Election in Pincodes: An unquenchable thirst for government intervention

Kadiri: It is half past nine in the first week of April, and a cruel sun is already beating down on Eguvakasipalli. It is still early, both in the day, and in the summer, yet everything is parched—the land, the people, their lives. The mercury has hit 40 degrees Celsius already; the hillocks that frame the village have smoke rising from them, remnants of forest fires. On flat land, boulders that dot the barren landscape are shorn of even a little foliage, the earth a golden yellow; the kind that can only exist in a village dying of thirst.

Full coverage of Lok Sabha Election 2024

It has barely rained in Andhra Pradesh’s Sathya Sai district this year— a 100% deficiency since March, according to the India Meteorological Department – and 60-year-old A Lakshmi Devi is surrounded by a clutch of women, pots and buckets in their hands. Sathya Sai district witnessed light rainfall towards the end of April, reducing the deficiency to 77% on Thursday.

Their faces are gaunt, their brows furrowed. For days, there has been no water — to drink, to bathe, to clean, or do anything else. Yet on this April day, there is the promise of some relief. Their eyes are fixed on the narrow road that leads to the village; for the gram panchayat has finally been able to arrange for a rare water tanker. “There is drought,” Devi says, matter-of-factly.

For Eguvakasipalli and broader Rayalaseema, a region that spans five districts in southern Andhra Pradesh, this is nothing new.

Every summer for the past decade, Devi has spent her days waiting for a tanker; or beseeching those that have the resources to dig a borewell to spare some for her family; walking kilometres on end if she gains rare permission. “Some time ago, some people nearby found water at 980 feet. In our gram panchayat, we dug SIX borewells a few years ago. All of them failed,” said Peddi Naidu, the village sarpanch.

The hunt is relentless; a quest that defines everything. 40 people have migrated away from the village this year; all of them young; all of them moving to cities such as Bengaluru to work for a pittance as construction labourers. But one person, from every family, must stay behind. “It is on them to source water from somewhere or everything falls apart. The burden always falls on the women. We live in wait,” 50 year old Ramannam said.

Drought is a persistent problem across India, with the National Remote Sensing Centre showing that, on an average, out of the nearly 140 million hectares total net sown area about 68%is prone to drought, and its associated issues of migration, trafficking and hunger. This affects millions of people, but is an issue that often flies under the radar in election season. Nowhere is this dichotomy displayed more starkly than in Rayalaseema, one of India’s most arid regions.

It is now 10 am, the tanker has arrived, and there is a desperate cacophony. But Rayalaseema is waiting not just for water, but with assembly and Lok Sabha elections to be held simultaneously in Andhra Pradesh on May 13, also some government intervention into a crisis that frames the every-day. In many ways, that wait is as arduous as the wait for water.

Drought and employment

In 2023, an Andhra Pradesh Space Applications Centre report found that of the 679 mandals across 26 districts in the state, 388 were “normal” based on crop condition surveys, but 137 were suffering “moderate” drought, while 142 had “severe drought.” 12 mandals were excluded from the assessment as they were either predominantly urban, or had extensive forest cover. The report was based on the “Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)”, and drought was declared based on lack of vegetation or soil moisture. In 2024, a second state government assessment declared 87 mandals drought-affected based on rainfall received, the availability of fodder and cattle, and a drop in ground-water levels during the northeast monsoons.

Experts say that the impact of the climate crisis was clear. “Assessment of Climate Change over the Indian Region”, a 2020 ministry of earth sciences report, said that in the decades after 1950, there has been a corresponding rising trend in both the frequency and intensity of heavy rain events, and consecutive dry days, particularly over central and peninsular India. “When it rains it pours, causing floods. And then there is drought. People are at the mercy of nature,” said Subhashini B of the Foundation for Ecological Security.

In November 2021, for instance, at least 44 people were killed, and crops and homes destroyed after extreme rainfall over Rayalaseema triggered flash floods.

G V Ramanjaneyulu, CEO of the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture in Hyderabad, said that there was a “very clear climate crisis signature” in Rayalaseema. “Let’s say that earlier it rained 40 days in a year. Now that number has come down to between 10 and 20 days a year, but those are (days of) intense rain. Dry days are increasing, so drought is more severe now and almost a year-round feature. This being an El Nino year, we are seeing a very serious water crisis. The land is excessively dry,” he said.

In Rayalaseema’s villages, the persistent drought brings with it not just choices of whether to stay or to migrate, but desperation for any work that makes itself available. In the late nineties, horrific stories of human trafficking persisted in what is historically a poverty-stricken region. Even today though, E Srinivasulu of Janjagruti, an organisation that focuses on rural livelihoods, says they get between 130 and 150 cases of trafficking from towns such as Kadiri alone. “There is a clear link between persistent drought, water scarcity, crop failures and trafficking or willing engagement in sex work in metropolitan cities like Mumbai, Dubai and Bengaluru,” he said.

People search for any work that will make ends meet in a land that offers very little in terms of agriculture or industry; middlemen scour the villages, preying on the vulnerable. “The targets are often married women who have a few children There is no industry, and no livelihoods locally,” Srinivasulu said.

