa had apparently borrowed Rs 50,000 from moneylenders for buying seed, pesticide and fertiliser. He was hoping that with a good harvest he could pay back at least part of his accumulated debt of a few lakh rupees. But with rains failing, he lost hope and hung himself from the ceiling.

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“Since our village is close to Hyderabad, we earlier thought we could sell off our land at a boom price of about Rs 20 lakh an acre and clear all the loans in one shot,” says Peramaiah Goud, Venkatesa’s father. But that didn’t happen once the government announced the Pranahita-Chevella Lift Irrigation Project. Farmers say the land valuation was much below market price. “This had depressed all of us—and with the rain failing, the problem was compounded,” adds the father.

As we go round the village to take a look at the stunted crops, slowly changing from green to a golden hue, the stories of other villagers echo the agony of the Goud family. Nagalingam, who has sowed cotton and maize on four acres, says: “We have survived because we are a little more brave than Venkatesa. Otherwise, our condition is no different.” This farmer had borrowed Rs 40,000 from moneylenders at four per cent interest and says that it costs him about Rs 10,000 an acre to cultivate. “Even if it rains now, as it did today, it’s of no use: the plants will not recoup,” he says, indicating the height the maize crop should have reached by now had the rains not failed.

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From Chevella, as we travel in the opposite direction to Siddipet, in Medak district, the drought and suicide stories are repeated by farmers and farm labourers. Siddipet mandal, the bastion of Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) leader K. Chandrashekara Rao, has seen two farmers commit suicide in the last fortnight and the district’s unofficial death figures stand at 14.

Papulla Prabhakara Reddy of Himambad village, in Medak district, was looking after eight acres of family land, essentially maize and paddy. The well on the farm had dried up and he borrowed Rs 65,000 to sink a borewell. Four failed attempts were too much for the 58-year-old Reddy to bear.

The second suicide last fortnight was of Bhumaiah Gari Venkata Reddy, 59, from the neighbouring village of Chinna Gunda Velli. The borewell he struck at two spots on his five acres did not yield water. He had a loan of Rs 2 lakh on him, according to his wife Yellamma. Of course, the rural development officer and the local TRS MLA have come visiting with assurances of help. But that doesn’t seem to have cheered the farmers one bit.

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