Drought Proofing In Rajasthan - UNDP
Discussion Paper Series - 5Drought Proofing in Rajasthan:Imperatives, Experience and ProspectsbyReetika KheraThe analysis and policy recommendations of this Paper do not necessarily reflect the views of theUnited Nations Development Programme, its Executive Board or its Member States.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSThis paper is based on fieldwork for a Ph. D. at the Delhi School of Economics. The author would like to thankthe UNDP for a grant that made this possible. During the fieldwork the author was helped by Kavita Srivastava,various NGOs and also by many people in the villages. Without their logistical help and support, this paperwould not have been possible. The author would also like to thank Piers Blaikie, Arudra Burra, Nikhil Dey,K. Seeta Prabhu, Suraj Kumar, Francois Leclercq, Ritu Mathur, Elena Borsatti, Ben Rogaly, Janet Seeley andKunal Sen for helpful suggestions in writing this paper. Finally, special thanks are due to Jean Dreze forguidance during fieldwork and otherwise.
PROLOGUEDroughts have affected many people’s lives in Rajasthan. The adverse impact is due to widespread cropfailure, which leads to shortages of food, fodder and drinking water, and migration.This paper calls for a comprehensive drought policy, as droughts are a recurring phenomenon in the State. Butit also argues that successful policies need a change in the understanding of droughts. The impact on people’slives should be taken into account and diversification of livelihoods in Rajasthan should be promoted. Theanalysis is also based on fieldwork carried out in four districts of the State.This paper is one of the studies commissioned by the HDRC to have a deeper understanding of the livelihoodsituation in a few States.Reetika Khera is currently pursuing a Ph.D. (Economics) at the Delhi School of Economics. She is studyinggovernment interventions and their effectiveness during the recent drought in Rajasthan.
CONTENTSIIIIIIIVVEXECUTIVE SUMMARY1DROUGHT: ITS PERIODICITY AND MEASURES2Types of Drought2Alternative Indicators3THE DROUGHT OF 1999-2001: METHODOLOGY USED6Selection of the Districts6Selection of the Villages6Selection of the Households7The Villages8THE SEVERITY OF THE DROUGHT OF 1999-200113Agriculture13Livestock15Coping Strategies16GOVERNMENT POLICY21Drought Mitigation21Drought Proofing25CONCLUSION30v
STATISTICAL ANNEXURES31Table 1Some Indicators of Drought in Rajasthan, 1981-2 to 2002-331Table 2Rainfall and “Famine-affected” Villages, 200132Table 3Basic Features of the Sample Villages33Table 4Land Owned and Area Cultivated (Bighas) by Various Caste Groups, 200135Table 5Changes in Area Sown and Total Output of Main Foodgrains36Table 6Change in Total Livestock Wealth of the Sample Households37Table 7Coping Strategies of Households in Order of Importance38Table 8Vulnerable Groups in the Sample Population39REFERENCES40vi
ABBREVIATIONSCRFCalamity Relief FundDDPDesert Development ProgrammeDPAPDrought Prone Areas ProgrammeGOIGovernment of IndiaGORGovernment of RajasthanIRDPIntegrated Rural Development ProgrammeOBCOther Backward CastesNCCFNational Calamity Contingency FundPDSPublic Distribution SystemSCScheduled CastesSTScheduled TribesSWRCSocial Work and Research CentreURMULUttar Rajasthan Milk Union Limitedvii
GLOSSARYAnna akaalFood droughtBajraPearl milletsBaniaTrader casteBighaMeasure of landChanaChick peasChowktisCasual labour marketDhanisHamletGaunaBeginning of effective married lifeGirdawariLand-use reportGram sewakGram Sabha SecretaryGwarCluster beansJal akaalWater broideryKharifMonsoon cropLuharCaste of blacksmithsMakkaCornMochiCaste of cobblersMoongGreen gram, a kind of pulseMothHaricot, or dew beanNadiPondNaiCaste of barbersPanchayatAn administrative unit comprising of a few revenue villagesPatwarLand Revenue CirclePatwariLand Revenue OfficerRabiWinter cropviii
SunarsCaste of goldsmithsSutharsCaste of carpentersTankaUnderground water storage structureTilSesame seedsTrinakaalFood, fodder and water droughtTuarArhar lentilsUradBlack gramix
Executive SummaryDroughts are a recurring phenomenonin Rajasthan. This paper discusses various aspects of this phenomenon: howpeople deal with drastic crop and livestock losses, especially when coupledwith limited employment opportunitieselsewhere (“Coping Strategies”); government policies to provide relief insuch times (“Drought Mitigation”); andgovernment policies to prevent the occurrence of droughts (“Drought Proofing”). Currently, droughts are perceivedas sporadic events so policies are not designed in the best possible manner. Thispaper argues that successful policies fordrought mitigation and proofing requirea change in our understanding ofdroughts. Thus a review of drought-related policies must be accompanied bya review of the definitions adopted todeclare a drought.This paper is partly based on fieldworkcarried out in four districts of Rajasthanfrom May 2002 to February 2003, collecting information on the drought of1999-2001. The first section looks athow droughts are defined, and what evidence is used to judge their frequency.The second section outlines the methodology used and attempts to judge theseverity of the drought on the basis ofvarious indicators. Section III discussesthe drought of 1999-2001, based on datacollected during fieldwork. It also contains a discussion of the coping strategies that emerged in the sample areas.The concluding section provides a shortoverview of the government’s droughtpolicies, and discusses the policy implications and recommendations thatemerge from the discussions in theearlier sections.Successful policies fordrought mitigationand proofing require achange in ourunderstanding ofdroughts1