For those who stay, a cruel cycle of debt is a way of life. In the village of Eguvaniggidi, 45-year-old farmer Narsimhulu invested ₹1.17 lakh this year in groundnut crop. But with the heavens unforgiving, his hopes are fading. “I think I will get ₹17000 back and lose ₹1 lakh because everything is failing. Agriculture in our villages is like a lottery; you can hit the jackpot or lose everything. Every family here has a debt of around ₹3 lakh on average,” he said.

The politics

In Eguvaniggidi village, 35-year-old Gangojamma smiles serenely as she talks, her face belying hardship, both past and present. Around a decade ago, her husband died, leaving behind two young children, and a farm. That pain she has processed; it is the here and now that gives her grief. She points to the unpaved road that cleaves through the village. “To be able to market what I grow, I should be able to transport it. How will I do it? We expect political parties to build a road to provide connectivity so at least our groundnut can reach the place they are sold.”

Ever since the state was bifurcated into Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in 2014, the former has had electoral dominance swing between two principal parties , YSR Congress and the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), and two men — Jagan Mohan Reddy and Chandrababu Naidu. While Naidu’s TDP won the 2014 elections, in the 2019 assembly elections, the YSRCP stormed to power, winning a massive 151 of the 175 assembly seats. In the Lok Sabha elections held on the same day, Reddy’s party, named after his father and former AP chief minister YS Rajashekar Reddy, won 22 of the 25 Lok Sabha seats.

On the ground, there is some appreciation for a host of government welfare schemes called Navaratnalu. Under the programme, among other things, the government assures ₹12,500 annually to each farmer family, in addition to zero interest loans. Under the Amma Vodi scheme, the state government contributes ₹15,000 a year into the accounts of eligible mothers.

Ishwaramma, 35, from Goddubelagala village said that these schemes helped women with school-going children in particular. “It helps cushion our financial woes. More importantly, there was no road before, but it has now been built. There is a regular doctor at the primary healthcare centre and the teacher at the primary school also attends regularly. Now what we need is mobile tower connectivity.”

But in the Lok Sabha constituency of Hindupur, which covers the villages that HT travelled to in Rayalaseema, there is also the realisation that their most pressing concern – the lack of water and employment – is ignored.

In Eguvakasipalli, Ramannam says years and years of the same strife have brought no succour. “If there are four people in a family, at least one has to stay home to source water, or everything falls apart. There are such important things at stake. Young women need sanitation or they fall ill. And yet, despite struggling for so many years with the same problem, nothing has been done by either a party, or a political leader.”

There are villages that have found inventive methods to mitigate the crisis, but these have not necessarily come from government intervention. In Goddubelagala for instance, Ishwaramma G and her husband Ramanjaneyulu juggle several odd-jobs to keep themselves afloat — rearing of cattle, various natural resource management tasks under MNREGA, and the collection of non-timber forest produce such as neem seeds and palash leaf for plates.

The village has also profited from intervention from the Foundation for Ecological security that has helped build a watering hole for small ruminants. Bhaktar Vali, Andhra Pradesh chief for the Foundation for Ecological Security, a climate-focussed non-profit, said that only measures such as access to commons, and a combination of solutions can build resilience in terrains like Rayalaseema.

“There are only some livelihoods that are possible here, and farmers have very small plots of dryland for rainfed agriculture. They keep some livestock for grazing on common lands, they take up MNREGA work, and this work can be shared by men and women. Everyone needs a continuous income flow and to meet that what we need is government policy that encourages differentiated income sources. This will also ensure a better ecological outcome. If villages have common land and assets like ponds, plantations and watering holes for livestock are created, it helps during dry months,” Vali said.

In Hindupur, both the YSRCP and the TDP have fielded fresh candidates, and both argue that the scarcity of water is central to their ideas of development for the region. Joladarasi Santha, formerly of the BJP and the sister of BJP leader and former Karnataka minister B Sriramulu, is the YSRCP candidate. She admitted that people are facing an “unprecedented crisis.” “There are some ponds which get recharged by rainwater but this is a drought year. There is the Peruru dam and water from the Tungabhadra can also be drawn. If people bless me to be their leader, we will build canals and pipelines. I will ensure the Lok Sabha and the centre knows about this crisis.”.

Santha also said that she was aware that Hindupur faced problems of outward migration, trafficking, and women being pushed into sex-work. “I want to engage with the police and the centre on this issue. I am a woman, so I know what it means.”

On the other side, the TDP candidate is 64-year-old BK Parthasarathi, a two-time MLA from the local Penuknodna assembly seat. “The party has already prepared a detailed project report on how water can be brought to the region from the Cherlopalli reservoir. It will be through a lift-irrigation scheme. Other schemes were also in advanced stages when Chandrababu Naidu was CM. If the people give us the chance this time, these schemes will be implemented immediately. Making water available is of highest priority for us.”

But in Rayalaseema, even in villages such as Goddubelagala where there are some efforts to mitigate the growing crisis, there is a lack of faith — promises have been made before, and broken. “We have to buy drinking water, and wish we didn’t have to,” Ishwaramma says. In Eguvakasipalli, the water tanker has already left. And the wait for water, in a scorching parched summer, has resumed afresh.

This is the 21st in a series of election reports from the field that look at national and local issues through an electoral lens.

Read more news like this on HindustanTimes.com