The two features mark the geography of Bundelkhand, in Central India, there are 13 districts of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh in the region: Vindhya steep hills and progressively scary rain and rapid drought.
Consider Panna district in Madhya Pradesh. As data From the Meteorological Department of India, Panna is getting low rainfall, even the temperature is rising. As An estimateThe average temperature in Bundelkhand is expected to rise by 2100 to 2-3.5 of C.
Thus this area has become a hotband of drought. For example, in Madhya Pradesh, Datia faced nine droughts between 1998 and 2009. During the same period, Lalitpur and Mahoba districts in Uttar Pradesh faced eight.
Farmers of the region have been the worst affected. Since their crops have failed more often, they have struggled to fulfill the ends and have slipped deeply into the debt. Agricultural workers have picked up other jobs, such as working In the diamond mines of the area. When that too is not enough, men have left their families behind and migrated, Lucknow said that Babasaheb Bhimrao said Surendra Singh Jatav, assistant professor of economics at Bhimrao Ambedkar University (BBAU). Their destinations are “Surat, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai”.
Jatav has studied the impact of climate change on farmers’ lives in Bundelkhand since 2012. The most important change, he said, is in the social taunting of the villages of Bundelkhand.
Climate migration
Charpauli is a village in Bangladesh, 1,500 km from Bundelkhand. Charpauli has a different problem, situated on the banks of the Jamuna River. Every year during the monsoon, Jamuna provokes and rebukes the land on its banks. Large parts of the land are broken and washed them, carrying people’s homes with them.
According to some media reports in Bangladesh, in May 2022, in a week, Riverbank erosion in Jamuna destroyed about 500 houses in Charpauli, making thousands of homeless. One in 2023 studiesResearchers at Dhaka University of Engineering and Technology used satellite images to find out that between 1990 and 2020, the left bank of the river reduced about 12 meters every year and the right bank to about 52 meters every year.
Scientist Has suggested That climate change leads to a high amount of water through a particular river channel at a particular time, which increases the risk of flood and erosion.
Flooded banks of Bundelkhand and flooded banks of Jamuna shared a similarity. As their homes are sometimes consumed by the river, people first try to move away from the bank, sometimes construct fresh houses on arable land. Then, when it is not possible to survive in the village, according to the researcher of Ath Zurich, John Freehard, the entire house goes to nearby cities like Dhaka as the previous remedy.
Postdoctorl researcher, Freehard has studied climate migration in Charpauli and other villages.
Climate migration refers to the movement of people arising from disasters related to climate change, which can be sudden (flood, cyclone, etc.) or sequential (temperature, sea-level growth, etc.). according to a 2022 report By the International Refugee Assistance Project, events related to climate and weather forces around 20 million people to migrate every year in other areas of their countries. This is called internal migration.
While the migration away from Jamuna banks is permanent, climate change can also increase seasonal migration in many areas. One such case is of migration of Vidarbha and Marathwada, which is in two infamous drought areas of Maharashtra.
Sugarcane and bitter end
Farmers loaded sugarcane crop on a tractor, which in a village in Kard, October 2022 photo credit: PTI
Vidarbha and Marathwada regions are located in the rainy shade of the Western Ghats.
A shadow of a rain becomes when an area is situated on the side of the mountains away from the sea. As the water evaporates from the sea, the hot, moist air increases. When it reaches the top of the mountains, it is condensed to make clouds, which eventually rains down from the sea to downwards. By the time the wind crosses the other side of the mountains, almost all the moisture is over, thus the side away from the sea does not receive less rain over time. This has happened with Vidarbha and Marathwada.
Climate change is deteriorating in this situation. Both areas are recording late irregular rainfall.
Ramanjaneyulu GV, Executive Director of Sustainable Agriculture Center for Sustainable Agriculture, said, “The number of rainy days is decreasing and the rain is increasing on a special day. But the gap between two rain days is long.” Also revealed In two areas, this temperature has already crossed the 50 of C mark in May.
