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1-15 MAY, 2016
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SCIENCE AND ENVIRONMENT

FORTNIGHTLY
ON POLITICS OFFORTNIGHTLY
DEVELOPMENT, ENVIRONMENT AND HEALTH
Subscriber copy, not for resale
`45.00
People in Mahoba district

of Uttar Pradesh are now
digging ditches in the
dry bed of Kirat Sagar, a
large 11th century tank, to
extract water
01Cover1.indd 5
IN-DEPTH COVERAGE
DROUGHT
Drought now affects
people across classes.
India needs a new strategy
for disaster management
Why Bundelkhand and

Marathwada should
not have suffered a
water famine
Villages in droughtprone areas show how to

secure water and double
farmers' income
25/04/16 10:53 AM
DownToEarth
BOOK
w w w.downtoear th.org.in/books
01Cover.indd 4
26/04/16 4:50 PM
VIKAS CHOUDHARY / CSE
Down To Earth
FORTNIGHTLY ON POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENT,
ENVIRONMENT AND HEALTH, SINCE 1992
FOUNDER EDITOR
Anil Agarwal
EDITOR Sunita Narain

MANAGING EDITOR AND PUBLISHER
Richard Mahapatra
Vibha Varshney, Archana Yadav,
S S Jeevan
MULTIMEDIA EDITOR Arnab Pratim Dutta
CREATIVE DIRECTOR Ajit Bajaj
GRAPHIC EDITOR Sorit Gupto
REPORTING TEAM
Anupam Chakravartty, Jitendra Choubey,

Kundan Pandey, Rajeshwari Ganesan,
Shreeshan Venkatesh, Karnika Bahuguna.
Jigyasa Watwani
COPY DESK
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Aditya Misra, Rajit Sengupta, Deepanwita
Niyogi, Aakriti Shrivastava, Priya Talwar
DESIGN TEAM
Chaitanya Chandan, Shri Krishan,

Raj Kumar Singh, Tarique Aziz, Ritika Bohra
PHOTOGRAPHER Vikas Choudhary
PHOTO LIBRARY Anil Kumar
WEB TEAM
Rajendra Rawat, Jaidev Sharma

PRODUCTION
Rakesh Shrivastava, Gundhar Das

INFORMATION AND RESEARCH SUPPORT
Kiran Pandey
www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in team
CONSULTING EDITORS
Chandra Bhushan, Anumita Roychowdhury

Vol 24, No 24; Total No of Pages 68
Editorial, subscriptions and advertisements: Society for
Environmental Communication,
41, Tughlakabad Institutional Area,
New Delhi 110 062,
Phone: 91-11- 29955124,
29956110, 29956394, 29956399
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Email: downtoearth@downtoearth.org.in
2005 Society for Environmental Communication. All
rights reserved throughout the world. Reproduction
in any manner is prohibited. Printed and published by
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Communications. Printed at International Print-o-Pac
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contents
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
IN-DEPTH COVERAGE
4-35
Front Cover
Wanted: a new code

The war against reoccurring droughts can only be fought through proper
water management
As you sow...
Sixty per cent of Maharashtra's villages are reeling from a severe drought
because of poor water management policies
13 droughts in 15 years
Bundelkhand secured its water from its 20,000 ponds three decades ago.
Today only 5,500 of them are left
Dearth of ideas
Drought-prone areas in the country have increased by 57 per cent since 1997.
The government simply does not wish to learn
Sweet surprise
A few drought-hit villages demonstrate how to secure water. Here, the income
of farmers has doubled
FOR ADVERTISEMENT CONTACT
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COVER DESIGN Ajit Bajaj
COVER PHOTO Vikas Choudhary
Down To Earth editorial does not

endorse the content of advertisements
printed in the magazine
1-15 MAY 2016
03Contents.indd 3
Back Cover
68-36
ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL
Deadline met!
As Down To Earth enters into its 25th year of

publication, former and current members recall
their special moments
www.downtoearth.org.in 3
27/04/16 10:59 AM
IN-DEPTH
COVERAGE
NIDHI JAMWAL
DROUG
BUT WHY
04-07In-depth coverage.indd 4
25/04/16 12:44 PM
DROUGHT
UGHT
25/04/16 2:44 PM
IN-DEPTH
COVERAGE
J
SUNITA
NARAIN
Down To Earth has

featured 12 cover
stories on drought in
24 years
6 DOWN TO EARTH
habua, late 1980s. This tribal, hilly district of Madhya Pradesh resembled
moonscape. All around me were bare brown hills. There was no water. No
work. Only despair. I still remember the sight of people crouched on a dusty
roadside, breaking stones. This was what drought relief was all aboutwork
in the scorching sun to repair roads that got damaged each year or dig pits
for trees that did not survive or build walls that went nowhere. It was unproductive work. But it was all that people had to survive the cursed time. It was also
clear that the impact of drought was pervasive and long-term. It destroyed the livestock economy and sent people down the spiral of debt. One severe drought would set
back development work for years.
The country is once again reeling from crippling drought. But this drought is different. In the 1990s, it was the drought of a poor India. This 2016 drought is of richer
and more water-guzzling India. This classless drought makes for a crisis that is more
severe and calls for solutions that are more complex. The severity and intensity of
drought is not about lack of rainfall; it is about the lack of planning and foresight, and
criminal neglect. Drought is human-made. Lets be clear about this.
In June 1992, Down To Earth published an article by editor Anil Agarwal and colleagues on the state of drought. Their analysis was that while large parts of India were
under the grip of drought, by official meteorological accounts it was a near-normal
year. He went on to argue that drought would be here to stay unless we learnt again
the millennium-old art of managing raindrops. Harvesting water in millions of water bodies and using it to recharge groundwater was critical. In the late 1990s, when
drought reared its ugly head again, Down To Earth explored how villages had beaten
the odds by managing their water sagaciously. It was a lesson taken by political leaders as they then launched water-harvesting programmes in their states.
However, this effort to rebuild water security was wasted in the following decade despite the opportunity to get it right. There was rainyears of deficiency were
fewerand there were government programmes designed to build water structures.
Under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (mgnrega)
millions of check dams, ponds and other structures were constructed. But as the intention was not to overcome drought, but only to provide employment, the impact of
this labour has not shown up in the countrys water reserves. The structures were not
designed to hold water. In most cases they were holes in the ground that quickly filled
up with soil by the next season.
But this is not the only reason for water desperation today. India has prospered
over these decades. This means today there is more demand for water and less availability for saving.
Yet governments do not have a drought code that can handle this situation. In bad
old times, when there was drought, the British-designed drought code would kick in.
It meant that water for drinking would be requisitioned by the local administration;
1-15 MAY 2016
25/04/16 12:45 PM
DROUGHT
This drought is of richer and water-guzzling

India. It makes for a crisis that is more severe
and calls for solutions that are more complex
fodder for animals would be procured from long distances; livestock camps would be
opened and food-for-work programmes would be started. The objective was to check
misery and as far as possible stop distress migration to cities.
But this code is outdated. Water demand has increased manifold. Today, cities
drag water from miles away for their consumption. Industries, including power plants,
take what they can from where they can. The water they use is returned as sewage or
wastewater. Then farmers grow commercial crops, from sugarcane to banana. They
dig deeper and deeper into the ground to pump water for irrigation. They have no way
of telling when it will reach the point of no return. They learn this only when the tubewell runs dry.
This modern-day drought of rich India has to be combined with another development: climate change. The fact is that rain has become even more variable, unseasonal and extreme. This will only exacerbate the crisis. It is time we understood that
since drought is human-made it can be reversed. But then we really need to get our
act together.
First, we should do everything we can to augment water resourcescatch every
drop of water, store it and recharge groundwater. To do this we need to build millions
of more structures, but this time based on water planning and not just employment.
This means being deliberate and purposeful. It also means giving people the right to
decide the location of the waterbody and to manage it for their needs. Today, invariably, the land on which the waterbody is built belongs to one department and the land
from where the water will be harvested belongs to another. There is no synergy in this
plan. There is no water that is harvested. The employment that will be provided during this drought must be used to build security against the next one.
Second, revise and update the drought code. It is not as if the richer parts of the
world do not have droughts. Australia and California have gone through years of water scarcity. But their governments respond by shutting off all non-essential water use,
from watering lawns to hosing down cars. This is what is needed in India.
Third, obsessively work to secure water in all times. This means insisting on water codes for everyday India. We need to reduce water usage in all sectors from agriculture to industry. This means benchmarking water use and setting targets for reduced
consumption year on year. It would mean doing everything from introducing waterefficient fixtures to promoting water-frugal foods. It means making our war against
drought permanent. Only then will drought not become permanent.
@sunitanar
1-15 MAY 2016
25/04/16 12:45 PM
IN-DEPTH
COVERAGE
MARATHWADA'S
DRY STORY
HOW POOR POLICIES PUSHED THE REGION
INTO ONE OF ITS WORST DROUGHTS EVER
n a scorching hot April afternoon, standing under a mango tree on

his 5.7-hectare (ha) farm, Ramvithal Valse declares, This years
drought is unprecedented. It has surpassed the drought of 1972. The
81-year-old farmer from Sonwati village in Latur district says that in
1972, when the state witnessed one of its worst droughts ever, the
shortage was of food grains and not water. Groundwater was available within six metres, but now even 244-metre-deep borewells have gone dry. This is
not akal; it is trikalno water, no fodder and decline in farm produce, says the farmer.
Valses village falls in the Latur tehsil of Marathwada, the worst drought-affected
region in Maharashtra. According to an April 2016 report of the Godavari Marathwada
Irrigation Development Corporation, 11 major irrigation projects, 75 medium irrigation projects and 729 minor irrigation projects in the eight Marathwada districts have
only four per cent, five per cent and three per cent of live water storage respectively.
The picture is not much different in other parts of Maharashtra that has more than 60
per cent villages under drought this year. The situation is expected to worsen till June
when the monsoon showers begin.
Given the magnitude of the crisis, the state government has resorted to several desperate measures, including transportation of water on trainswith over 50 wagons
to Latur and prohibiting people from gathering around water supply points.
However, as the crisis deepens, people are increasingly asking one fundamental
question: why did the government not act earlier? Unlike other disasters, drought
gives sufficient warning. It was building for the past five years. Why did the state government not reserve water for drinking and regulate water supply to industries? asks
Pradeep Purandare, ex-associate professor at the Water and Land Management
Institute, Aurangabad.
Valse echoes Purandares sentiment when he says that the current situation is a result of drought-like conditions that have been prevailing in the region for the past four
years. My annual income has reduced by 80 per cent in four years. I had 12 cattle then.
Now I am left with a cow and its calf. Three borewells in his farmland have gone dry.
The last one has little water left that is used only for drinking purposes.
H M Desarda, former member of the Maharashtra State Planning
Commission, goes a step further when he says the state is facing a poliMore than
cy-induced water scarcity. Faulty policies, regional imbalance, wrong
60 per cent
cropping pattern, unregulated mining of the groundwater and political
villages in
apathy have ruined the rural economy, says Desarda.
Maharashtra
The deteriorating water situation in the region can be gauged by the
are reeling
steady decline in farming in the area. The problem started in 2011 when
from drought
we had below average rainfall. The next year, Marathwada received excess
this year
rainfall of 136 per cent. In 2013, 2014 and 2015, we again had about
8 DOWN TO EARTH
PHOTOGRAPHS: NIDHI JAMWAL
NIDHI JAMWAL
Village women (top) in

Latur district walk over
two km at least twice a
day to fetch water. On the
way, they have to climb
a hillock. Mamta Devi
(above) of Sonwati village
spends hours just filling
water from a dugwell
near the village temple.
She has developed
severe neck and back
pain because of carrying
water up the hillock to
her house
1-15 MAY 2016
25/04/16 1:01 PM
MAHARASHTRA
MARATHWADA
AREA
64,590 sq km
0 305
<<<
0 004
305
R21,000
51,660
50 per cent deficit monsoon. Freak hailstorms durmetres

rain deficit
ing February-March in 2014 and 2015 destroyed
years in the
groundwater levels in
the standing rabi crops (October-March), says
Vijay Diwan, president of Aurangabad-based
some of the regions past five years
Nisarga Mitra Mandal and former member of The
Marathwada Development Board. Mohan Bhise,
agriculture officer, Latur, says farmers in 15 per
cent of the villages in the Latur district did not sow
the kharif crop (July-October) last year after the
area had a 50 per cent monsoon deficit.
0 051
0 021
The Economic Survey of Maharashtra 2015-16
says that during the 2015 kharif season, sowing was
completed on 14 million hectares (ha) of area in the
state, which is six per cent less than the previous year.
water conservation
This is expected to result in an 18 per cent decline in
crore
structures built in
the production of foodgrains and two per cent in oilspent on
seeds production for kharif crops. The area under
the past two years
drought
rabi crops is also expected to decrease by 16 per cent
under Jalyukta
relief in the
as compared to the previous year resulting in an exShivar Abhiyaan
past four years
pected decline of 27 per cent and 50 per cent in
foodgrains and oilseeds production respectively. In
2014-15, deficit monsoon and unseasonal rains lead to a decline in the production of
foodgrains, cereals and pulses24.9 per cent, 18.7 per cent and 47.0 per cent respectively over the previous year. Production of fruits and vegetables also decreased by nearly
15 per cent. There was, however, a 19 per cent increase in sugarcane production.
SUGARCANE CURSE
At the heart of the current drought is the changing farming pattern in the semi-arid
Marathwada region in the past few decades. Several farmers have ditched droughtresistant crops such as jowar (sorghum) and chana (chickpea) for water-intensive
cash crops such as sugarcane. Marathwada receives an annual average rainfall of
844 mm, while sugarcane ideally needs 2,100-2,500 mm of rainfall.
1-15 MAY 2016
25/04/16 5:23 PM
COVER
STORY
Uday Deolankar, agriculture officer, Aurangabad, says while crops such as moong
and maize, which were traditionally grown in the region, consume 3.5 -7 million litres
of water per ha to grow, sugarcane needs 25 million litres of water per ha. But sugarcane
farming continues despite the drought. In Marathwada, the sugarcane area has gone up
from 184,900 ha in 2009-10 to 219,400 ha in 2014-15. In the same period, sugarcane
production in Latur increased from 39,900 ha to 46,400 ha. The production of kharif
jowar for the same period, however, reduced from 117,200 ha to 88,300 ha.
Uday Despande, a farmer from Laturs Nagzari village, says it is not the farmers,
but the government that should be blamed for the growing popularity of sugarcane in
the region. Farmers will grow crops which get assured returns. Sugarcane fetches us
good money. If the government assures us it would pick up our other crops like vegetables and pulses, and gives us a good frp (fair and remunerative price), we will switch
over to those crops, says Deshpande.
Of the total 205 sugar factories in Maharashtra, 34 per cent are in Marathwada.
Latur alone has 13 sugar factories and 45,000-50,000 ha area under annual sugarcane
cultivation. Pandurang Pole, collector, Latur, says that of the districts irrigation capacity of 118,000 ha, barely 50-60 per cent is active. And almost 90 per cent of the total
water available for irrigation in the district is used for sugarcane cultivation. In fact,
seven to eight of the 13 functional sugar factories in the district crushed sugarcane even
till February this year. When asked why this was not arrested, Pole says, There is no
law that gives me the power to stop sugar factories. We are trying to educate farmers
not to grow sugarcane. This, despite the fact that as early as in 1999, the Maharashtra
Water and Irrigation Commissions report had recommended no sugarcane cultivation in drought-prone areas, and relocation of sugar factories. Instead, in 2012, the
state government sanctioned 20 more private sugar factories in Marathwada. The
Maharashtra Irrigation Act, 1976, gives enough powers to the state government to reduce water supply to water-intensive crops. Even crops in the command area of an irrigation project can be controlled during the drought years. What was the state government doing all these years? questions Purandare.
The Maharashtra government has finally woken up and decided to not give new
permits to sugar factories in Marathwada for the next five years.
10 DOWN TO EARTH
1-15 MAY 2016
25/04/16 1:01 PM
COVER
STORY
(Left) Defunct jackwell on dried-up Manjara

