Nitish's Bihar faces hunger pangs

6 MONTHS IN POWER PART - I

With at least 43 districts running dry, the chief minister has described the situation as 'Bhayankar'.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar admits to waking up at nights, stirred by horrors of an impending drought and possible famine in the state. Kumar, who completes six months in office on Wednesday, describes the situation in one word: "Bhayankar (Horrible!)"

At least 43 districts, including Patna, Gaya, Nalanda, Nawada, Arwal, Jehanabad, Aurangabad, Jamui and Bhojpur are dry, with hundreds of blocks facing an acute shortage of drinking water.

About 300,000 hand pumps are dry. Wells dug up to 25-30 feet have gone dry. In many areas, the water table is estimated to have dropped to 10-15 feet, partly because of the large number of tubewells installed in recent years. Hand pumps are being installed 50-60 feet deep, two to three times the depth that used to be adequate a few years ago.

There is a story doing the rounds here that an old woman in Gaya, whose son left to ply his rickshaw one morning without arranging drinking water for her, died of thirst. Wild animals, especially deer, are falling prey to hunters as they step out of their habitat in search of water.

It has not helped that the state did not receive rain last winter. Since most farmers here still rely on rain for irrigation, this has damaged the Rabi crop. Much of the wheat crop harvested is said to be without grain, raising the spectre of a famine.

In some areas of the east such as Katihar, Purnea and Kosi, farmers are burning their wheat crop. The crop has been so bad that they cannot hope to recover the expense of harvesting it.

"If we do not re-charge water or conserve water, nobody can save us," says Kumar, who recounts seeing more sand than water on a recent flight over the Ganges.

No wonder, stories of the state's last big drought and famine "" in 1966-77 "" are being retold with gusto.

Saibal Gupta, member secretary of the Patna-based Asian Development Research Institute, sees the current situation as an inevitable result of zero public investment in agriculture. "Even the first phase of the Green Revolution has not been completed in the state while the rest of the country has moved on to the second phase," he says.

JK Sinha, who recently joined the Bihar relief committee, a non-government organisation, after retiring as number two in the research and analysis wing (RAW) last year, says the condition of landless and marginal farmers is precarious. Many of them are leaving their villages.

"This is not unusual for landless labourers, but marginal farmers, those with 2.5 acres of land and less, have also left their villages," says Sinha.