Those who live here pack their belongings on bull vehicles and travel hundreds of kilometers in western Maharashtra and Karnataka. There, they live for four to six months, acting as a “sugarcane cutter” in these areas, said Ankita Bhatkhande, the head of communication in a social-affect consultation called Asar.
Bhatkhande has been involved in research projects that study the boundary and influence of drought in Maharashtra.
India is the world’s largest producer and sugarcane consumer. Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Told that in 2021The country produced 50 million tonnes of sugarcane, generating revenue of more than Rs 20,000 crore.
This flatter number does not reflect the reality of migrant laborers who harvest the country’s sugarcane fields.
According to Bhatkhande, the sugarcane cutter is usually hired as a couple: the husband bites the sugarcane and the wife piles them up. Together, couple is called Koita – A Marathi word for Sickle used to cut sugarcane. These laborers are hired by a contractor PrizeWhich pays an advance to the couple: an amount that can be between Rs 50,000 to Rs 50,000 to Rs 5 lakh based on the couple’s financial requirements, the size of sugarcane gardens and harvesting the amount of sugarcane that year.
Bhatkhande said, “The uncertainty and conditions of this migration and the wages that have deteriorated in the year,” Bhatkhande said.
Because they are paid an advance, laborers need to work until they cut the sugarcane enough to match the payment. For example, if a couple has been paid Rs 50,000 at the rate of Rs 367 per tonne of sugarcane, they should cut 136 tonnes of sugarcane during the harvesting season. However, irregular rainfall and dried mantras have reduced sugarcane production, which is a water-intensive crop. This means that laborers have to return the next season with no additional payment for losses, causing a cycle of debt bonding.
The deteriorating uncertainty also shows who is migrating: “Earlier, people in their 30 and 20s were those who were migrating. Now, people who are close to the 70s and 80s are also migrating to work,” Bhatkhande said. Small people cut sugarcane and load its piles on tractors, while the elders are hired to remove mourning from the field and stack sugarcane before loading.
When migrants reach sugarcane fields, they are “a very dirty and shabby patches of the land, where they can install their homes,” he said. These, according to them, usually take the shape of plastic sheets without electricity, toilets or water.
Adaptation v. Displacement
Conditions are not better for migrants of Bundelkhand. BBAU economist, Jatav said that they migrate in metropolitan cities, they work in daily-laborers, security guards and Dhabas (Roadside restaurant). Only those who are highly skilled, they do jobs that give them enough money to rent a room. Other people adjust themselves into slums, where poor hygiene declines their health, Jatav said.
Back home, conflict is different. As the migrant family wait for their dispatch – which may take about six months after a person’s migration and can set up a shop in the city, according to Jatav estimates per Jatav – they struggle to complete the ends. The worst hit is women and children. Left to manage “everything on their own” with women, they are unable to effectively monitor whether their children are going to school, according to Jatav. He said that women also become unsafe for sexual harassment.
For migrants from Charpauli and other villages on the coast of Jamuna, what they do after migration depends on where they migrate. Some villagers migrate to other villages, said freehord. There, they include themselves in jobs that remind their lives in their previous houses, now lie under water: “Agricultural work for the land of other people”. Those who migrate in cities pick up more informal jobs, such as rickshaw pulling, construction work and daily salary work in brick kilns.
One in 2011 Comment In NatureResearchers at the Sussex University and the Government of UK argued that migration “may be the most effective way to allow people to diversify income and make flexibility where environmental changes threaten livelihood.” That is, he suggested, migration can be a form of adaptation against livelihood climate change-inspired losses.
However, Jatav disagreed: at least in the context of Bundelkhand, he explained, migration is a form of “forcible displacement” that reduces “social security of migrants and their families”.
“Migration is not an adaptation. This is a crisis.”
Sayantan Datta is an independent journalist and a faculty member at Crade University. They tweet @QueersPrings. The author thanked Annu Jalis, Chirag Dhara and Jaideep Hariyar for his input.