river at Nagzari barrage in Latur district.
Manjara is the only river in the district.
(Below) Kachru Hadwale, a resident of
Madapuri village of Beed district, has been
staying in a cattle camp since January
2016 with 24 head of cattle of his landlord.
He will return to his village only after the
monsoon rain. (Right) a cattle camp near
Beed town. The camp buys 36,000 litres
of water daily for the 799 cattle it houses.
The per day cost of water and fodder at
the camp is `33,600. Beed district has 262
cattle camps with 260,925 head of cattle
Almost
90 per
cent of the
total water
available for
irrigation in
Latur district
is used for
sugarcane
cultivation
1-15 MAY 2016
Allowing sugarcane production to flourish at a time of droughts is not the only way
in which the state government has faltered. The water structures in the statewhich
has one of the highest numbers of large dams in the countryhave failed to help because of government policies to divert water from farm to industries and urban centres.
A March 2013 report titled Water Grabbing in Maharashtra shows that between 2003
and 2011, the state governments Ministerial-level High Power Committee on Water
Allocation and Reallocation diverted 1983.43 million cubic metres of water from 51 irrigation dam projects to non-irrigation purposes. The report by Pune-based Prayas
Resources and Livelihoods Group says that the diversion for non-irrigation purposes,
mainly for big cities and industries, has been to the tune of 30-90 per cent of the dams
live storage capacities, leading to acute water shortage for agriculture.
As a result, despite having the maximum numbers of large dams in the country1,845the state has failed in providing water to its people. Similarly, The
Economic Survey of Maharashtra 2015-16 says the state has 3,909 irrigation projects
that on paper provided the potential to irrigate 4.9 million ha on June 2014. But, the
total irrigation potential utilised is only 31.37 per cent. Because of lack of irrigation facilities and inappropriate cropping pattern, desperate farmers of Marathwada have
turned to groundwater. As a result, in some tehsils of Latur, there is no water even 304
metres below the ground. According to Bhise, eight watersheds in Latur district are
over-exploited (groundwater extraction is more than 100 per cent of the recharge),
whereas six are under semi-critical category (groundwater extraction is between 70
and 90 per cent of the recharge). Three years ago not even a single watershed in Latur
was overexploited. In the past one year, the water table in Latur has gone down by 3.54 metre, says Pole.
Government figures highlight the regional imbalance in distribution of water in
the state. According to an October 2013 report by the states Planning Department,
Marathwadas per capita water availability is 438 cubic metres (cum), as against 985
cum in Vidarbha and 1,346 cum in the rest of Maharashtra. This has happened
because the state government has regularly neglected the water requirement of the
Marathwada region. For example, in 1965, the Maharashtra government proposed
the Jayakwadi dam on the Godavari river in Paithan tehsil of Aurangabad to make
25/04/16 1:01 PM
COVER
STORY
Marathwada districts water-sufficient. In the first report on the dam, there was a provision of 240-km-long left bank canal and 180-km-long right bank canal for irrigation purposes. The declared command area for irrigation facilities was 272,000 ha.
But, by the time the project was completed in 1976, the right bank canal was reduced
to 80 km and command area decreased to 140,000 ha. According to the plan, the dam
should receive 81 thousand million cubic feet (tmc) every year from irrigation projects
upstream of Jayakwadi to irrigate Aurangabad, Jalna, Beed, Parbhani and Nanded
districts. But, for more than 15 years now, Jayakwadi has received only 40 tmc water,
complains Diwan. At present, the dam has no live water storage. Of the 11 major irrigation projects in Marathwada, seven have zero live water storage.
Desperate
for water,
people have
started
dredging
rivers and
streams on
their own
DRIED PROMISE
The lone state government scheme that promises to save the people from droughts is
ill-conceived to say the least. The Jalyukt Shivar Abhiyaan was started in 2014 with
the promise to drought-proof the state by 2019. It aims to make 5,000 villages free of
water scarcity every year through deepening and widening of streams, construction
of cement and earthen stop dams, work on nullahs and digging of farm ponds. A total of 158,089 works are to be carried out under this project, of which 51,660 were completed till April 22 this year.
However, the project has already run into rough weather as Desarda has filed a
public interest petition in the Bombay High Court alleging Jalyukta Shivar is against
the principles of watershed management. The basic principle of watershed management, explains Desarda, is ridge-to-valley, which means any work of water and soil
conservation must begin from the ridge in order to arrest faster run-off, and eventually come to the valley down below. Jalyukt Shivar is doing exactly the opposite.
Scattered and single line activities are being carried out in farms and villages without
any works on the ridge. River beds and rivulets are being dredged with heavy machinery in the most unscientific manner, complains Desarda, who has recently toured 17
Maharashtra districts to assess Jalyukt Shivar and river rejuvenation projects.
A visit to sites in Latur and Aurangabad districts where widening and deepening
of streams is being carried out bears out the complaints. In Aurangabad, river rejuvenation works have been carried out in Yelganga and Fullmasta rivers using funds raised
under corporate social responsibility. In Latur, 18 km of Manjara river is being wid12 DOWN TO EARTH
1-15 MAY 2016
27/04/16 11:00 AM
COVER
STORY
(Left) Harangul villagers stand in the

dried-up stream they have deepened.
They have over-excavated the stream
bed that may cause more problems. A
petition has been filed in Bombay High
Court against such unscientific river
rejuvenation works being carried out in
Maharashtra. (Above) Mahananda bai
from Devangra village in Latur district
says government's Mahatma Gandhi
National Rural Employment Guarantee
Act has failed to generate any work in
the past seven years in her village. Dried
sugarcane (right) is being used as fodder
in cattle camps
ened and deepened between Sai and Nagzari barrages. The project was launched on
April 8, 2016, and heavy excavator machines are working day and night to deepen the
river. At Harangul village on the outskirts of Latur city, local irrigation officials and
farmers are widening and deepening 27 km of main stream and its mini-streams that
flow through the 160-ha cultivable land of the village. At some places the river has been
dredged to more than five metres depth.
Rivers and streams should not be deepened below three metres else they might
expose the groundwater and cause permanent damage to the aquifers, says Diwan.
Experts say the other problem with the Jalyukt Shivar Abhiyaan is that it is primarily doing the works that are also mentioned under the Mahatma Gandhi National
Rural Employment Guarantee Act (mgnrega), but without involving the people in the
process. If the Central scheme was funded and implemented properly, it would have
generated employment for the people in the drought-hit region during the time of crisis. Instead, Jalyukt Shivar Abhiyaan is benefiting only the contractors who are mindlessly dredging. Another problem is that people, desperate for water, are also arbitrarily dredging rivers and streams on their own. Purandare warns that haphazard water
conservation are heading us towards an ecological disaster.
Amid all the bad news, administration in Bhadegaon village in Khuldabad tehsil
of Aurangabad district has been successful in keeping drought at bay by adopting the
ridge-to-valley approach of watershed management. In 2015, village residents, along
with the forest department and agriculture officers, carried out deep continuous contour trench on the entire ridge around Bhadegaon on an area of 75 ha. Cemented nullah bandhs were constructed and compartment bunding was carried out in each farmland covering 60 ha. A number of farmers also adopted drip-irrigation.
The benefits have now started to show. Till last summer, Bhadegaon was dependent on water tankers to meet its drinking water needs. Starting June 2015, not even a
single water tanker has come to the village. Water storage of 122 tcm has been created
and there has been an increase in crop output. In the past one year, farmers have sown
both kharif and rabi crop. Some have sown a third crop as well. The average
annual income of families has gone up from `31,000 to `63,000.
Uday Deolankar, agriculture officer, Aurangabad, says his team now plans to survey all the villages in three blocks of Aurangabad in the first week of May to prepare a
plan to drought-proof villages using ridge-to-valley concept.
@JamwalNidhi
1-15 MAY 2016
25/04/16 1:01 PM
IN-DEPTH
COVERAGE
PENNY UNWISE,
POND FOOLISH
THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD HAVE REVIVED
TRADITIONAL WATER BODIES AND PONDS TO
PREPARE BUNDELKHAND FOR DROUGHT.
RATHER, IT SPENT I15,000 CRORE
TO BUILD NEW HARVESTING STRUCTURES
JITENDRA
SACHIN KUMAR JAIN
anwati, 38, has been trying her luck with the hand-pump for close to
two hours now. The effort has yielded half-a-bucket of water.
Exhausted, she gives up and decides to walk to another hand-pump
about two kilometres from her village Saliaya Karrah with her neighbour Kapoori. This is the only hand-pump in the village but it also
has started to run dry. I have to finish cooking for my three children
before dark because we usually have a night-long power-cut starting 6:30 pm, Manwati says.
Its already 5:30 pm and she has another hour to get water.
Manwati is just one of the many women in Bundelkhand, a region in central India comprising 13 districts of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, who have to struggle for water everyday. Her village lies in Uttar Pradeshs Mahoba district, an area that has always faced water
shortage. But the situation has turned particularly grim in the past couple of decades.
Manwatis husband works as a daily wage labourer in Mahoba. Her father-in-law, Lall
Chaturvedi, owns three hectares (ha) but has not farmed in the past two years because there
is not enough water. He took a loan to buy a tractor three years ago but has not been able to deposit his annual instalment of R1 lakh since last year. The bank has been sending recovery
agents to their house who abuse them. The family is worried that Chaturvedi might commit
suicide. As per official figures, 27 farmers have committed suicide between June 2015 and
March 2016 in the district. The water crisis has also caused crop failure, riots, caste violence,
and large-scale migration. In Kabrai block of the district, for instance, Manoj Basor, a sweeper, was beaten up by higher caste men for touching a hand-pump. I belong to an untouchable caste. I was thirsty and dared to use the hand-pump to take a glass of water. Apart from attacking me, they have also filed a police complaint, claims Manoj, showing his wounds.
Officials at the Kabrai police station say that water-related crimes would increase as the summer reaches its peak. Last year more than 50 such incidents were reported in our police station. This year, till the first week of April, we have already had five cases, says Raj Bahadur
Singh, a constable at the police station.
Here, might is right, says U N Tiwary, a retired bank official who lives in Kabrai. Water
tankers are looted as soon as they arrive. Last time, Tiwary could only manage three buckets
and that too because the distribution was done under police protection. He has to survive on
these three buckets for around four days. His wife has gone to live with her children in Bhopal
till the monsoon arrives.
14 DOWN TO EARTH
(Top) A woman draws

water from a ditch
in Bajakund village
of Madhya Pradesh's
Umaria district.
(Above) Gufran Khan
of Hamirpur district,
Uttar Pradesh, had a
stress fracture from
drawing water from
a well throughout
the day
1-15 MAY 2016
26/04/16 5:40 PM
UTTAR
PRADESH
MADHYA PRADESH
BUNDELKHAND
AREA
70,000 sq km
0 013
PHOTOGRAPHS: VIKAS CHOWDHARY / CSE
PERPETUAL CRISIS
1-15 MAY 2016
13
droughts
in past 15
years
0 015
15
th
consecutive
crop failure due
to drought and
unseasonal rain
This is the 13th drought Bundelkhand has witnessed in

the past 15 years. But this was not always the case. As per
government data, in the 18th and 19th centuries, the region faced droughts once in 16 years. The frequency increased and between 1968 and 1992, there was a
drought every five years. Between 2004 and 2008, four
consecutive droughts ravaged the region. Except 2013,
all the years between 2009 and 2015 saw deficit monsoon. Even in 2013, excessive rain in February and
0 116
0 015
heavy monsoon damaged 60 per cent of rabi and kharif
crops, says Rajendra Nigam, project coordinator of
Mahoba-based non-profit Grammonatti Sansthan.
The drought has also resulted in the 15th consecutive crop failure. According to the Uttar Pradesh govwater-harvesting
crore
ernment, its Bundelkhand districts lost 70 per cent of
spent on
structures built
rabi crop due to the drought this year. The state governdroughtbetween 2006
ment has demanded a compensation of R205 crore for
proofing
in
the
and 2015
farmers from the Centre. Rakesh Agnihotri, a marketpast
decade
ing inspector from the department of food and civil supply, says he and his team waited at the godown in
Charkhari block of Mahoba for the entire first week of April to purchase wheat at the minimum support price (msp) from farmers but not a single one turned up. This despite the state
government fixing the msp of wheat at R15,250 per tonnea 5.2 per cent increase from the previous years rate. Generally, this doesnt happen, says Agnihotri. We organise collection centres after much publicity. Farmers usually start coming from day one. This signifies that the
drought has been quite severe. Either the farmers did not cultivate crops at all due to water
shortage or the productivity was very low, he adds. Continuous crop loss for more than a decade has also pushed up the production cost. Experts say farmers are spending beyond their
capacity on irrigation.
The long spell of drought has also caused large-scale migration. Unable to sustain livelihood by agriculture, farmers are forced to work as labourers in cities. As per a government es-
R15,000
116,000
25/04/16 1:00 PM
IN-DEPTH
To fight
the crisis,
116,000
waterharvesting
structures
were built in
Bundelkhand
between
2006 and
2015. Many of
these failed
because
they were
technically
flawed or
unsuited to
the terrain
16 DOWN TO EARTH
COVERAGE
timate made during the polio immunisation drive in 2015, about 6.2 million people have migrated from Bundelkhand in the past 15 years, says Ashish Sagar of Banda-based non-profit
Prawas. He was involved in the preparation of the report.
Another fallout of the perpetual drought is stray cattle. Unable to provide fodder, farmers
just let them go. There are no figures for the entire Bundelkhand region, but government estimates say just the Chitrakoot division has 0.36 million stray cattle. This is 20 per cent of all
the cattle in the division. Bhori Devi, 38, of Ajimika village in Mahoba had to work as a labourer after her standing crop was destroyed by stray cattle this year. She owns 4 ha but grew wheat
on only half a hectare because there was not enough water. Even this crop was destroyed. We
took a loan and invested R50,000 in agriculture, which has to be repaid, she says. The problem is so severe that Saroj Dwivedi, the woman village head of Ajnar, won the recent panchayat election on the promise of safeguarding fields from stray cattle. In areas where the victory
margin is usually less than 50 votes, she won by 1,600 votes. Even I couldnt believe it, says
Saroj, a big farmer. My husband had started taking care of around 500 anna pashu (disowned
cattle) during the election campaign and people voted for us, she adds.
MONUMENTAL WASTE
So why has Bundelkhand not been able to prepare for drought despite suffering it for such a
long time? It should have, because the Central government has spent R15,000 crore in the past
decade to create water-harvesting structures. The figure includes R7,000 crore spent under
the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (mgnrega) on droughtproofing the region and the R7,266 crore package that the Centre announced after the four
consecutive droughts between 2004 and 2008. It also includes R577 crore that the Union ministry of agriculture allocated to support farming and allied sectors. With all this money, over
116,000 harvesting structures have been constructed in Bundelkhand in just ten years (2006
to 2015). These include 700 check dams and 236 minor irrigation projects. This should have
been enough to harvest rainwater to fight the drought.
The answer to why Bundelkhand failed to prepare for drought lies in the kind of waterharvesting structures that have been built. Most are either technically flawed or unsuited to
the terrain. For instance, the Sakaria reservoir. This 40 ha reservoir constructed at a cost of
R5.7 crore in Heerapur village of Madhya Pradeshs Panna district was a non-starter because
the gradient of the land did not slope towards the reservoir. Six years ago, I had pleaded with
the district collector a number of times that the proposed site for the reservoir would not work
because the slope was in the wrong direction, says 65-year-old Shukru Gond of Heerapur. But
1-15 MAY 2016
25/04/16 1:00 PM
DROUGHT
(Left) Water shortage has given birth to a
new business in Uttar Pradesh's Mahoba
district, where water drawn from wells
is delivered at homes. (Right) Sakaria
tank in Panna district of Madhya Pradesh
could not store water because its design
was flawed. It was built at a cost of R5.7
crore (Below) Shukru Gond was displaced
because of the construction of the
Sakaria tank
the argument was dismissed because the project had been cleared by engineers. However, the
knowledge of the village residents about the terrain proved correct. The reservoir that was announced as part of the Bundelkhand package to provide irrigation to 380 ha has now been declared defunct.
The selected location of the reservoir was the result of caste politics, says Shukru. The site
surveyed for the proposed tank was at Jamanhari village, a kilometre east of the current site.
The area is low-lying and has two streamsNeman and Kasehathat could have provided
water to the reservoir. But the site was ignored because the Ahirs and Thakurs, the dominant
castes of the village, did not allow it. The decision to change the location was taken overnight.
The part where Gonds, one of the most backward tribes of the country, lived was selected and
the residents were asked to relocate. Each family was paid R40,000 as compensation. Even
rainwater does not stay in the tank for long. It seeps through the ground and spreads in the
nearby fields, says Pan Bai Gond, who lost her 1.2 ha to this failed tank. At least the fields at
our previous location were fertile. The ones that have been given to us are not, says 60-yearold Sankar Gond.
A few kilometres from the Sakaria site is Gunor block of Panna district. Here a check dam
has been made on the Pereri stream. The problem is that the dam is on a plain landthe water never gains enough speed to be checked. The dam just ends up being an obstruction and
causes the water to spread in nearby areas. The problem with Jaswantpura dam in Amanganj
block of Panna is exactly the opposite. This dam was constructed with substandard material
and developed cracks in its first year of operation. As a result, there is no water conservation.
All the water just flows through the dam, says D P Singh, a teacher at a government school in
Amanganj block.
Yet another case is of Bhitri Mutmuru dam in Panna district. In 2013, one of the walls of
the dam was washed away during the rain while construction was still going on. Bhitri
Mutmuru, the village where the dam was being constructed, was also washed away. A few
people reportedly died. The matter was raised in the state Assembly. Renovation of the dam
started last year, says Sudeep Srivastava, a Panna-based activist.
There are innumerable similar stories in every district of the region. Wrong constructions
have also destroyed centuries-old ponds that were functional. One such pond is Chaand Sagar
in Nagar Dang village of Mahoba. Constructed by the Bundela rulers, the pond is on the verge
of extinction after the government declared it a model pond and decided to give it a facelift
in 2012-13. As part of the initiative, walls were constructed around the pond, which blocked
the flow of water from the catchment areas. The pond now lives up to its nameit can dry
1-15 MAY 2016
25/04/16 1:00 PM
IN-DEPTH
COVERAGE
even under moonlight, mocks Leeladhar Rajput, a farmer in the village. The initiative was
part of the state governments drive to build a model pond in every block. Bhanu Sahai, chairperson of the Bundelkhand Relief Package Monitoring Committee of the Congress party,
claims that the money granted under the package has been totally wasted. Nearly 90 per cent
of the ponds dug under the relief scheme have turned out to be useless, he says.
SUITABLE OPTION
Ponds
are most
suited to the
geography
of the
region. Three
decades ago,
Bundelkhand
had more
than 20,000
ponds. The
figure now
stands at
5,500
18 DOWN TO EARTH
Since medieval times, local rulers and kings of Bundelkhand have built ponds. Some of these
have lasted centuries and are still functional. Traditional wisdom suggests that ponds are best
suited to the topography of the region. Agrees Pushpendra Singh, a Banda-based activist working on water conservation. Singh started a campaign to build 1,000 farm ponds along the
banks of the seasonal Chandrawal river in 2013. These ponds would get filled up during the
rainy season when the river is in full flow and provide water to farms for the rest of the year.
Singh received support by the then Mahoba district magistrate Anuj Jha. The initiative was
started in 2015 under mgnrega. By then Jha had been transferred and the scheme underwent
a complete overhaul. Now, it was proposed that 15 new check dams should be constructed on
the river to harvest water. The 70 km river that flows through Hamirpur and Banda already
has five check dams. One of the new check dams, constructed at Nathupur village, has an almost 2 m wall, which is too high for a check dam. It completely obstructs the flow instead of
slowing it. Moreover, the dam has names of two different villagesKasrai and Karhara Kala
painted on either side to falsely claim that two separate dams have been constructed for the
villages. No one knows how much money has been spent on the dam. Thats the state of corruption in the region, say Singh.
Site selection for check dams cannot be done arbitrarily, says Anuj Jha, now the district
magistrate of Kannauj. Our unit has never been consulted to conduct study for site selection,
says Anil Mishra, executive engineer at the Banda unit of the Central Ground Water Board.
One needs to know the total quantum of flow of water at the site. As per rules, 35 per cent of
the total water must pass through the check dam to keep the river perennial. The rest of the
65 per cent can be used, he adds. Mishra blames engineers of the irrigation department. They
make their own plans and implement them. As per the geography of the region, ponds are
more suitable, he says.
One such pond is Heera talab in Hamirpur districts Athgar village. The catchment area
1-15 MAY 2016
25/04/16 1:00 PM
DROUGHT
(Left) Raj Mohammad of Goshiari village

