Rain shift leaves farmers in a spot

KOLKATA/TARAKESWAR: Farmer Chandrasekhar Das of Burdwan’s Chakdighi village is at a loss. For three years in a row, rain has been woefully inadequate in the sowing season. But it has rained heavily just ahead of the harvesting season.
“We are farmers for generations. I have been farming with my father and grandfather since I was a child. Knowledge of the crop, farming practice, rainfall pattern...everything they passed on to me. There hasn’t been much change in the farming pattern except for use of machinery to till and irrigation system. But now, we are facing a big problem — the change in the rainfall pattern,” Chandrasekhar said.
Hriday Pan of Hooghly’s Santoshpur village, too, is confused because of the change in rainfall pattern. “There is no rain when it is needed. Since the DVC water does not reach everywhere, farmers had to use tubewells more extensively in recent years,” he said.
While farmers in Burdwan’s Jamalpur, Bhatar and Kalna complain about the scarcity of water during sowing of the kharif crop, the abundance of rain during the harvest leaves them in a spot. In Burdwan’s Simlon village, Shanti Das suffered heavy loss as the standing crop was damaged because of waterlogging following heavy rain. “I tried to drain the water out, but could not, as the adjacent fields were also waterlogged,” he recalled.
According to the Indian Meteorological Department data, the rainfall pattern in south Bengal has changed significantly in recent years.
A study of the rainfall records for 100 years — from 1901 to 2002 — revealed that rainfall in June, the crucial sowing season, has declined by 48 mm. But the lower precipitation in June has not led to shortage in annual rainfall with the deficiency in the beginning of the monsoon being compensated by more rainfall in September.
“The monsoon rainfall is steadily getting skewed in south Bengal. This is causing enormous stress on the crop calendar. Since transplantation happens in June, that is when most of the water is required. The high rainfall in September hasn’t helped matters either as it is too close to the onset of winter. The combined cycle of temperature and rainfall is getting disturbed,” said river expert Kalyan Rudra who analyzed the rainfall.
Further south in the Sunderbans, incidence of cyclones have increased as the sea records temperature rise. When Aila happened in May 2009, it was the first time in many years that a cyclone struck before the onset of Monsoon.
Usually cyclones take place after Monsoon.
“As sea temperature rises, cyclones will become more frequent and they will happen earlier than they usually did. Had Aila happened post-monsoon, when the soil was not parched, saline water that gushed through the breaches in embankments would not have penetrated the ground as much as it did. The people there must be prepared to give up agriculture and shift to fishing. Or else, there will be large scale migration time and again like it happened post Aila,” Rudra said.
There are hardly any men in Kumirmari, Chhotomollakhali and some other islands as they have all left to work as labourers after their farms were inundated by sea water. Incidentally, intensity of cyclones in the past 120 years has increased by 26% in the Sunderbans.