October in Maharashtra’s Beed district is usually a time of hope. Reservoirs and wells are filled to the brim, fields of soybean and cotton are about to be harvested.
But this year, there is neither water nor work in this Marathwada region.
The crisis is widespread. More than two-thirds of Maharashtra – 304 out of 358 tehsils – have been declared drought-hit after recording an 18% deficit in monsoon rains. In Beed, the deficit went up to 37%, making it the worst in a decade, said collector Vivek Johnson.
The lack of rainfall in July, August and September shrunk the soybean crop on Satish Shirsath’s one-acre plot of land in Chumbali village. The seeds he harvested were so tiny that they fetched only Rs 10,000 in the market, not enough to recover the investment of Rs 20,000.
When the crop failed, Shirsath began to look for work.
In August, India’s newly revamped rural employment guarantee scheme came to his aid. He earned Rs 3,000 after digging a canal for six days under the Viksit Bharat- Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) or VB-G RAM G scheme.
But since then, Shirsath has not found any work.
In mid-October, he and his wife finally left Chumbali for Sangli, 350 km away, for the next three...