in Uttar Pradesh's Hamirpur district
carries a gun to guard the only water pit
of the village where women take bath.
(Right) Madan Sagar pond in Mahoba is
dying because its catchment area has
been encroached and untreated sewage
is discharged in it. (Below) Banda-based
activist Pushpendra Singh has been
campaigning for the construction of farm
ponds to fight drought in Bundelkhand
of this huge 120 ha pond has not been encroached upon. As a result, the pond has thrived for
centuries. We dont know how old this tank is. It never dries, even in harsh conditions, like
this year, says Pancham Aarakh, 58, a village resident.
CLEAR CORRELATION
The downfall of the pond system of irrigation started in the 1960s when land consolidation
laws (chakbandi) were changed in several states, says Singh. Traditionally, landholdings were
cut as per the availability of water bodies and it was kept in mind that every farmer had a water source for irrigation. As per the new laws, landholdings were cut in rectangular shape, ignoring water availability. Farmers, as a result, had to resort to other methods of irrigation. The
impact of chakbandi was felt in the 1990s when droughts became severe. The situation became acute in the 21st century. We had increased use of water but couldnt recharge groundwater and failed to conserve surface water, says Singh.
As farmers looked for other methods of irrigation, traditional water bodies were neglected and became defunct. A 1983 report of the Bundelkhand Development Authority, Madhya
Pradesh, states that the region had 9,407 ponds. Another report published by Banda-based
non-profit Vigyan Sanchaar Sansthan says that the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh had
more than 11,000 ponds till 1990. Of these over 20,000 ponds, now around 5,500 remain.
There is a clear correlation between the rising water scarcity in Bundelkhand and the falling
number of water bodies, adds Singh.
The geography of this region allows quick recharge and discharge. So ponds are most
suitable for conservation of water. Exploiting groundwater will not help, says Narendra
Goswami, a Jhansi-based geologist. Moreover, groundwater resources in Bundelkhand are
meagre because hard rocks like granite and gneiss do not allow water to percolate through the
ground. On the other hand, the quartz reef that traverses through the undulating terrain of
Bundelkhand provides sites where ponds can be formed, says Krishna Gandhi, a Jhansi-based
activist who started Lokodyam Sansthan, a campaign for water conservation in Bundelkhand.
Many tanks built during the Chandela rule 1,000 years ago along these reefs can still be found,
Gandhi says. We need to identify traditional water bodies and revive them, says Pankaj
Chaturvedi, a Delhi-based writer who has written two books on conservation and rejuvenation of traditional water bodies in Bundelkhand. Till that happens, the region will not be ready
to face droughts.
@_jitendrachoube1
1-15 MAY 2016
25/04/16 1:00 PM
IN-DEPTH
COVERAGE
IT IS NOT A
DROUGHT
BUT A CUMULATIVE OUTCOME OF
DECADES OF POLICY SINS
RICHARD MAHAPATRA
REUTERS
he images are familiar, though stark. In Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh,
police have been deployed to guard precious pools of water in dry beds of big
tanks and rivers. Children in Madhya Pradeshs Umaria district, instead of
heading to school, join mothers in hopeless journeys to search for water. It
is now a common sight: villages in Madhya Pradesh transport water from
far away tubewells to store it in dry dug wells for their use. In Dhar districts
Chandawat village, the only source of water for 800 households has vanished this year. The
village used to get water from a pond 5 km away and would store it in a dug well. But that
pond has completely dried. We now fan out to far away villages with bottles to beg for water, says Hare Singh, a resident of Chandawat.
Women in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra trudge up to 9 km, spending almost
half a day to collect two buckets of water. In Latur, the town that is in news for
water scarcity, Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code has been declared
around water bodies, prohibiting assembly of more than five people at one
place. In north Karnataka, residents leave villages early morning to scavenge
water from any possible source, sometimes digging a metre into dry river beds
and wait for hours to collect water as it seeps through. And it is just April;
the rain is two months away.
Recent official estimates say water level in 91 major reservoirs of
the country is just at 23 per cent
DROUGHT
The order of
the day?
Drought frequency
in the past decade
Source: State of India's

Environment - 2016
20 DOWN TO EARTH
1 time
2 times
3 times
>4 times
Data not available
One-third of India's total districts faced

more than four droughts in the past decade.
According to government data, the droughtprone area of the country has increased by
57 per cent since 1997
1-15 MAY 2016
25/04/16 1:13 PM
DROUGHT
major droughts
during 1871-2015
1-15 MAY 2016
150
years
India's experience of
organised drought
management
68% 50
of sown area is
subject to varying
degrees of drought
every year
million people
affected by drought
every year
750-1,125
mm annual rainfall most
drought-prone areas get.
The national average
is 1,183 mm
GRAPHICS: RAKU / CSE
23
25/04/16 1:13 PM
DROUGHT
2016
2nd
consecutive deficit
monsoon; 14% dip
in monsoon of 2015
The current drought that affects

10 states is turning out to be the
worst in the country's recorded
history. This shows that more
people are affected by drought
now than before, irrespective of
the level of monsoon deficit
254
districts affected
out of total 678
of their capacity. As power stations bring down electricity generation due to water scarcity,
city after city faces long power cuts. Amid this gloom, the government thought the word
drought was too political. So now the India Meteorological Department will use terms like
deficit monsoon, leaving the word drought to be used by others.
Half of India is under the grip of the second consecutive double-digit deficit monsoon,
to use the official terminology. The last time the country witnessed such a situation was in
1965-66, when famine-like scenarios were triggered and widespread starvation deaths took
place. At present, some 200,000 villages across the country are without water within their
respective geographical boundary. Some 60,000 tankers in 10 states, and a train, have been
deployed to provide water. Crops spread over 15 million hectares are under threat, while
governments promise a drought-relief operation, allocating a miniscule R20,000 crore.
Preliminary estimate shows over 330 million people are affected by the current drought spell.
But why does the country face a crisis every time it goes through a drought? Officially,
drought is a permanent disaster that strikes, on an average, 50 million Indians every year;
33 per cent of the country is chronically drought-affected while close to 68 per cent areas are
drought-prone. India has more than 150 years of experience in drought management.
Despite this, every time the country faces a deficit monsoon, we plunge into a crisis.
Is the drought of 2015-16 different from other droughts? No. Like previous years, this
time too India has just reacted to a situation. Though in all these years our policy has been
to drought-proof the country instead of just embarking on drought relief operations. Since
the 1965-66 drought, it has been an official policy to prepare villages to fight drought by investing in works related to soil and moisture management.
As they say, drought is a disaster one can see coming. Deficit monsoon creates situations
for a drought. But it is not deficit monsoon, rather the lack of policies and mechanisms to
drought-proof susceptible areas that turn the situation into a crisis.
Arguably, the current drought shouldnt have been so unbearable. In the last six decades
we have spent more than R3.5 lakh crore on water conservation and drought-proofing.
Particularly, in the last one decade, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment
Guarantee Act (mgnrega) has helped create, on an average, 21 water bodies in every village.
Some 12.3 million water harvesting structures have been built. Sixty-four per cent of the total expenditure under mgnrega was on agriculture and agriculture-related works. From its
inception in 2006 to March 2016 , the government has spent over R3 lakh crore on mgnrega. Of this, according to an estimate of the dte-cse Data Centre, R2,30,000 crore has been
spent as wage or money that has gone to people directly. We have a better monsoon forecasting system than we had before and our crisis response management has improved. The
drought, therefore, should have been easy to tackle. But still the capacity of rural areas to
tackle drought is quite poor. Probably, the ravages of nature the country witnessed in the past
22 DOWN TO EARTH
1-15 MAY 2016
25/04/16 1:13 PM
DROUGHT
POPULATION AFFECTED
255,000
200,000
villages affected
K3.5 lakh crore
2016
330 million
India's total drought-related

expenditure since Independence
2002
300 million
villages without water sources

within their geographic boundary
BIG DRAIN ON THE EXCHEQUER
(Third worst
drought
since 1901)
1987
85 million
12.3 million
Water conservation
structures created in
India under MGNREGA
21
structures
per village
(Worst in a century)
Sources: India Meteorological Department and Ministry of Rural Development
five years have something to do with it. In 2009, a severe drought year that crippled more
than half of India and impacted 200 million people, the situation was not that bad because
the winter monsoon was more than normal and people harvested a bumper rabi crop. This
compensated for the loss of kharif crops. But in the past two years, the country has gone
through two consecutive double-digit deficit monsoons as well as a below normal winter
monsoon. In January-February this year, the rainfall was 57 per cent less than normalthe
lowest in five years. Moreover, when it rained, it poured so heavily that the winter crop in the
areas already reeling from the second consecutive drought was damaged. In the Bundelkhand
region of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, this was the 15th consecutive crop loss. Such
situations are going to be the new normal in the face of climate change.
A 2006 study by the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines and the
Japan International Research Centre for Agricultural Science, in association with research
organisations in Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Jharkhand, shows that drought is a key reason
for the poor staying perennially below the poverty line. The study found that in every severe
drought year, farmers in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Odisha lose close to US $400 million. It found that in the three states, 13 million people who were above the poverty line
slipped below it due to drought-induced income loss. According to Some aspects of Farming
in India, a 2015 report by the National Sample Survey Office, farmers cited inadequate rainfall and drought as the biggest reasons for crop loss, parIt is not deficit
ticularly for the two most harvested cropswheat and paddy. Farmers, on
monsoon,
an average, suffer a loss of R7,363 (one-fifth of their annual income) in padrather the lack
dy due to these reasons.
of policies and
Drought and food security are critically linked. Drought-prone districts
account for 42 per cent of the countrys cultivable land. With 68 per cent of
mechanisms to
Indias net sown areas dependent on rain, rain-fed agriculture plays a key
drought-proof
role in the countrys economy. For maintaining food security, even at the cursusceptible
rent nutritional levels, an additional 100 million tonnes (MT) of food grain
areas that turn
needs to be produced by 2020. Realistically, the total contribution of irria drought into a
gated agriculture to food grain production from both area expansion and
crisis
yield improvement will contribute a maximum of 64 MT by 2020. The balance 36 MT will have to come from the rain-fed areas or the drought-prone
districts. According to estimates, 40 per cent of the additional supply of food
grain required to meet the rise in demand has to come from these districts.
So, it is not about whether our drought relief operations are effective. Rather, India cant
afford to have droughts any more. A long-term strategy to make India drought-free is the
biggest message of the 2016 crisis.
@down2earthindia
1-15 MAY 2016
25/04/16 1:13 PM
IN-DEPTH
COVERAGE
MR PRIME MINISTER
GOOD NEWS
A FEW VILLAGES FROM THE DROUGHTRAVAGED STATES CAN SHOW YOU HOW TO
MAKE INDIA
DROUGHT-FREE, AND MORE THAN DOUBLE THE
INCOME OF FARMERS
JITENDRA, SHREESHAN VENKATESH,
KARNIKA BAHUGUNA AND
KUNDAN PANDEY
n February 28, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made an audacious pledge.