SECTION IDrought: Its Periodicity and MeasuresA drought is afailure of rain,leading to moisturestress, that in turnleads toagricultural lossesand other forms ofsocial andeconomic hardshipCurrently, droughts are not treated as aregular feature of Rajasthan, but ratheras sporadic events. In this section, welook at various indicators of droughtand their shortcomings. The period under study spans approximately two decades – from 1981-2 to 2002-3. The discussion will bring out clearly the needto change our perceptions of drought,because these perceptions influencepolicy design.1.1 Types of DroughtWhat counts as a drought? Put simply, adrought is a failure of rain, leading tomoisture stress, that in turn leads to agricultural losses and other forms of social and economic hardship. There aremany definitions and classifications ofdrought, including that of the NationalCommission on Agriculture (quoted inBokil 2000) which has defined threetypes of drought:zAgricultural: When crops are affecteddue to moisture stress and lack ofrainfall.zMeteorological: When there is more than25 per cent decrease (from normal)in rainfall in any area.z12Hydrological: When recurring meteorological droughts result in decreasein surface water and groundwaterlevels.Droughts are a matter of concern as theyaffect the lives of people. We will focuson agricultural droughts. In keeping withthis focus, we may classify droughts according to the shortage of three commodities: water ( jal akaal), food (annaakaal) and fodder (trinakaal).1.1.1 RainfallRajasthan can be divided into four broadagro-climatic regions and indeedphysiographical regions: the arid regionin the west, the eastern plains (whichare fertile and receive a good deal ofrainfall), the hilly region of the Aravallisextending from the north to the southin the eastern part of Rajasthan, and theplateau in the south-eastern part of theState. Rajasthan receives most of itsrainfall over a period of three months –roughly from July to September. Theaverage annual rainfall is 531 mm,compared to the all-India average of1100 mm. Rainfall is not only low, butalso uncertain. Further, there are widevariations in rainfall across the State –from as little as 193 mm in Bikaner inthe west, to as much as 607 mm in theeastern plains in normal years.The Indian Meteorological Departmentdefines a failure of the monsoon as ayear in which the actual rainfall has been20 per cent less than the “normal” rainfall.1 By this definition, in Rajasthan theNormal rainfall is calculated as the long period average.DROUGHT PROOFING IN RAJASTHAN: IMPERATIVES, EXPERIENCE AND PROSPECTS
monsoon failed in just two years – 1987and 2002 (Table 1, p. 31).Rainfall and agricultural operations inRajasthan, and indeed in many parts ofIndia, are very closely related. Therefore,rainfall and land area sown tend to bepositively correlated.2 In Rajasthan, only25 per cent of agricultural land is irrigated. However, the relationship between rainfall and area sown is quitecomplex and depends on the regionaldispersion, the timing and duration ofeach spell, as well as the gap betweensuccessive spells. These factors are likelyto be as important for agricultural output as total rainfall. Meteorologicaldroughts do not take these factors intoconsideration and therefore cannot beused to make judgements about agricultural droughts.The area sown is a slightly better indicator of a drought because it reflects oneof the ways in which the lack of rainfall affects human life. Since most agriculture in Rajasthan is rain-fed, andpeople’s livelihoods are still quiteheavily dependent on agriculture, fall inarea sown provides us with a good starting point to judge the severity of adrought. Table 2 (p. 32) demonstratesthat rainfall data can be misleading because there is only a loose relation between amount of rainfall and area sown.It provides a cross-tabulation betweenthe amount of rainfall and the proportion of villages that were declared “famine-affected” in the year 2001. By theState government’s classification, anarea is declared “scarcity-affected”2when it reports crop losses of 50-75 percent, and “famine-affected” when thelosses exceed 75 per cent. If one wereto judge the occurrence of a droughtbased only on whether rainfall wasnormal or not, only 6 districts wouldhave been classified as drought-hit(column 3). However, when we look atcrop losses, we find that in as many as16 out of the 25 districts that receivednormal to excess rain, more than fiftyper cent villages had been declared “famine-hit”. Thus we see that lack of rainfall (a “meteorological” drought) doesnot adequately capture what actually affects people’s lives and we need to usealternative criteria to determine whetheror not a drought has occurred.1.2 Alternative IndicatorsWhile it is true