Amritsar: The cotton farmers committing mass suicide was a shock for the agricultural sector.
The ordeal the orange farmers of the Amravati district in Maharashtra are facing due to depleting water tables could be another threat too.
About 5,000 orange farmers gathered in the Chargarh dam of the district to demand water for their farms. They got police bullets leaving one dead and many injured instead and their demand was never met with.
"Our demands are for water and for justice against the SP," Tulsiram Rout, father of one of the victims says.
What might have been a river five years ago has become bone dry. The government may have built small check dams to shore up water supply in the area but that hasn’t helped. Villagers now want the water from the Chargarh dam to flow into this dry river but the district administration disagrees
"The people in the catchments have the first right over the water of the dam and they pay a cess. What could happen to their crops otherwise," Harsheet Kamle, Discrict Collector of Amravati says.
A new police camp has also been built to protect the dam against the neighbouring villages.
However, it is not just these villages which are thirsting for water, orange farmers even across Amravati are cutting down their trees due to falling water tables.
A farm in another village in Amravati just has five bore wells out of which only two are functioning because of water levels falling every year.
"Earlier we used to get water at 300 ft but now we have to go up to at least 900 ft," Avinash Chikle, an orange farmer says.
Each new bore well costs Rs 1.5 lakh and it still might not hit the water table.
"We get water from a farmer who has water and pay 500 rupees per day for that," another farmer, Nandakishore Likurwale adds.
As the water levels continue to fall, the land is getting bone dry and so are the orange trees. Wells have to yet to be filled up with water brought from hundreds of kilometers.This is all leading to the farmers who tend the orange tress to commit suicide.
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