I am confident that my dream will come true. My dream is your dream. My
dream is with your dream. What is my dream? My dream is that by 2022,
when the country celebrates its 75th Independence Day, the income of
farmers should double, he said, adding Can we do it? Can we take a pledge
in this regard, the states, the farmers, we all? Many years after former
prime minister Indira Gandhis garibi hatao slogan, Modis definitive target to fix the problem of farmers has evoked the same hopes. In the context of the current drought, many find
this unachievable. There is fierce academic debate over the ways and means to achieve this.
But Down To Earth (dte) reporters found that many villages have insulated themselves from
drought, including the current spell. These villages, located in Indias most drought-prone
areas, are beautiful examples in difficult places. They are no more bothered by the performance of the monsoon. In a span of just two decades, these villages, once hopeless, have
scripted economic miracles. In a way, they dreamt before the prime minister, and dte shows
the way they made the dream come true.
In the drought-ravaged Marathwada, residents of Kadwanchi village in Jalana district are

least worried about the drought or the next monsoon. In fact, they were not bothered by any
drought in the past 20 years, including the drought of 2012, the worst in 40 years. Rather,
as one enters into a conversation with residents, the discussion is about agricultural expansion. And not without reason: in the past 20 years, the income of its residents has gone up
by 700 per cent.
Kadwanchi is a glowing example of how a well-planned government programme can
JITENDRA / CSE
A VILLAGE OF LAKHPATIS
24 DOWN TO EARTH
27/04/16 11:00 AM
DROUGHT
In Kadwanchi,
Marathwada,
groundwater recharge
has enabled farmers
to build ponds and do
horticulture. Farmers
now earn four times the
national average
27/04/16 11:00 AM
COVERAGE
help in fighting drought and raising the income of farmers. The village has seen a sharp decline in drought vulnerability since 1996, when the Kadwanchi watershed project was
launched. At that time, 100 per cent farmers in the village would report crop failure during
a drought. The figure in 2013 stood at 23 per cent. All that the farmers did was conserve water and soil and dig farm ponds. Add to it the carefully thought out cropping pattern that
suits the district with annual average rainfall of 730 mm.
The project, launched under the national watershed programme, was implemented in
the village between 1996-97 and 2001-02 with a financial outlay of R1.2 crore. We did not
think much of the work the officials were doing. They constructed bunds and trenches, and
planted trees in a piece of forestland in the village to showcase how effective these methods
are in fighting drought. These steps slowed the flow of running water, increased seepage and
recharged groundwater. They had an impact on the nearby areas as well. Within two years,
the wells in surrounding areas started recharging and the soil gained moisture. This compelled us to understand the techniques, says Vishnu Bapurao, 58, a farmer whose annual
income is more than R10 lakh. The project helped increase the total cultivated area in the village from 1,365.95 hectares (ha) in 1996 to 1,517 ha in 2002.
Once the water scarcity was over, the farmers started growing grapes, apart from rice
and wheat. This required drip irrigation for which farmers constructed farm ponds. These
are small ponds dug by the farmers themselves by taking loans from banks. The ponds store
rainwater and provide water throughout the year. The village had 357 ponds in 2015. For
grape cultivation and pond construction, the farmers received training by the Krishi Vigyan
Kendra (kvk) of Jalana, which also oversaw the implementation of the project.
Grape farming phenomenally raised the income of the farmers. According to a 2012 survey by the Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture (crida), the average annual
income of farmers in the village increased from ~40,000 in 1996 to ~3.21 lakh in 2012a
700 per cent rise. As per the latest data by the National Sample Survey Office in December
2014, the nationwide average annual income of farmers is around ~72,000. Farmers in
Kadwanchi earn four times the national average.
The rise in income also increased the credit worthiness of farmers. Our study showed
that non-institutional money lending decreased to 7.5 per cent and institutional lending shot up to 87 per cent. Almost all families in the village now
have a lakhpati, says Pandit Wasre, an agriculture scientist at kvk, who headed the project. The Kadwanchi project succeeded because the community
Jalana
owned the programmes, says Wasre. Thats why even 15 years after the programme, the structures are intact.
MAHARASHTRA
Not very far, at the epicentre of the current drought, Latur, Sandipan
Badgire is busy measuring his harvest. In a striking contrast to many farmers
in the district who are desperately digging borewells to save crops and invariably landing up in the debt trap, he boasts: There is no borewell in my farmLOCATION:
land and I do not grow sugarcane at all.
Drought-prone
He is an organic farmer and believes in multi-croppingthe traditional
Marathwada
way to ensure crop security. In 1988, at an age of 35, he decided to help his father in farming their 5 ha. At that time, there was no information available on
DESIGN:
organic farming in Latur and almost all the farmers were dependent on chemHarvest water
icals and fertilisers. From 1988 to 1993, Badgire also practised chemical farmand diversify
ing and realised his crop output was going down while the input cost of pesticides was going up.
crops
In 1993, he came across an article on organic farming published in a local Marathi magazine, which set him thinking. After sourcing more informaIMPACT:
tion on organic farming and attending a few farmers meetings in Pune,
700% increase
Badgire decided to adopt organic farming on his land. Since information was
in income
limited, the period between 1993 and 2000 was spent experimenting with
rain-fed agriculture and organic farming. He suffered losses, but did not give
DURATION:
up. Things started to look up after 2000, as soil fertility increased, and since
then Badgire is only making progress.
16 years
26 DOWN TO EARTH
NIDHI JAMWAL
IN-DEPTH
1-15 MAY 2016
25/04/16 1:08 PM
DROUGHT
Sandipan
Badgire is a
proud organic
farmer from
Latur. Not only
does he not
need borewells,
his per hectare
output is higher
compared to
the farmers
who use
chemicals and
fertilisers
I do inter-cropping and crop rotation to keep my farmland healthy. In three acres (1 acre
equals 0.4 ha), I grow tur (pigeon pea). Another three acres of jowar (sorghum), three acres
of moong (green gram), and two to three acres of soybean. While farmers doing chemical
farming have seen a sharp decline in their crop output, my output is still high, claims
Badgire. He uses cow dung to make manure for his farm and makes medicine for his crops
using cow urine.
Because of the drought this year, several farmers in Latur have lost their crops or not
grown any kharif or rabi crop. A neighbouring farmer did not get any jowar from his one
acre land; but in spite of the drought, I have got five quintals (1 quintal equals 100 kg) of
jowar from an acre. As against an output of one quintal chana (chickpea) from an acre in
chemical farming, my output is at least double. He also has a number of tamarind and babul
trees on his farmland which are suitable for semi-arid Marathwada.
THE DOMINO EFFECT
In the Bundelkhand region, a few villages are overcoming consistent drought by innovating. Six years ago, Haldin Patel, a 36-year-old marginal farmer from Majhout village in
Chhatarpur district of Madhya Pradesh was struggling to feed his family of five with an income of around R10,000 a year. He had to do odd jobs in Delhi and Jammu and lease out his
part of the field to tenants and share croppers. On his 1 ha, he used to spend more than half
1-15 MAY 2016
25/04/16 1:08 PM
IN-DEPTH
Haldin Patel in
his ginger field
in Chhhatarpur.
Many others
like Patel
stopped
migrating to
nearby towns
once they
started organic
farming
COVERAGE
the cost of input on chemical fertilisers.

Things changed when farmers were trained to make organic fertilisers using cow dung,
cow urine, neem leaves, water, and gram flour. In March 2011, an advocacy group Harit
Prayas funded by Caritas, a Rome-based non-profit, started training small and marginal
farmers in making fertiliser.
I was the only person who dared to prepare my own fertiliser in a village of 250 households after the training, said Haldeen. Though social pressure made him throw the fertiliser in a corner of his field, a little after a month, everybody saw the results. Not only did the
ginger sapling mature before its time, it was much better in quality.
Today, the cost of production for Haldin has reduced to less than ~5,000 and his income
has increased to more than ~30,000, after integrating cattle with agriculture. Following
25/04/16 1:08 PM
DROUGHT
JITENDRA / CSE
Haldins example, many small farmers opted for organic farming in

Majhout and saw an increase in their income.
The effect was also seen in adjoining villages. In a tribal village
Chhatarpur
13 km from Majhout, agriculture had become a loss-making venture.
MADHYA PRADESH
Farmers had to work as labourers in Jhansi and nearby towns. Till three
years ago, the village wore a deserted look. Haldin decided to travel with
the Caritas team and convince the farmers about the benefits of organic farming.
LOCATION:
Many people, like Mohan Manjhi, stopped migrating since they
Bundelkhand
started organic farming in Karoundia village in Chhatarpur district.
region with
Everybody now rear their cattle and prepare their own fertiliser, says
15th consecutive
42-year-old Manjhi, who owns 2 ha of land.
Though organic farming has its benefits,
crop loss
many factors determine the ease with which
farmers can reap them. Lack of fodder and
DESIGN:
shrinking wasteland and grazing land make it
Harvest water
tough for small farmers to make their fertiliser.
and shift to
Many choose not to fully embrace organic
organic farming
farming as it requires time and labour. Those
with bigger landholdings or other sources of income also find it inconvenient. But for small and
IMPACT:
marginal farmers like Babloo Prajapati who own
200% increase
less than half a hectare, it makes a huge differin income
ence. Organic farming has enabled Prajapati to
save ~5,000 to 7,000 every year, which he says he
DURATION:
uses for the education of his children.
5 years
Vinod Pandey, a former national coordinator with Caritas India who started the intervention, says, There are a hundred adjoining villages where we did not intervene but were still influenced by our efforts.
The initiative has been catching up in panchayats like Bhasaur, Cylon,
Kavar, Saliya, Dongariya, Amronia, Lahar, Majgowan, Kota, Tapara
and Dharmapara of Chhatarpur district.
REPLENISHING AQUIFERS
H K Anandappa, 58, sunk more than 11 borewells in the past two decades in his 2 hectare farmland in Karnatakas Naikanhalli village.
Every time they would run dry in a couple of years or fail to yield water right from the start. Tired and desperate, he nursed thoughts of
committing suicide. In 2008, I was heavily in debt, he says.
A meeting with Maleshappa, a farmer, in 2012 helped him turn
things around. Anandappa learnt that apart from drawing water,
borewells can help in recharging underground aquifers. Maleshappa
had himself practised this technique in his field in Hulase Katte village after learning about it from Devaraja Reddy, a Chitradurgabased consultant in hydrogeology, during a farming workshop.
Anandappa dug his 12th borewell in 2012 and used it to pump
water into the ground from a nearby seasonal canal. This solved his
problem. With a recharged water table, he could now extract water
throughout the year.
The idea is to direct surface water to an aquifer through a bore
in the ground. Though a simple mechanism, it is difficult to find the
right spot for successfully recharging the bore. For instance, the
catchment area must be more than a hectare for agricultural purposwww.downtoearth.org.in 29
25/04/16 1:09 PM
IN-DEPTH
64-year-old
Maleshappa
(left), a farmer
from Hulase
Katte village,
stands near
his farm pond,
which he built
using a recharge
borewell. "I am
not as dependent
on the rains now,"
he says
30 DOWN TO EARTH
COVERAGE
es, explains Reddy. Reddy has held several training programmes and workshops in
Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh in the past two decades to educate farmers about the method. His clients include state governments, non-profits and individual farmers.
The technique has helped Anandappa increase his income eight times. From R1 lakh per
year he earned by cultivating coconut and groundnut before the recharge bore, his income
has now jumped to R8 lakh. The borewell has helped him irrigate a larger area, diversify crops,
and pay off debts. I now harvest 2,000 coconuts at a time against the 200 earlier, he says.
The method is typically useful for Karnataka, a state that has in recent times been severely affected by drought. As per State Focus Paper 2014-15, a report by the National Bank
for Agricultural and Rural Development, Karnataka is Indias second most drought-affected state after Rajasthan. Between 63 and 72 per cent of the total area of the state is drought1-15 MAY 2016
25/04/16 1:09 PM
DROUGHT
prone, says the report. More than 1,000 farmers committed suicide in the
state in 2015.
Although groundwater recharge can improve water security and agricultural productivity in dry and water-scarce regions, its affordability hampers
its progress as a tool for drought mitigation. The question is who will bear
the costs of the recharge structures. Basic structures can be built for R30,000,
but even this is hardly affordable for those who need such structures the
most, says Reddy.
Though there are schemes to build public recharge systems, there are no
subsidies for individual farmers. The government-run Krishi Pragati
Grameen Bank is the only bank in the country which offers loans for building recharge structures. kpgb offers up to R20,000 to farmers depending on
the size of the farms to dig recharge bores and recharge structures. Of around
2,000 farmers who availed this loan 75-80 per cent returned the loan. The
recovery rate in other kinds of loan is 40 per cent, says M Shivashankara
Setty, manager, kpgb, Chitradurga.
SHREESHAN VENKATESH / CSE
CHHAPARIYA'S FODDER BANK
1-15 MAY 2016
Now, it is the turn of Indias most drought-prone state, Rajasthan, where livestock is the second survival crop. In a land where water is perpetually in short
supply for human consumption, water to grow fodder for cattle is a luxury.
But every family in Chhapariya village is assured two tonnes fodder every
year. This is because of a common pasture land which a non-profit developed
to help the villagers cope with five consecutive droughts it faced from 1999
to 2004.
During that period, almost all of the 100-odd families of the tribal village
in Udaipur district were forced to sell their cattle or see them die due to fodder shortage. More than 60 families were indebted to private lenders because
they were not considered credit worthy by government institutions and were
paying as much as 40 per cent interest.
In 2003, Udaipur-based non-profit Sahyog Sansthan, decided to develop the common grazing land. The land was severely degraded by soil erosion,
drought and overuse. The non-profit asked the residents to allow them to develop about 52 ha of the 80 ha village common land. No one was supposed to
let their cattle graze in these 50 ha for six months. The non-profit constructed furrows to arrest the flow of water and retain moisture, built a boundary
wall and posted a guard for security. About 4,000 saplings of bamboo and 30
kg seeds of Cenchrus setigerus (dhaman) were also planted. The greening was
done in two phases. In the first phase, 39 ha in 2003 and remaining 13 ha in
2004. About 28 ha was left open for grazing and movement of animals
throughout the year.
In developing the grazing ground, a total of R47.5 lakh was spent. The district rural development agency of Udaipur, England-based non-profit Wells
for India and village residents contributed 45, 39 and 16 per cent respectively. Villagers contributed mostly in the form of labour, says Hiralal Sharma,
head of Sahyog Sansthan.
Once the land was ready for use, it was divided into 10 parts which were
then used by the 10 hamlets the village consists of. The hamlets further distributes the land. The 10 pieces of land are used in rotation to ensure that no
hamlet is stuck with the same piece of land for consecutive years.
The initiative has seen remarkable results. According to Sahyog Sansthan,
the income of the village from grass grown in the common land has risen from
R37,500 in 2003 to R84,000 in 2008. The wood grown in the land is also used
as fuel. The total wood collected is divided equally among the families. In 2012
and 2013, each family got 650 kg of wood. Apart from developing the graz-
KARNATAKA
Davangere
Chitradurga
LOCATION:
Semi-arid north
Karnataka
DESIGN:
Groundwater
recharge
IMPACT:
700% increase
in income
DURATION:
5 years
RAJASTHAN
Udaipur
LOCATION:
Desert state of
Rajasthan
DESIGN:
Integrate
livestock with
crops and revive
grazing lands
IMPACT:
Income more
than doubled
DURATION:
5 years
25/04/16 2:47 PM
IN-DEPTH
COVERAGE
ing ground, Sahyog Sansthan renovated old wells, constructed irrigation channels, introduced soil and water conservation measures and rain water harvesting to help the village
residents. In 2005, the non-profit completely withdrew from the maintenance of the ground.
Now the village residents are solely responsible for the upkeep.
INFORMED SUCCESS
In the past 13 years, the lives of farmers in seven districts of undivided Andhra Pradesh have
changed in a big way. They are not only able to cope with drought-like conditions but also
grow crops which assure yield and generate higher income.
In 2003, the Food and Agriculture Organization (fao) of the United Nations launched
a groundwater management programme called Andhra Pradesh Farmer Managed
Groundwater Systems in seven most drought-prone districts, two of which now fall in
Telangana.
The training given to farmers in groundwater management by fao and local non-government bodies has enabled them to make feasible and informed decisions about which
crops to grow depending on water availability. Previously, I used to flood the field whenever water was available but the training made me understand when and how much to irrigate, says G Venkata Konda Reddy, a 52-year-old farmer.
Farmers learnt to measure rainfall and groundwater level, based on which they now advance sowing to October, usually done in December, to save costs on irrigation. Before the
training, Reddy was cultivating water-intensive crops, paddy and cotton. Now he has shifted to crops which consume less water, enabling better yield and higher income. Earlier I
A farmer dries millet