that meteorological reasons have been the cause of the worstdroughts in Rajasthan (1987 and 2002),it is important to separate the “trigger”event from its consequences. Thoughdroughts may be triggered by lack ofrainfall, they affect people in many ways(e.g. loss of home-produced foodgrain,loss of employment, difficulty in gettingwater for daily domestic needs and foragriculture, lack of fodder for livestock,etc.). Change in level of agricultural output, availability of fodder, employmentand water are therefore good indicatorsof drought.Lack of rainfall doesnot adequately capturewhat actually affectspeople’s livesWhen the State government declares adrought, it uses indicators that, in principle, include those mentioned above. Inthis section, we examine changes inIn his analysis of rainfall data for the period from 1877-1986, Sivasami finds that when rainfall hasbeen less than 20 per cent of normal, the area sown in the country can fall by as much as 50 per cent.When the shortfall is between 10-20 per cent, the affected area ranges between 20-40 per cent (Sivasami,2000: 1991).Drought: Its Periodicity and Measures3
agricultural output and livestock population, government expenditure on reliefworks, and person-days of employmentgenerated. The analysis relies on secondary data published by the Governmentof India or the Government of Rajasthan(Table 1, p. 31).The most importantindicator of theseverity of a drought isthe number of peopleit affectsThe Scarcity Manual (formerly knownas the Famine Code) for Rajasthan laysout the rules and procedures to be followed in declaring a drought. In this process, the girdawari report plays a key role.The girdawari report is a land-use reportand is prepared by the patwari (landrecords official) of each panchayat. Theother criteria in the Scarcity Manual include distress migrations, increase inthefts, news of starvation deaths, etc.While the Scarcity Manual includes manycriteria, in practice, the State government has come to rely almost exclusivelyon the girdawari report and the losses insowing and production reported therein.To calculate the losses, the current year’sfigures are compared with area sown andproduction in “normal” years (definedas the average production for the pastfew years). On the basis of this, calculations of affected population are made.Affected populationProbably the most important indicatorof the severity of a drought is the number of people it affects. In 14 of the 22years between 1980 and 2002-03, agricultural operations in more than 10,000villages were declared either scarcity or famine-hit. Only in three years during this 22-year period, was the numberof affected villages less than 500.34Labour employedIt has been mentioned that duringdroughts the State government providesrelief for the able-bodied by openingemployment sites in the affected villages.Only in two years over the entire period1981-2003 did the State governmentdeem it unnecessary to provide such relief work. In each of the remaining 20years, the government generated, on anaverage, 3.35 lakh person days ofemployment. During the drought of1987-8, nearly 220 lakh person days ofemployment were generated.Government expenditureGovernment commitment to providerelief measures can also be gauged fromits drought relief expenditure (Table 1,p. 31). These funds are used largely toinitiate food-for-work programmes, toensure water availability during adrought, the supply of subsidized fodder for the conservation of livestockand the provision of gratuitous relieffor the weak, old and disabled. Thegovernment’s commitment is quite clearfrom the financial resources it sets asidefor these obligations. In the period from1981-2 to 1989-90, the State government expenditure on relief operationswas Rs. 1515 crores and in the periodfrom 1991-2 to 1999-2000, it wasRs. 1057 crores.3Agricultural productionGiven the overall importance of agriculture in the State, in terms of its contribution to the Gross State DomesticProduct (27.4 per cent in 1999-2000),as well as in terms of proportion ofThis expenditure is at current prices. If we look at expenditure at real prices, the fall in expenditure in the1990’s is likely to be larger still.DROUGHT PROOFING IN RAJASTHAN: IMPERATIVES, EXPERIENCE AND PROSPECTS
people who rely on agriculture as theirmain means of livelihood, it makes senseto look at the growth of this sector.Trends in the production figures offoodgrain for the State show that, sincethe 1980’s, in four years, the fall in agricultural production was much higher(more than 20 per cent) than that of theprevious peak year.there is a move away from cattle towardssheep and goats, which are known tobe sturdier.Livestock populationThus, going by many of the above indicators, while there has been a meteorological drought in just two years of the22 years under study, by all the alternative indicators, only three or four years(depending on which criterion one uses)have remained “drought free”.The Government of India carries out alivestock census every 5 years. The lastcolumn in Table 1 (p. 31) reports thetotal cattle population at various pointsof time. This brings out clearly the impact of the drought of 1987-8, whichcaused the total cattle population todecline to such an extent