in R Krishnapuram
village in
Andhra Pradesh.
Groundwater
management has
allowed many like
him to grow waterefficient crops,
thereby increasing
incomes
25/04/16 1:09 PM
KARNIKA BAHUGUNA / CSE
DROUGHT
was growing seven to eight crops but now I can cultivate up to 14 crops depending on rainfall and water availability.
When Reddy was growing cotton, he earned a maximum of ~10,000 per
acre. Today he earns between ~20,000 and ~40,000 per acre from groundnut cultivation. Depending on water availability, he also grows green gram,
black gram, millet, pulses and vegetables to sustain his income. V Paul Raja
Rao, secretary, Bharathi Integrated Rural Development Society, a non-profit, says, The project has made farmers shift from water-intensive to waterefficient crops besides encouraging diversified cropping.
Under the project, farmers are trained in data collection, soil types, lithology, irrigation systems and water-saving techniques like drip irrigation,
mulching, and furrow-irrigation. Besides training, various structures are set
up like check dams, percolation tanks and injection wells.
A committee of villagers, panchayat members and hydrologists collects
the information about intended cropping patterns and calculates water consumption based on acreage. The resultant groundwater deficit or surplus is
then estimated. Farmers use this information, illustrated on walls of the village, to plan their crops in an exercise called cropwater budgeting. In case of
severe water deficit, they advance sowing and opt for diversified cropping.
The programme has had other effects. By the late 1990s, an increasingly
large number of dug wells fell dry or became seasonal. But today, there is substantial reduction in groundwater usage. According to a 2010 World Bank
survey of eight hydrological units in the project area, six reported a reduction
under high water use crops. The area under high water use crops in
Yerravanka decreased by almost 11 per cent from 2004-05 to 2007-08,
whereas the area under the low-water-use-crops increased by roughly the
same amount.
TELANGANA
ANDHRA
PRADESH
LOCATION:
Suicide-prone
districts of
Andhra and
Telangana
DESIGN: Better
groundwater
management
and crop
diversification
IMPACT: Income
more than
doubled
DURATION:
13 years
THE LESSONS
Modi made his strategy clear to achieve the fixed target through a seven-point charter: focus on irrigation; provide quality seeds and increase soil health; avoid post-harvest losses
by building warehouses and cold chains, add value through food processing; have a single
national market; provide crop insurance coverage; and add ancillary activities like poultry
to farming. But these initiatives are not new. The villages have already adopted what Modi
proposed. The only differences are in the way these villages implemented the change and the
principles behind them. While Modi identified activities to increase the income, the villages have focused on local planning and the involvement of local communities in development.
These villages, which have successfully generated employment and livelihoods from local resources, have followed a common road to prosperity. All the villages have defined their
poverty as lack of access to natural resources. One can call it ecological poverty. Thus, their
primary aim has been to gain access to local resources like traditional tanks and ponds or the
common grazing land. Secondly, community organisations have efficiently partnered with
government and non-government organisations. This common road has two major roadblocks as well. Government agencies, the biggest funders of rural development, working
with a conventional notion of poverty dont see community initiatives as a viable model of
employment generation and poverty eradication. Consequently, government policies are
not tuned to the local scenario, making all the efforts futile.
While many factors helped bring changes in these villagesinvolving voluntary organisations, committed individuals, and government grants and loansthe most important
common factor was the key role played by local institutions like community groups and village panchayats.
The pertinent question is: how to learn a lesson from these villages and scale up initiatives at a national level to increase the income of farmers. Modi has the instrument in the
Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (mgnrega), which recently
26/04/16 5:54 PM
IS N
P -E D
CE
IA
PL
T HC O
CO
VE
VR
EA
RG
AG
E E
HOW TO DROUGHT-PROOF A VILLAGE IN 10 YEARS | Examples show

0-2 YEARS
3-5 YEARS
FOCUS: Revive traditional water
FOCUS: Handhold agricultural
structures and invest in water
revival post water availability
Potential: Every village on an average has
Impacts: In two
Potential: Each MGNREGA structure can
access to 340 ha land that can capture 3.75

billion litres of rainwater, enough for drinking,
domestic and basic irrigation needs
years, enough water

will be captured,
stored and recharged
to ensure water
availability and to
fight erratic monsoon
right crop mix, a farmer

can more than double
Opportunity: MGNREGA allows agricultural the income within three
years. Agriculture is not
activities in private lands of certain groups;
government's new seed distribution and crop dependent on monsoon
performance
insurance will give farmers confidence
Opportunity: MGNREGA has created on an

average 21 water harvesting structures in each
village; nearly half million planned for this year
celebrated its 10th anniversary. The employment programme has all the required elements
to replicate the above examples: it mandates the village council to plan; it has a provision of
five-year plan for villages; it mandates the creation of structures relevant to local farming
and water security; and more so, mgnrega has the required funds to carry out the tasks.
In the last decade, mgnrega has created unprecedented 12.3 million water conservation
structures. So, why water scarcity in drought-hit states? Close to 60 per cent of water structures are in the 10 states reeling from drought. It is a problem not with mgnrega but with the
way it has been implemented.
As in Bundelkhand, hundreds of structures were created but with scant regard for local
MOYNA / CSE
In 2009, MGNREGA
was effective in
mitigating drought
even in the most
chronic droughtprone areas
Impacts: With the
irrigate one hectare of land, ensuring second

crops for small and marginal farmers
34 DOWN TO EARTH
1-15 MAY 2016
25/04/16 5:23 PM
that
DROUGHT
how that drought-proofing is possible even in the most water-scarce areas. Here is a four-stage formula
6-8 YEARS
9-10 YEARS
FOCUS: Revive
FOCUS: Horticulture and
livestock and fisheries
tree plantation
Potential: Can introduce livestock rearing;
Impacts:
Potential: This is when farmers can
Impacts: Insured
Opportunity: Demand for non-vegetarian

food and dairy products is phenomenal; studies
show a herd of 10 goats fetch double the amount
a farmer in Rajasthan earns from agriculture
Supplementary
sources of income
cushion people from
severe economic
consequences of
drought
plunge into cash-farming; horticulture is

now driving the agricultural economy and
is more remunerative than food grains
against monsoon and

surplus money to
invest. Examples here
became droughtproof from the eighth
year onwards
one can earn 85/day from a productive cow,

almost four times the rural poverty line
Opportunity: Government has its

focus on horticulture; a national mission
supports farmers
ecology. So, most of the structures failed to do their primary work: capture rain water. The
programme, if not designed for long-term development, will lead to sheer wastage of public money.
mgnrega can meet one of the toughest challenges of Indias drought management. A
study of Indias drought management approaches over the last several decades shows that
India largely depended on crisis management. This is despite the fact that over a period of
time there have been gradual changes in our approach, at least officially. After the 1966
droughta situation similar to the current onegovernment drought management approach changed from ad-hoc crisis management to an anticipatory drought management.
In the early 1970s, the Drought Prone Areas Programme (dpap) and the Desert Development
Programme (ddp) were implemented to revive the ecology in hot and cold deserts. The
drought in 1987 forced a shift in the focus of the government to long-term measures such as
watershed development approach for drought-proofing the country. Many of the above successful examples have adopted this approach. dpap and ddp were redrafted to make watershed development a unit of the drought-proofing initiative. The drought in 2002 finally
prompted policymakers and development practitioners to account for the fact that drought
was perpetuated by human-induced factors such as neglect of water harvesting capacity.
Since then, rainwater harvestingspecifically, the revival of traditional systemshas been
given priority in drought management. All of these changes have been factored into mgnrega and given a legal stamp for effective implementation.
It is not deficit monsoon that triggers drought but the lack of mechanism to capture
rainwater. Most of the above villages have done precisely that. With just 100mm of rainfall
in a year, that is, around one-tenth of the countrys average rainfall, India can harvest a million litres of water from one hectare of land. Applying the same calculation, rain captured
from 1-2 per cent of Indias land can provide its people as much as 100 litres of water per person per day.
The water structures created under mgnrega21 structures in every village till now
are the best instruments to ensure that Indian villages become drought-proof. These structures harvest water and recharge the groundwater. Going by the types of water structures
created, each of these structures can irrigate one hectare of land. The average cost of irrigation per hectare using these structures come to around 20,000. This is a sharp contrast to
government of Indias estimate of 1.5-2 lakh/ha based on canal irrigation.
mgnrega has been effective in mitigating drought. This was evident in 2009, when poor
and marginal farmers in chronic drought-prone areas were more prepared than the state
government. It is time, we rejuvenated the programme to drought-proof the country.
@down2earthindia
With inputs from Nidhi Jamwal
1-15 MAY 2016
25/04/16 1:09 PM
Jokers in
transition
RICHARD MAHAPATRA
&
S S JEEVAN
nil Agarwal died on January 2, 2002.

He was admitted to a hospital in
Dehradun, where he was taking
ayurvedic treatment having lost confidence in Western medicine. We used
to visit him for clearing stories, sometimes also to
donate blood. We had a premonition of the worst,
even though we were humanly optimisticAnil
would fight his long battle with a rare cancer.
In more ways than one, the week preceding his
death marked the magazines generational transition. It tested the viability of a magazine that he,
along with Sunita Narain, had built word by word.
Whose blood is this? asked Anil, with his usual
straightforward look. Mine, Richard replied. I am
feeling better. How is your cover story going? Anil
was then back to his usual selftearing apart ideas
and deluging us with unthinkable perspectives to
the story.
Anils last responsibility as editor was to sign off
a cover story on how repressive forest laws had fuelled the Naxalite movement. Till then, the Naxalite
movement was all about land distribution. His idea
37 DOWN TO EARTH
37-36Richi-Jeevan.indd 36
of forest laws contributing to the movement seemed

farfetched. We travelled across the central and east
India meeting tribal communities, Naxalite leaders
and foresters. Known for their characteristic of
quantifying every argument, Anil and Sunita insisted: Calculate the forest cover in Naxalite-affected
districts and speak to foresters/police officials on
how much forest area is under Naxal control.
Intense research proved right19 per cent of
Indias forests were under the control of Naxalites.
Finally, a seemingly impossible story was taking
shape, with all the characters, data and analysis in
perfect sync.
The issue hit the stands to a huge applause, but
Anil was not around. For outsiders, the forecast of a
meltdown of the 10-year-old magazine without Anil
and his vision was but natural. But from inside our
office, unknowingly or unconsciously, there was no
such fear. On the day of his cremation, we talked
about the next issue and the cover story. The loss was
unbearable, but the legacy and teachings of Anil
were overpowering and overwhelming. We didnt
mechanically change the credit line: Anil Agarwal,
1-15 MAY 2016
27/04/16 11:48 AM
Editor to Founder Editor. It was a

wasnt satisfied with just cold
Anil: there are
change that Anil had all along pre- several and regular
numbers. Rather, he went in seapared us to face. And he groomed
rch of a larger story, telling them
illusory sightings
each one of us, and everywhere. He
through graphs, diagrams and
of you in the office.
tables. We have kept his spirit
would sometimes brief us on a fasWherever you are,
aliveinfographics and factcinating cover story from inside
rest in peace.
sheets are now part of every stothe urinal. Sometimes, in anger, he
ry. And we will be narrating the
would call us jokers. He would not
The jokers are
tolerate even the slightest lack of
state of Indias environment only
just as restless as
seriousness while pursuing stories.
through data in the next State of
you used to be
Indias Environment. The magAnd he debunked the clinical way
of doing stories.
azine has survived and sustained
Data was sacred for him. Often, we would end itself even 14 years after Anils death. There is little
up picking up a fight with top government officials change in the way we used to work with him, and
over statistics at odd hours. For instance, in one now. Even today when we are doing a difficult stostory we had mentioned about a particular grass ry, we always refer to his writings, and we can say
that grows up to the height of a camels eye. But that his genes are finely embedded in the magazine.
what is that height? Get the exact measurement,
Anil: there are several and regular illusory
was his taut response. We woke up the director of sightings of you in the office. Wherever you are, rest
the National Research Centre on Camel in Bikaner in peace. The jokers are just as restless as you used
in the middle of the night. Finally, we got the mea- to be.
surement, but not without the director saying
(Mahapatra is Managing Editor
bluntly: Never again the dte people. But Anil
and Jeevan is Associate Editor)
1-15 MAY 2016
37-36Richi-Jeevan.indd 37
27/04/16 11:48 AM
Breaking
stereotypes
KAUSHIK DASGUPTA
ne balmy February afthrough the lens of an anthropoloternoon 13 years ago,

gist. It was exhilarating to combine
I sat on the fifth-floor
theory and journalistic insight.
terrace at the Centre
Those were stirring times. I jofor Science Environined the magazine a few months
ment (cse) office sipping coffee
after it had reported cses pathbrewith Down To Earths (dte) managaking study on pesticides in bottled water. The study had shaken
ing editor, Pradip Saha, and chief
up the establishment and ruffled
copy editor, Pratap Pandey. It appeared an informal chat, but was
many feathers. A few months later
not. I was being interviewed for a
the magazine reported another grposition on the magazines desk. I Worked from 2003 to
oundbreaking endeavour: cses stwas trained in social sciences, but 2015. He now works
udy on pesticides in soft drinks.Its
the apathy towards social sciences with the Economic &
publication was presaged by the
rankles, I told them. The disgrun- Political Weekly
redoubtable Pandey telling me one
tled social sciences editor at a wellevening, Shhhhour next edition
known publishing firm in Delhi was
is going to show that rum is safer
than cola.
soon put at ease. We lay great emphasis on social sciences, Saha and Pandey replied
In days to come, I would often joke with Pratap
almost in unison.
about his comment on the relative merits of rum
Their words rang true throughout my 12-year and cola. But the similes should stop here. Spirited
stint at the magazine. dte sees itself as a science and would be way inadequate to describe the manner
environment magazine, but it lays much store by in which the team immersed itself in the investigaprobing issues through the lens of a social scientist. tion, cross-checking facts, figures, every detail and
Almost immediately after joining, this environ- then describing them in lucid text and easily intelmental neophyte was asked to edit a story on tribal ligible graphics. I was struck by the meticulousness
leaders. But editing wasnt simply a matter of cor- with data and the effort to understand the science
recting wrong usage, structuring a narrative or behind it. I had often heard of inter-disciplinary
bringing text to a required word count. The story approaches. I could see the execution of such an
tested my acumen as a social scientist. Here was a approach in the magazines workings, where data
chance to understand a critical contemporary issue and reportage were put under the scrutiny of sci-
39 DOWN TO EARTH
39-38Kaushik Dasgupta.indd 38
1-15 MAY 2016
27/04/16 11:49 AM
ence and the social science insights.

I saw the tendency getting sharper in days to
come. This was no mechanical application of
theories on raw data. Evidence was scrutinised,
certitudes questioned, and there was a conscious attempt to draw reporters and writers
away from their comfort zones. That wasnt an
easy task for several reasons. The chief amongst
them was because environment was somewhat of
an adolescent in academia. Scholars writing on the
environment had to grapple with the shibboleths
of traditional scholarship and also take care not to
be too predictable themselves. A reporter or commissioning editor seeking out new scholars had
his/her task cut out.
What helped was the camaraderie amongst
colleagues. An informal discussion over lunch could turn into a debate on the most pressing issue. It
also helped that many of those who worked in dte
were amongst the most erudite and, significantly,
not bogged down by ideology. Reporters travelled
all over the country relating a diversity of concerns
and issues. They could access scholars doing interesting work in what is rather condescendingly
called small universities or institutions, many
times outside the academia as well.
All this, though, took time fructifying, and is
indeed a process that goes on. Many an editorial
meeting would be punctuated by the editoror senior editorsberating us for our hackneyed approach. At the same time, there were also words of
encouragement and praise, typifying the crucible
of ferment that dte wasstill is. Food, history, anthropology and travel, usually not the stuff of
an archetypal environmental publication, found
pride of place in the magazine.
This inclination to draw staff out of their comfort zones has helped in several ways. dte today is
known for questioning dogmaseven that of its
peers in the environmental movement. It ruffles
feathers, even of sympathisers. But at the same
time, it now counts young people amongst its avid
and discerning readers.
Its approach has paid off in other ways too.
The magazine today has a books unit, which counts some bestsellers amongst its products. I count
myself lucky that in my 12-year tenure with the
magazine, I played a small part in expanding
its horizons.
1-15 MAY 2016
39-38Kaushik Dasgupta.indd 39
Evidence was
scrutinised, certitudes
questioned.DTE is
today known for
questioning dogmas,
even that of its peers
in the environmental
movement
27/04/16 11:49 AM
Lifes
prescriptions
VIBHA VARSHNEY
hen I joined
tell people how everything was spiDown To Earth
raling towards a total collapse.
I did not then blame the envi( dte) in 2000, I
ronment for most of our health
was not sure of
problems. One of the first stories I
what I was lookwrote changed me. The story was
ing for in a job. Initially, dte did not
about a study in Sweden where reseem to be right place. It was unlike
anything I had done before. There
searchers used a large group of twiwas always chaos in the newsns to figure out whether cancer was
roompeople screaming, blaring
in our genes or in the environment
music and cricket matches in the
in which we live. Their answer was
middle of the night. This was not Is now Associate
that the environment was the culwhat I expected from a place that Editor. Has been
prit. I have found many more linkproduced such a serious piece of writing on health
ages between environment and sicwork. Every fortnight, when a new and science issues
kness since then.
issue came out, I could only shake since 2000
It has been a long journey,
my head in wonder.
made a little bitter by the realisaI was assigned the health beat,
tion that things are progressively
and very early on I figured this was the perfect job getting worse. We are still helpless even when we
for a conspiracy theorist like me. Here I was, being have to tackle the simplest of diseases. Nothing expaid to find faults and ulterior motives into whatev- emplifies this more than a disease called Japanese
er people did, be it government, the private sector encephalitis (JE), which I first heard in 2005. That
and even common people. I was more than ready to year, there was a massive outbreak in the eastern
41 DOWN TO EARTH
41-40Vibha Varshney.indd 40
1-15 MAY 2016
27/04/16 11:49 AM
Reporting on health is deprpart of Uttar Pradesh, that killed

Everywhere I went
countless children. In Gorakhessing when you see people sufferto report people
pur, I saw children die while docing without hope, year after year.
came
forward to
The futility hit me on a reporting
tors stood around helpless. The
help hoping that
state should have been prepared
assignment to East Champaran in
my research would
betterthe disease has been striBihar in 2007, where I went twice
king the area for more than 27
to report on kala-azar. There was
help them find
years. The disease continues to
a gap of around a month between
answers
kill and has now spread to nearthe two trips. But time seemed to
have stopped for a middle-aged
by states. And the only progress
we have made is that now we are even more unsure man who I found at the same spot both times, dyabout the cause of the disease. JE virus is not the ing slowly due to lack of medicines.
What pushes reporters to continue writing on
only culprit now, a polio-like virus, pesticides and
natural toxins in litchi fruits too have been blamed. health are those people who have not given up lookThe disease is now being called Acute Encephalitis ing for answers. Everywhere I went to report people
Syndrome due to lack of clarity. Public healthcare is came forward to help hoping that my research
so pathetic in the area that the poor who contract would help them find answers. In Balloh village in
the disease usually die. The rich who get treated in Punjab, a group of young men told me about the
private hospitals are more likely to get better, but at huge number of cancer cases in their village. They
a high cost. This is not a lone case of uncertainity. We did not know dte, but were willing to help anyone
still do not know what was the Siliguri fever or the who could find the answer.
I believe that working for dte has mellowed
Saharanpur fever either. I find it unacceptable that
we still cannot pinpoint what is killing people.
down my outlook towards the world. It has grounded me into the reality of life. I learnt from real people I met across India.
1-15 MAY 2016
41-40Vibha Varshney.indd 41
27/04/16 11:49 AM
The dam that

could not
be built
SOPAN JOSHI
carved out of Bihar. The peoome interviews you

ple of Torpa had high hopes
remember. Some
interviews change
when Babulal Marandi, a tryou. Soma Munda
ibal, became the chief mincomes to mind.
ister. The following year, on
It was 2003. Paulus GuFebruary 2, the police opedia, who had been the authorned fire on about 5,000 peitative voice of his people, had
ople gathered in the nearby
already died. Munda had asTapkara village. Eight peosumed the leadership of the
ple died.
popular movement against
I was visiting some placthe Koel-Karo dam project in Worked from 1997
es in Jharkhand two years afto 2001 and from
Torpa, Ranchi district.
ter the firing. In Ranchi, I had
First proposed in the 2002 to 2010. He
interviewed Marandi, a form1950s and seriously pursued is now a freelance
er chief minister now. He was
nonchalant: There is nothing
since 1974, the Koel-Karo pr- journalist and a
new about police firings against
oject had immediately draresearch fellow at
tribals. They will keep happenwn the ire of the people here,
the Gandhi Peace
ing. On March 2, 1946, five peomostly Munda, a scheduled
tribe. The government had tr- Foundation, New Delhi ple had died around the same spot
ied repeatedly to press ahead,
in Tapkara after police fired on a
gathering of hundreds of protestbut failed in the face of protests, which had become a part of the overall Jhar- ers demanding the creation of Jharkhand
khand movement.
state. Jharkhand was here, as was the colonial
In 2000, the state of Jharkhand was finally legacy of repression and violence.
43 DOWN TO EARTH
43-42Sopan Joshi.indd 42
1-15 MAY 2016
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It had taken me some effort to locate Somas

house in Lohajimi village. On the way, I had visited
the shrine erected at Tapkara in the memory of the
martyrs. Soma was a soldier retired from the
army. I knocked his door, he emerged, I introduced myself, he put out a cot in the
courtyard, and we sat down to talk.
I began by asking him about
the Tapkara firings. He said he
felt betrayed by Marandi; the
government had no interest in people, they were only interested
in taking away their land. He
said all political parties talk
of such issues when they
are in the opposition, but once in

power, they do exactly what previous governments had done.
Why not try the rehabilitation package the government
was offering? In 1987, he said,
the administration was asked to
rehabilitate two villages to demonstrate its offer. It could not. He
smiled and said the villagers had
made the conditions very difficult for the government to carry
out the programme. Given the
tribal history of fighting for their land, they didnt
trust the government at all.
I remember Somas tone of voice. He spoke
very softly, his face free of any expression. I had
to lean forward and turn my ear towards him to
grasp the words. He sat over folded legs, almost
crouched, a picture of ordinariness, the exact
opposite of Babulal Marandi.
What if the land surveyors came back? He
said they wont let them set foot on their land.
But they will come with the police, I retorted. We are Munda, he said, a few of us will
die again, as had happened in Tapkara,
but we wont let them survey our
land. The dam will not get built,
he said, repeatedly. His tone
was unwavering. There was
no anger, no rhetoric, no flo-
Sopan's cover
story on the
failure of tribal
leadership in
the country
His tone was

unwavering. There
was no anger, no
rhetoric, no flourish,
no argument. I knew
what he meant,
because a chill
crawled down my spine
urish, no argument. I knew he meant
it, because a chill crawled down my spine. My remaining questions were a
mere formality.
Each time I hear slogans or loud
demands of activists, I think of Soma
Munda. Of his quiet resolve, his rectitude, his confidence in his own
leadership, of knowing that when
he will call, his people will answer.
With their lives, if needed.
PS: The Koel-Karo dam
remains unbuilt.
1-15 MAY 2016
43-42Sopan Joshi.indd 43
27/04/16 11:49 AM
Re-searching
journalism
PRADIP SAHA
ometime in March 1992,

splattered around. My eyes went
I went to meet Anil Agadown and I discovered that the
rwal. He was about to latable was actually half of a table
unch a news fortnightly
tennis board! Pretty soon, I was to
on science and environdiscover that in the great ping
ment called Down To Earth (dte).
pong of the global North-South
debate, Anil retained half of the
But the content of this new fortnightly started taking shape 10 yeboard to himself: the global South
ars before, with the publication of
was his domain. I was lucky enough to get a glimpse of the fight
The First Citizens Report in 1982.
from the first row.
Back in Kolkata, a dear friends faWas managing editor
I was in. When I told a friend
ther had a copy and insisted that we
of the magazine.
that I was going to work with dte,
read it. The book moved some of us
a lot. We were brought up in Kolkata He currently heads
a new magazine to be published by
with definitive and traditional Left the Damage Control
a non-profit, he laughed and declared that he would give it sixleanings. This book provided us the Consultancy Private
first glimpse of poverty in the glob- Limited
seven issues, at the most 10 issues.
al South, and its relationship with
Well, the 600th issue of dte is on
ecological degradation.
the anvil, without dropping a sinAnil was a hero, and meeting
gle issue till now.
him in person for an interview was exciting. I waitdte came into being in 1992. It was the most ined for quite some time. But when I went inside the teresting time in the world history of modern politroom, I realised that I was just a small particle (we ical economy. Closer home, prime minister Naradid not know about PM2.5 those days!) in Anils simha Rao liberated the Indian economy of its
scheme of things. He was busy fixing deeper prob- embarrassing inhibitions about free market. Malems of the world. In between phone calls, he asked nmohan Singh, as finance minister, wrote the scrme how many plants and trees I could identify. I ipt, and probably believed that an honest approach
knew nothing. I was an urban idiot, and I told him to capitalism would bring India out of its low forso. I thought that was the end. But he assured me eign reserve. He did succeed, but with a malaise that
that if I were a keen observer, I could pick up this was sure to comea cruel and mindless assault on
knowledge pretty fast. I thought he was a cool guy Indias ecology. Moreover, 25 years down the line,
and freak enough to be my employer.
opposing this assault would be equated with comAnil sat behind an unusually large table, with promising the security of the country! But dte
lots of books, papers, files and other assorted stuff was not about India only.
45 DOWN TO EARTH
45-44Pradip Saha.indd 44
1-15 MAY 2016
27/04/16 11:49 AM
The early 1990s saw the application of

But the greatest contribution of dte has
the Washington Consensusit was about been on research journalism. We analysed
free flow of natural resources, labour and multiple research on a subject and sent topmoney. The sole objective was to grab the class reporters to the field to give face and
last remaining rich biodiversity of the glob- emotion to cold numbers. Every story had to
al South. So, what happened in India had a make a point. On the other hand, it was
long chain connected to the boardrooms of deeply satisfying to refashion some of the
multilateral banks, global corporate head- cses substantive original research for dte
quarters and various backrooms in Wash- to break down research and give the essence
ington DC, London, Paris, Bonn, Brussels for readers.
and so on. Global political economy was to
Students of journalism should go back
be integrated, at any cost.
to dtes cover stories on air pollution, rainThe inaugural issue of dte was dated water harvesting and first green rating reMay 31, 1992. Three days later, from June 3, port to understand how research messages
1992, the first attempt to globalise the worlds were positioned in the public domain to genenvironment, the United Nations Confe- erate big discussions, debates and some of
rence on Environment and Development, the big ticket policy changes.
popularly known as Rio Conference started
I feel fortunate to be part of a gang of so
in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The new fortnight- many great researchers, reporters, writers,
ly from India was distributdesigners, illustrators, phed among the high and
otographers, infographers
mighty in Rio, with a prethat made dte a phenomAnil retained half
dictive cover story titled
enon in journalism. And
of the table tennis
no one was unimportant,
The Green Farce. dte was
board to himself:
all about effective journalas the focus was on quality
ism, a step towards deep- the global South was
journalism. The great thening democracy. We plaing was that I earned even
his domain
yed with forms too. I urge
as I got educated every
readers to view a round tamoment. But looking at
ble discussion we did in 1992 on economic the appalling environmental scenario around
liberalisation and its effect on the environ- us today, a nagging question crops up: did we
ment. The quality of the narrative will put fail in our objective? Or, did we slow down the
any TV discussion to shame.
rate of decay?
1-15 MAY 2016
45-44Pradip Saha.indd 45
27/04/16 11:49 AM
Scientific
fracking
RAKESH KALSHIAN
hone my skills as a science journalfter graduating in

physics in 1989, I
ist. I was fortunate that Anil, being a
too, like many of my
trained engineer from iit, was equpeers, was contemally fascinated by science even thouplating going off to
gh he had his own critique of it. I wrthe US to pursue higher studies.
ote on a wide spectrum of scientific
curiosities such as back holes, huBut before I plunged deep into the
man origins, Fermats theorem and
esoteric world of quarks and quaalternative medicine.
sars, I felt like taking a detour into
unfamiliar worlds. So I took a year
However, even as I enjoyed traoff exploring the hinterland, translating technical jargon into poetnslating popular science books in- Was the first science
ic metaphors for the benefit of the
lay reader, I gradually began to feel
to Hindi, and teaching physics in correspondent. He
a little awkward about the fact that
an alternative school.
is now a freelance
I was merely translating, with as
By the time my long digression journalist
much elegance, clarity and fidelity
was over, I was in two minds about
as I could muster, the arcane ideas
going back to school. I was toying
with other possibilities, one of them being a science of a species called the scientist. I soon reckoned,
writer, inspired as I was by the writings of Stephen thanks to freewheeling conversations about the
J Gould and Peter Medawar. This was also the time nature of science with my colleagues, especially my
when literary agent John Brockman was turning good friend, Pratap Pandey, who introduced me to
science writing into a fashionable thing. And as luck the fascinating literature on the anthropology and
would have it, a couple of months after I returned sociology of science that I needed to revise my unfrom my wanderings, I was offered the job of science derstanding of science. Incidentally, this was also
correspondent in a new magazine called Down To the time when environmental issues, especially deEarth. Defying all logic, not to mention the counsel bates on climate change, were beginning to stir the
of my well-wishers, I waded into the uncharted wa- imagination of the popular media. And since science and scientists were key actors in this drama,
ters of journalism.
dte was fun, and I was given enough room to I began thinking and writing about science thro-
47 DOWN TO EARTH
47-46Rakesh Kalshian.indd 46
1-15 MAY 2016
27/04/16 11:50 AM
ugh the illuminating lens of the environment.