that it had notrecovered to its pre-drought levels evenat the time of the last census in 1997.This probably also has to do with achange in the composition of livestock:From the available data it is not possibleto say whether the intensity or severityof droughts has been increasing over theyears, as has been suggested by previous research.4 For doing so, one wouldhave to look not only at the above indicators, but also at the duration of eachdrought cycle and at the regional spreadof each cycle. Localised droughts orsingle-year droughts are known to be lesssevere on the human populations affected by them.4Localised droughts orsingle-year droughtsare known to be lesssevere on the humanpopulations affectedby themJodha (1991) and Vidya Sagar (1995) both have suggested that the intensity of droughts has increasedover time.Drought: Its Periodicity and Measures5
SECTION IIThe Drought of 1999-2001:Methodology UsedThe survey was carriedout in four districts,chosen to reflectregional variationsThis section discusses the methodology used to study the impact of thedrought of 1999-2001. Data was collected from nearly 400 households ineight villages by means of a questionnaire. In addition to collecting dataon the background characteristics ofthe households and individuals, thequestionnaire covered the severity ofthe drought, coping strategies, thepublic distribution system and foodfor-work prog rammes. T his wassupplemented by group discussionsand informal discussions with variouspeople in the villages, including thesar panch, ward panches, patwari, gramsewak and others.2.1 Selection of the DistrictsSince the survey could not cover verylarge parts of the State, or provide asample in which all regions got adequate representation, it was carriedout in four districts, chosen to reflectregional variations. The sample districtswere Bar mer, Bikaner, Jaipur andUdaipur. Barmer and Bikaner are in thesouth-west and north-west of Rajasthanrespectively (along the border with Pakistan). Jaipur lies in the north-easternpart of Rajasthan and Udaipur in thesouth. These districts not only give afair geographic spread, but also reflectagro-climatic variations and differinglevels of development in different parts6of Rajasthan. Bikaner and Barmer areboth semi-arid regions with sandy soil.Jaipur is mostly flat, with fertile land,while Udaipur lies in the Aravallis andhas fertile but not level land, and richforest reserves.2.2 Selection of the VillagesOnce the districts were selected, a twostage random sampling procedure wasadopted. The first stage was a selection of clusters, which were taken tobe revenue villages according to the1991 census.The household population of the revenue villages tends to vary quite a lotthus smaller villages would standproxy for a small number of households and larger villages (with a population of more than 1500 persons)would be proxy for a larger number ofhouseholds. But the bulk of the population lies in villages with a population of 800-1500. A simple randomsample of villages would give rise tobias in the estimates of populationcharacteristics because it would giveequal probability of selection tohouses in small and large villages as itwould to houses in medium-sized villages. To improve the precision of thesample, such (i.e. medium-sized) villages should have a greater probability of selection. This suggests that toget unbiased sample estimates for theDROUGHT PROOFING IN RAJASTHAN: IMPERATIVES, EXPERIENCE AND PROSPECTS
population, households in mediumsized villages should have a higherprobability of selection than those insmall or large villages. This can beachieved by employing probability proportional to size sampling. 5Another consideration in the selectionof villages was whether it would be possible to stay in the village for the duration of the fieldwork. This meant thatonly those villages in which some contact was available - mainly throughNGOs working in that district - wereincluded in the final frame from whichthe sample was chosen.6 This gave a listof villages from which the sample villages were chosen.Replacement villages were also chosenat this stage. In cases where there hadnot been any
Rajasthan can be divided into four broad agro-climatic regions and indeed physiographical regions: the arid region in the west, the eastern plains (which are fertile and receive a good deal of rainfall), the hilly region of the Aravallis extending from the north to the south in the eastern part of Rajasthan, and the plateau in the south-eastern .
and Mitigation Unit (DMMU). However, the country has no drought plan, drought policy, legislation and institutional framework to strategically facilitate drought management. The National Drought Plan is intended to contribute to the protection of Zambia’s land from over-use and drought for
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Por Alfredo López Austin * I. Necesidad conceptual Soy historiador; mi objeto de estudio es el pensamiento de las sociedades de tradición mesoamericana, con énfasis en las antiguas, anteriores al dominio colonial europeo. Como historiador no encuentro que mi trabajo se diferencie del propio del antropólogo; más bien, ignoro si existe alguna conveniencia en establecer un límite entre .