This, I think, was dtes first gift to me.
Anil was also a keen amateur ethnographer,
and, time and money permitting, he encouraged
his reporters to report from the field. His own writings on the Chipko movement, the seminal State of
the Environment reports,
and the first-rate reportage in dtes
long career, are testaments to his commitment to field reporting. Even though I travelled much
less than the news reporters, I
think got my fair share of it. At
times, I would be gone for over a
month. Once I spent about five
days in an ashram in Dehradun trying to make sense of an Ayurvedic alchemists claim that a felicitous mix of
toxic metals such as mercury and arsenic can cure incurable diseases like
multiple sclerosis and cancer. Between my own journeys, and those
of my colleagues, I was able to
weave a rich and multi-layered
tapestry of the vast and diverse geography of the Indian
subcontinent. For instance,
reading stories on the politics
of sharing river waters offered a
perspective on abstract ideas such as democracy, nation-state,
nature, laws, and borders like
no other.
This was dtes second
gift to me.
When I joined dte,
I was guilty of a nave
view of science, thanks in great measure
to the way I was taught. Seldom, if ever,
did I interrogate
the relation of scientific knowledge to truth and, ultimately, to
1-15 MAY 2016
47-46Rakesh Kalshian.indd 47
power. It was at dte that I learned to always keep

this triangle in mind while covering any aspect of
society, not just its relation to science. cses influential document Global Warming in an Unequal
World, regardless of whether one agrees with it or
not, further underscored the necessarily complex
nature of reality.
DTE was unhampered by

the tyranny of the profit
motive and could practice
journalism more freely than
the corporate media
This I believe was dtes third gift to me.
This is not to say I had no problems with dtes
editorial view on various subjects. Nor am I suggesting that the working atmosphere was ideal. Like any
other work place, dte had its imperfections. That
said, dte attracted many talented journalists, many
of whom are now famous figures. Besides, dte, unhampered as it was by the tyranny of the profit motive, could afford to practise public journalism more
freely than the corporate media.
All things considered, I have far more happy
memories than bad. I may not have become a famous journalist or an acclaimed science writer, but,
as the saying goes, the journey is its own reward.
And dte, no doubt, had an important role in it.
27/04/16 11:50 AM
In ink
and line
Was Down
To Earths first
cartoonist. He is
now academic
dean at the
Srishti Institute
of Art, Design
& Technology,
Bengaluru
RUSTAM VANIA
49 DOWN TO EARTH
49-48Rustam Vania.indd 48
1-15 MAY 2016
27/04/16 11:50 AM
1-15 MAY 2016
49-48Rustam Vania.indd 49
27/04/16 11:50 AM
Ground
Zero
MAX MARTIN
to escape giant logs rolling downong ago, beyond the

mist of time, I was a
hill, splashing into a canal that took
reporter with Down
them to some remote village for
To Earth. I count thprocessing. The deforestation was
ose years as the most
going on at a feverish pitch with
enjoyable period of my career as a
clockwork precision. Still the logjournalist. It taught me how to
gers were friendlythey beamed
and posed for pictures with their
work in the field, library and labs
axes. You should have come last
places where I spend most of my
time now as a geographer.
week, one of them said. We wiped
Talking about field, some of us
out that walnut forest up there.
We all have our stories behind
spent a good part of the month trav- Was reporter from
the stories. My colleague, Rajat
elling. At the height of summer, I 1993 and led the
have chased a story on desert fruits news team from 1996
Banerjee, came back after covering
in the Thar desert. In pouring rain, to 1999. He currently
the pollution of the Yamuna with
I have travelled from Goa to Thiru- teaches international
bottles full of pesticide-laced wavananthapuram, talking to artisa- development at the
ter. We splashed it on the cover:
Poison in your drinking water!
nal fisherfolk on my way. I have been
University of Sussex,
to the heart of jungles in UttaraAniruddha Bahal of Cobrapost fathe UK
khand, Jharkhand, Odisha, Mame came back from Wapi in Gujadhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh,
rat with samples of hazardous
learning how people deal with wild fires, dam pro- waste and tales of stray dogs bathing in industrial
jects, water scarcity, and the laws that denied them effluent shimmering green. Richard Mahapatra,
access to resources. I have trekked the Western the present managing editor, returned from westGhats, and lived in a bamboo hut at Ziro, a hill sta- ern Odisha to tell us about mining companies flattion in Arunachal Pradesh, writing a cover story on tening hillocks, and draining rivulets when droubamboo. Our extensive field reporting made even ghts made food scarce. Anumita Roychowdhury
diligently recorded how car tailpipes and factory
mainstream media editors envious!
An unforgettable experience was reporting a smokestacks spewed pollutants to make Delhis
story on deforestation in Kashmir at the height of air unbreathable.
Down To Earth placed several such environinsurgency. After a weeks ground work in Srinagar,
I gained access to a remote hill where people were mental and health issues of the time on the public
felling trees. We had to negotiate our way carefully agendadrug-resistant epidemics, farmers sui-
51 DOWN TO EARTH
51-50Max Martin.indd 50
1-15 MAY 2016
27/04/16 11:50 AM
cides, human-animal conflicts, pollution from brick walked that extra mile to see how research, policies
and the dynamics of climate and environment had
kilns, tanneries, and dye-making units and so on.
These stories packed a lot of punch as they were an impact on people. We talked with fishers using
based on rigorous research. We spent days in the li- new craft and gear, farmers harvesting rain and adbrary, tracing what has been written on the topic. ivasis playing hide and seek with wild beasts.
Thus, we could break down some of their shibThen while on assignment, we collected loads of scientific material that sometimes needed an extra boleths of scientists and bureaucrats. For instance,
jhola to carry. Then came the process of digesting all if you see how embankments along the Kosi make
this stuff, and turning out an intelligible copy. Our the river flow at a higher elevation compared with
copy editors, among the best in town, weaved en- the villages around, you will question the concrete
gaging stories out of our rambling narratives, pac- solutions offered by the Ministry of Water Resourked with hard facts. Our photography team always ces engineers. Seeing pesticides, skewed markets,
had some evocative images and the design was al- and an ever-dipping water table driving farmers to
ways a hit, with some on-target cartoons and inno- penury, you will question the agriculture scientists
green revolution story.
vative typography and colour. Our
Last, but not the least, Down
journalism involved a full package
It was Down To
To Earth brought out the best
with style and substance.
Earth's emphasis
qualities of the argumentative
We were learning while chason people's
Indian in all of us. It was often
ing these stories. We often landed
voices that gave
hard to sell a story to our editor,
in some of the best labs in the
reporting an
countryCentral Arid Zone ReAnil Agarwal. One had to be super
added edge
search Institute in Jodhpur, Natsharp to match his wits. Then caional Chemical Laboratory and
me the logisticswe sometimes
Centre for Development of Advanced Computing had to play hard ball with Sunita Narain, the second
in Bengaluru, National Institute of Oceanography in command. I have had many rounds of arguin Goa, National Aerospace Laboratories and the ments with both of them over a story I always
Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru and so on. wanted to doon climate, environment and miThis exposure gave us a wide perspective on the sci- gration. I guess Anil had a point when he spiked
my story pitch, challenging me to come up with a
entific research.
Back in town after those long trips, many of us better explanation for why poor people migrate.
spent hours at Shastri Bhavan and Vigyan Bhavan Years later, my doctoral research showed that most
chasing bureaucrats, with occasional visits to the of the time people migrate for money, not because
nearby Press Club of India, our watering hole. Some of climate or environment!
In short, a stint at this wonderful publication
of them had a lot of things to talk about. They told
us about the policy relevance of the scientists tales. with a unique field-library-lab approach made our
It is Down To Earths emphasis on peoples voic- reporting style down to earth with a 360 degree
es that gave our reporting an added edge. We always view. Many thanks.
1-15 MAY 2016
51-50Max Martin.indd 51
27/04/16 11:50 AM
Learning
pit for
environmental
narratives
ANIRUDDHA BAHAL
y journey with
my boss there, who is now head
Down To Earth
of the Star empire in India. Uday
started in a grubhimself travelled a lot in his years
by old building in
there, covering stories from the
Kailash Colony. A
wetlands of northern India to envistructure spread over several floors,
ronmental summits abroad. There
each one competing with the othwas Anupam Goswami, whose
er over seepage in the rooms. The
wit and grasp of stories was unplace was ideal for an I Spy chamsurpassed. And Ravi Sharma,
pionship of an international level
who wrote up obtuse environwith founder Anil Agarwals voice
mental projects and got magiWorked in the
acting as the default gps.
cal funding for the organisation.
And what a man Anil was. In reporting section of
Then there was Akhila Seshathe years that I knew him perhaps the magazine. He is
sayee in design doing her wonderful layouts and Pradip Saha
his energy levels were not the same the founder and
compared to when he was driving editor of Cobrapost.
shooting his way through them.
his reports on the State of Indias
There was Rustam Vania
com, a non-profit
Environment, but even then he
doing his illustrations and
investigative website
could put a young reporters buKajal Basu fixing copy in a
reau to shame.
manner that only he could
The magazine in the early and
and can.
mid 1990s was a special place. It had accumulated
Of course, then there was me and a
great talent under its roof. There was Uday Shankar, whole bunch of others who specialised
53 DOWN TO EARTH
53-52Anirudh Bahl.indd 52
1-15 MAY 2016
27/04/16 11:50 AM
in ping pong in the basement of the new office in

Tughlakabad. We didnt know much of anything.
But we travelled like nobodys business and cut our
teeth in environmental stories.
We had decent budgets and Uday would
send me on stories where I had both a travelling budget and time at my disposal.
So one week I could be covering toxic
waste disposal in the industrial cities
of Surat and Vadodara and sometime
later, I could be bussing around in
Himachal nosing about in horticultural institutes.
In Delhi, I found myself chasing
a toxic waste disposal truck one day
and brought the sludge to the office
so we could test it in a laboratory.
Our section smelled of sludge for
a whole week till we disposed it of.
There are very few environmental reporters in India who havent passed
through the magazine at one time or the other. It was a learning pit for us all who sought to
create relevant narratives to the economic growth
story happening in India. The buzz word then was
sustainability. Those were still times when we felt
There are very few

environmental reporters in
India who haven't passed
through the magazine at one
time or the other. For many of
us now, the woes of the planet
are many and it seems like a
journey where the bus is long
past the tipping point and the
cliff just a few bends away
that we could change the world.
For many of us now, the woes of the planet
are many and it seems like a
journey where the bus is long
past the tipping point and the
cliff just a few bends away.
The magazine under Sunita
Narain can perhaps still show
us the way and save us from
our accumulated cynicism.
1-15 MAY 2016
53-52Anirudh Bahl.indd 53
27/04/16 11:50 AM
Reinventing
the inverted
pyramid
ANUMITA ROYCHOWDHURY
of editors tutored us on story line,

had just returned after nearly
story angle, and casting stories in a
three months of intense trek
frame clichd as the inverted pyrathrough the tribal landscape
of remote and thick forests of
mid. We learnt how to think visualArunachal Pradesh. Armed
ly while writing to pack a punch in
with the minutest detail of its ecothe message. As the assembly line
system and insights into its comof writing, editing, and designing
munity-managed forests and warolled, madness and excitement
ter, I was ready to write a thesis.
set in. News meetings raised heat
Just then the big idea of Down To
and dust over what makes a story. Will I ever forget the most tryEarth happened. For the uniniti- Began as a reporter
ing moments of finding convincated, it was fascinating to watch a
for the magazine, and
ing news pegs every morning at 10
potential thesis taking shape as an
made a transition as
to get space in the pages of Down
attractive feature story in the debut issue of Down To Earth, May 1, a campaigner for the
To Earth?
Life had changed in many wa1992. Tell the story about what you Right to Clean Air
ys. Few issues later, I and Anjani
have seen and understood, and say
Khanna, our science reporter, acit in a language with drama that will
appeal to all, said Anil Agarwal who had incubated companied Anil and Sunita Narain to Rio de Janethe big idea. While this became my personal story iro for the Earth Summit. We had a handle to inof transmutation into a journalist that I had never fluence and inform the climate negotiations. But
planned to be, this was also a rare instance where a it was also planned that an entire issue of Down To
popular magazine was launched mainstreaming a Earth would be devoted to the Summit. After a fortstory from the fringe.
night of intense climate politics, as I slipped into a
Down to Earth changed our lives as we clocked fatigued coma on reaching Delhi, the phone explodourselves from the infinite timeline of research to ed within couple of hours with the shrill summon
tight time frame of a story deadline. For some of us from Anil that we must write and close the issue
who were making forays into popular writing for within a day. I woke up to the reality of a fortnightly
the first time, it was a new world and lingo. Bevy lifestyle, but also the excitement of writing what no
55 DOWN TO EARTH
55-54Anumita.indd 54
1-15 MAY 2016
27/04/16 11:51 AM
one else was capturing in the Indian media on the

first-ever climate summit.
The new prism, through which stories on development politics around environment had to be
written, helped us to go beyond the obvious. When
drought hit Rajasthan in 1992 and stories of economic misery splashed across the media, I was investigating in the darkness of night near Udaipur
finding out how villagers in distress were stealing
wood from the forests to survive. No one had got
that yethow drought also speeds up deforestation as communities, barred from legitimate access
to their own forests, have to plunder to get surviv- goons as soon as I opened the shutters of my camal food and alternative livelihood that sets off a vis- era to click the children huddled in rooms weavcous spiral.
ing carpets. I faced a similar situtation when I tried
The story was always not what was most appar- reaching limestone mines that had devastated the
ent. This was clear when I was set off to investigate ecology near Renuka Lake in Himachal Pradesh.
sandalwood smuggling epitomised by the dread- Or imagine facing an irate crowd near Ashok Vihar
ed smuggler Veerappan that otherwise was a rou- in Delhi, where informal settlements were fighttine crime story in the media. But this crime story ing with middle class neighbourhoods over open
exposed how illegal activity was an expression of defecation and basic rights. Or that daring stunt
peoples hostility towards a tree that the State had perched behind Rustam Vanias wobbly two-wheelmade a state property. This was leading to clanden- er on the hills of Uttarkashi still shaking from the
stine destruction. If this tree could be sustainably aftershocks of the earthquake of 1991 to investigrown and harvested by the community, it could gate why buildings kill, earthquakes dont. Down
have wiped out poverty in the sandalwood belt. This To Earth did change the established news values
investigation sent ripples that led to some loosen- with an attitude.
ing of the States stranglehold on sandalwood proAfter several years of reporting, Down To Earth
tection and trade.
catalysed yet another metamorphosis. It was one
But I will never forget the goose bumps I got summer afternoon in 1995 when Anil called us to
traversing the remote villages of Nullur, Vachati his office, very angry after standing in a long queue
and others in the forests, trackto get a pollution under control
ing sandalwood smugglers to
certificate for his car. He blasted
hear their story. How scary it was
this
as tailpipery and imbecilic
The story was
to travel through the M M Hills to
and asked, Is only vehicle mainalways not
tenance at the heart of the probVeerappans village and his desertwhat
was most
lem of air pollution? He asked us
ed house. Rumour was rife that
apparent
to do a cover story on why vehicles
Veerappan would strike again as
in India pollute so much.
that day was the anniversary of his
That set us off on an incredible journey to kndeadly ambush the previous year. It was eerie to talk
to the villagers, the partners in his crime, who al- ow the nuts and bolts of polluting two-stroke engines, diesel emissions, and dirty fuels. This story
ready knew I was around.
Down To Earth was always about making con- unearthed the politics of inaction of the industry
nection that others had not made. When the com- and the government. Down To Earth did an expomunal riots broke out in early 1990s, we trooped s on Smog Inc based on this investigation and
out to riot-hit areas. I had to report from ground put the transport and environment ministers, and
zero to convey why some neighbourhoods remained the largest producer of two-stroke two-wheelers,
safe, while others were burnt. I got amazing re- Rahul Bajaj, on cover page, saying, Nailed for slow
sponses from distraught people who explained this murder. But the larger spin off of this investigaas a form of community fencing built over time. tion was the book Slow Murder: The Deadly Story
Only Down To Earth would value and report this of Vehicular Pollution in India that catalysed the
critical connection that can prevent riots.
Right To Clean Air campaign in cse. Down To Earth
Environmental reporting is also adventurous. remained the most powerful platform to push the
While reporting on child labour in the carpet mak- message out all through our fight for clean air. This
ing belt of Bhadoi and Mirzapur, I was gheraoed by was the time I was reborn as a campaigner.
1-15 MAY 2016
55-54Anumita.indd 55
(Left) Anumita's
first story
on forest
degradation
in Arunachal
Pradesh, and,
(right) the cover
jacket of Slow
Murder, which
she co-authored
27/04/16 11:51 AM
As things were,
and are
AJIT NINAN
Worked as a cartoonist
for the magazine.
He is now Group Art
Consultant with The
Times of India
1-15 MAY 2016
58-56Ajit Ninan.indd 29
27/04/16 11:51 AM
57 DOWN TO EARTH
1-15 MAY 2016
27/04/16 11:51 AM
1-15 MAY 2016
27/04/16 11:51 AM
Conscience of
environmental
journalism
UDAY SHANKAR
he unique thing about

tific lens, which even today helps
stories in Down To
me to analyse all issues. It taught
Earth (dte) was the
me how to look at facts and situaway they combined
tions. It is an important tool even
the science and polithough today I am not a practising
tics of environment. But more than
journalist. The second was the
the stories I reported, I remember
man behind dte. Anil was the emthe quality of conversations we had
bodiment of the institution, and
with Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narfor me, it is hard to distinguish beain. They were highly evolved inteltween the man and dte. Having
lectuals who could separate the
Was part of the launch worked with many editors, I can
say that he was one of the most
wheat from the chaff.
team. He is now CEO,
outstanding editors I have come
Every day after seven in the
evening, when the reporters would Star India Private Limited across. Nobody could understand
and merge the science of environstill be working on their stories,
ment, the logic of journalism with
Anil would drop by and a conversation would begin. Though the topic would be inci- public good like he did.
In those days, when environmental reporting
dental, the trajectory the discourse would take was
always amazing. Even though Anil would rant and was mostly about planting trees, Anil used to say
rave, those 50-minute or so conversations with that we had missed the wood for the trees. He had
the unique ability of getting the bigger picture
him were always a learning experience for me.
dte fascinated me at two levels. As an individ- right on the basis of getting the tiny facts right.
ual, working with dte gave me a powerful scien- When I was working on the story about pollution
1-15 MAY 2016
60-59Uday Shankar.indd 59
27/04/16 11:51 AM
Uday's cover
on pollution in
the Ganga (left)
and on Chilika
Lake (right)
stand the story. I did spend two weeks, and I think

I was probably the only journalist who got to row a
boat to the mouth of the lake.
I knew Anil from my jnu days when he was
struggling to find the right journalists for dte.
He was also frustrated with mainstream environmental journalism. He told me reporters like me
anyway wont come, but I asked him to try me. A
few days later, I got a post card from him inviting
me to join.
It has been 24 years now and it makes me wonder. I wasnt sure about the future of the magazine,
in the Ganga, Anil told me if I could become a drain but the fact that it is still running reinforces the
belief that behind every institution is the grit of
inspector, I would understand the story.
One of the many things that have stayed with an individual and dte has done it, thanks to
me is that every story is a big story if you can get the Sunitas determination.
implication right. You had to be an open mentee
dte has always pursued issues in the public doand be willing to invest time. For instance, when I main and established itself in a niche space, and it
was doing a story on the Chilika
has also gone beyond that niche
Lake, Anil asked me how long I was
space. It has taken the consciousgoing to spend there. Having come
ness of environmental journalDTE has taken the
from a daily news journalism backism beyond the plantation of treconsciousness of
ground, I said a day or two. Anil
es. That is a tribute to Sunitas
environmental
grit and commitment and Anils
was surprised to hear my response.
He asked me to spend a week or two journalism beyond
vision. The world needs dte mothe plantation
so that I could investigate the tinire than it needed before and it
of trees
est detail accurately and undermust become a viral idea.
60 DOWN TO EARTH
60-59Uday Shankar.indd 60
1-15 MAY 2016
27/04/16 11:51 AM
Brave new
magazine,
tenuous new
world
PAMELA PHILIPOSE
t all began with a bottle of a

er. It was about that bottle which
purplish brown liquid that
was staring so balefully at me. Oh
that, that is the drinking water of
stood on the desk of the man
the villagers of Bichhri village, and
acknowledged as Indias foits this colour because a firm manremost environmental thinufacturing the highly toxic H-acid
ker, Anil Agarwal. He wanted to
hire me as feature editor for a magnearby allowed its effluents to conazine that was to be like no other. At
taminate the villagers only drinking water source.
that moment it had no name, but it
Before long, preparations of
seemed to exist fully formed in
the magazine began in the right
Anils head. A fortnightly environ- Was part of the
earnest. Session after session of
mental magazine that would have launch team. She is
brainstorming took place, someboth news and views, with some
now working on
science and technology thrown in,
times meandering into the late suand, which would in time, help to social media and
mmer evenings. There were four
social movements
change the world.
of us to begin with: Anil, Sunita
Narain, who ran the Centre for
Was it to be like an environmenScience and Environment (cse)
tal Economic and Political Weekly,
I asked hesitantly. No. Like The Illustrated Weekly and had partnered this idea of a magazine that
of India? No, no. The Economist? A little, perhaps, would draw on the intellectual rebut far more attractive and approachable. Sounded sources built up by cse, and Akila
like fun and my mind was almost made up. The an- Seshasayee, who thought in imagswer to the last question I put to Anil was the clinch- es, graphics and layouts, and was
63 DOWN TO EARTH
63-61Pamela Phillipose.indd 62
1-15 MAY 2016
27/04/16 11:51 AM
IT / CSE
ILL UST RAT ION S: SOR
1-15 MAY 2016
genuinely excited about this chance to juggle with

world class images and crisp text to create a new
design form. It needed audacity to imagine the yetunrealised and I, for one, was increasingly conscious that the editing skills and understanding of
16 years of mainstream journalism were simply insufficient to cope with the challenge. A lot had to
be learnt; a lot more unlearnt. Anil, having been a
newspaper journalist himself, believed in the editors pencil and used it meticulously, pouring over
copy day after day, suggesting headlines, rewriting
intros. Captions, for him, were not just for effect.
He saw them as important devices to convey additional information that was important and which
was sometimes not even in the main text.
Many journalistic innovations went into the
magazine that enhanced its considerable depth of
information, even as it remained readable and accessible. The use of boxes to narrate the side story
or the back story was one such device, as was the
back page devoted to reporting through data,
graphs and pie-charts. Long before social media
made the term network fashionable, the magazine had a section devoted to information on how
to get in touch with organisations working on a
wide variety of social concerns. As for those who
photographed for the magazine, they were not given the second class treatment invariably meted out
to them by mainstream media. Here, every photograph was the story and duly credited.
There were innumerable titles suggested for
the new magazine, all of which were summarily
discarded. One, however, struck root, not because
it was particularly striking, but because it was, well,
down to earth. Grounded. For all the meticulous
planning that went into Down To Earth (dte), it
was ultimately meant not just for experts and policymakers, but ordinary people. An early ad pitch
reiterated this: Are you not sick of reading newspapers that are obsessed with the antics of our politicians? Is it not time that you got to know more
about what people like you and me are doing?
Subscribe now! Annual individual subscription
R240 (a highly discounted rate).
By the time the first issue was ready to roll in
late May 1992, many more extremely talented people were in the dte team. Although arguments and
personal disagreements were aplenty, lunch time
saw everybody sharing dining tables, where roti,
daal and sabzi was always enlivened by a deliciously lemony chilli pickle that I havent had the pleasure of tasting since. There were now young reporters, environmental activists, doctoral students,
photographers, data crunchers and computer operators. When the first issue came to us, warm from
27/04/16 11:51 AM
(Left) The first

issue in May
1992, and,
(right) the first
advertisement
for the
magazine
discovery, whether it focused on a domestic concern or a South Asia or a global one; whether it was
a wood drought that was affecting Saharanpurs
famed craft of carving, or the unacceptably high
pollution levels in Kathmandu; whether it was a
look at the vested interests that were destroying
Chilika Lake, or the death of the Indus Delta. Anil
would often say, often banging the table for added
emphasis, I dont want opinions. Opinions are
like a---s, everybody has one. I want facts.
I still remember the phenomenal fact-gathering skills of a young Uday Shankar, now top honcho at Star India Private Limited, as he reported
the press, jubilation spread across the F-6, Kailash on the state of the Ganga. The cover story with its
Colony office. The Society for Environmental Co- fantastic close-up shots of the river at Varanasi rife
mmunications, which was responsible for brin- with garlands and refuse, taken by Pradip Saha,
ging out dte, was certainly no big media house, but was unequivocal: The River Stays Dirty. Many
it had demonstrated the capacity to produce a first- reports of the polluted Ganga have since made it to
rate publication that could compete with the best the media, including some after the present prime
in the world.
minister adopted the issue. Yet few had the inSome of the cover stories done that first year sights of that dte exposition with its telling boxes
when I was with dte still remain in the minds eye. of supplementary information, data, and maps. It
In many ways, the year 1992 was an important one. carried photographs that went beyond the clichd
Liberalisation had just been ushered into the images of bathers in Varanasi, catching newlycountry by then finance minister, Manmohan Sin- dyed textiles being washed in the Ganga, sewer wagh. The question of how unregulated global flows ter gushing from a nullah in Kanpur, effluents
of capital and the retreat of the State from the so- from a tannery dying red a river sandbar; a juxtacial sector would impact the countrys environ- position of Varanasais new electric crematorium
ment was a crucial one. The very first issue of dte with a traditional cremation on the ghats.
took a long, hard look at the issue.
As the year came to an end, the siren call of the
It was also the year that saw, for the first time mainstream media was once again beckoning me
ever, 105 representatives of government and some to move on, and so I didhanding over my papers
2,400 members of non-governwith a heavy heart. In one of my
last few days at dte, I along with
mental organisationsthe now faMany journalistic
others gathered as usual in Anils
miliar acronym ngos got maininnovations went
streamed after that eventmeet at
office to discuss the cover story for
into the magazine
Rio de Janeiro to talk about the
the first issue of 1993, which was
state of the worlds environment.
to be a wrap of the year that had
that enhanced
dte resisted the role of being a
gone by. The discussions were as
its considerable
cheerleader to the conference lausual vibrant, with Anil and Sudepth of
beled as the Earth Summit. It crinita leading the charge. Before
information
long the issue of the cover came
tiqued it for its refusal to look at the
up. What should be that one imreal reasons for environmental devastation and choose, instead, to deal with the age which would reflect the chaos that seemed to be
symptoms of the problem, rather than interrogat- facing humanity?
ing the real causelack of global democracy at one
Finally, we zeroed in on image of a battered ketlevel, and local democracy at the other. The cover tlethe chaiwallah typewith steam issuing furidte had on the conference carried a photograph of ously out of its spout. The headline: 1992 World on
the leaders who had assembled at Rio with a ban- the Boil. The introduction: In 1992, the world
ner headline that went: The Class That Failed. moved several steps towards globalisation. But litdtes stance was controversial, but soon it became tle attention was paid to the sharp economic, social
something of a blueprint for those from the global and cultural divides.
South who wanted to take on the global North for
Prescient words which seemed to scope the fuits inequitable consumption patterns.
ture from a vantage point that was, as always,
Every dte cover story was, for me, a journey of down to earth.
61 DOWN TO EARTH
1-15 MAY 2016
27/04/16 11:51 AM
Breaking
barriers
SUNITA NARAIN
wenty-four years ago,

from a dusty, damp
basement in south
Delhis residential colony we began pubdefecating in the
lishing Down To Earth. It was our
open, cooking food using pollutlate colleague Anil Agarwals coming biomass and with no access to
mitment and dream that we must
electricity and water. At times it
research, write and inform in as
seems we are in danger of losing
simple a language as possible the
the plot.
developments that matter to our
It is not just India, but the
world. He believed ideas were like Co-founded the
world that is a paradox. There is
enormous wealth, massive food
time bombs; our work is to put out magazine along
reserves and many countries have
the information and people will with Anil Agarwal.
achieved the highest human delight the fuse. Change will come.
She is now the editor
velopment indices. But this wellIt seems we have come a long of the magazine
being does not make the rich joyway since; environment is no lonful or generous. In fact, there is
ger marginal, but mainstream. But
more insecurity and intolerance
in many other ways, it seems time
has stood still. There is more garbage on the today than there was 24 years ago. When it comes
streets, more toxins in the air and more sewage in to global agreements, whether on trade, climate
the rivers. Worse still, India is suffering from the change or biodiversity, global leadership has demtriple burden of poverty, tradition and modernity. onstrated it is only concerned with its selfish naSo, on the one hand, India can celebrate its moon tional interest. So, there is economic and ecologimission or its e-commerce boom or some improve- cal globalisation, but no political globalisation
ment in health indicators. On the other hand, there where the world would stand together for justice
is the shame of having a large number of people for the poor and future generations.
65 DOWN TO EARTH
65-64Sunita Narain.indd 64
1-15 MAY 2016
27/04/16 11:52 AM
You, our readers, need to

tell us if we fail you. Judge
us mercilessly. We need
your attention more than
anything else
1-15 MAY 2016
65-64Sunita Narain.indd 65
The circle has closed and yet not. Down

To Earths birth coincided with many intertwined developmentsfrom the 1992 Rio
Conference on sustainable development to
the talks on the General Agreement on Trade and Tariff, the precursor to the World
Trade Organization. In India, 1992 was the
year it opened up its economic policy. This
would intensify growth and so impact the
environment. It was also the year when the
country was reeling from one of its worst
droughts. These events have influenced our
stories for decades. And through this period, Down To Earths role has been to inform,
provoke, challenge and, most critically, provide solutions.
These past decades have also reflected
my personal journeyfrom nave innocence
about the challenges to a growing anger
about our societys inaction and even deliberate negligence of social justice and poverty. It is increasingly clear to me that the environmental crisis is not about technology
or methods of cleaning up. It is most fundamentally about the rights of people to access
their resources and our ability to build an inclusive and just society. I say this because I
believe we are forgetting the soul of the
movementthat environment and equitable growth are two sides of the same coin.
The question arises if we should continue to do what we are doing, given the explosion of news, thanks to the Internet. There
is more information today than what one
can digest, but there is also less knowledge
of the challenges the world faces. Each one
of us has bubble-wrapped ourselves in the
news we want to hear. This is another paradox of our age.
My answer is: thrive in this paradox.
The Internet gives us a level-playing field in
information dissemination. We must use it
to get the inconvenient message out, the
message of the invisible and the unknown.
We have to work even harder to break the
barriers of our increasingly informationrich and knowledge-poor society, where one
does not hear the cries of distress or learns
from the exuberance of life that continues to
make the difference against all odds. This is
our task for the coming years. This is our
reason for continuing to publish. You, our
readers, need to tell us if we fail you. Judge
us mercilessly. We need your attention more
than anything else.
27/04/16 11:52 AM
67-66 Anil Agarwal.indd 66
27/04/16 11:52 AM
Why this
magazine?
This magazine is not the product of a desire
to capture a share of the information market. It
is the product of a need that we feel within us, of a
desire to fill a critical information gap.
Since learning is best done by listening to others, this
newsmagazines uppermost objective will be to bring
reports from our farms, fields, forests, factories and
laboratorieswhere the struggle for survival and
for progress is at its peak and at its best.
We intend to report all those things that a
regular magazine or newspaper will reportfinance, economics, politics,
markets, diplomacy, conflicts,
development. But we will look
at this with two eyes, the
eyes of science and of
environment.
(Excerpts
from our first
editorial)
67-66 Anil Agarwal.indd 67
27/04/16 11:52 AM

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DownToEarth

1-15 MAY, 2016

SCIENCE AND ENVIRONMENT

Subscriber copy, not for resale

People in Mahoba district

Why Bundelkhand and

Villages in droughtprone areas show how to

VIKAS CHOUDHARY / CSE

EDITOR Sunita Narain

Anupam Chakravartty, Jitendra Choubey,

Snigdha Das, Rajat Ghai, Jemima Rohekar,

Chaitanya Chandan, Shri Krishan,

Rajendra Rawat, Jaidev Sharma

Rakesh Shrivastava, Gundhar Das

Chandra Bhushan, Anumita Roychowdhury

Wanted: a new code

FOR ADVERTISEMENT CONTACT

Down To Earth editorial does not

1-15 MAY 2016

As Down To Earth enters into its 25th year of

Down To Earth has

1-15 MAY 2016

This drought is of richer and water-guzzling

1-15 MAY 2016

n a scorching hot April afternoon, standing under a mango tree on

PHOTOGRAPHS: NIDHI JAMWAL

Village women (top) in

1-15 MAY 2016

50 per cent deficit monsoon. Freak hailstorms durmetres

1-15 MAY 2016

(Left) Defunct jackwell on dried-up Manjara

1-15 MAY 2016

1-15 MAY 2016

(Left) Harangul villagers stand in the

(Top) A woman draws

1-15 MAY 2016

PHOTOGRAPHS: VIKAS CHOWDHARY / CSE

1-15 MAY 2016

This is the 13th drought Bundelkhand has witnessed in

(Left) Raj Mohammad of Goshiari village

Source: State of India's

One-third of India's total districts faced

1-15 MAY 2016

GRAPHICS: RAKU / CSE

The current drought that affects

1-15 MAY 2016

K3.5 lakh crore

India's total drought-related

villages without water sources

BIG DRAIN ON THE EXCHEQUER

1-15 MAY 2016

n February 28, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made an audacious pledge.

In the drought-ravaged Marathwada, residents of Kadwanchi village in Jalana district are

1-15 MAY 2016

THE DOMINO EFFECT

1-15 MAY 2016

the cost of input on chemical fertilisers.

Haldins example, many small farmers opted for organic farming in

SHREESHAN VENKATESH / CSE

CHHAPARIYA'S FODDER BANK

1-15 MAY 2016

A farmer dries millet

KARNIKA BAHUGUNA / CSE