It is a district through which the mighty River Krishna flows. Yet, it made a plaintive plea to the government seeking to declare all the 64 mandals in it as drought-hit.
The plea came, interestingly, at a review meeting called by the Mahabubnagar District Collector, T.K. Sreedevi on Monday with concerned senior officials across related departments, including Joint Collector M. Ram Kishan and Chief Planning Officer (CPO) Lalith Kumar.
As of date, it is said that 48 of the 64 mandals in the district registered a deviation from the average rainfall, of a whopping 54 per cent. But this already-bad situation turned worse as there was no rainfall throughout July, leaving mandals with deficit or no rainfall.
This is, however, not new to the drought-prone Mahabubnagar. With an average rainfall of just about 600 mm a year, it is undisputedly the most backward and poorest of the districts in the State.
It is also known for migration of labourers in search of work every year.
Paddy cultivation low
Due to lack of adequate water, paddy cultivation is low. Mostly, maize and cotton apart from jowar and vegetables are cultivated.
As for horticulture, it includes sweet oranges, Quinoa and mangoes. This year, due to meagre rainfall, most of the maize has shown stunted growth, the cotton crop too has been hit badly, with pod size shrinking.
Consequently, the District Collector has asked the CPO to forthwith take up crop-cutting experiments to estimate the severity of the situation, apart from asking a team of scientists from the Regional Agricultural Research Station (RARS) at Palem to come up with mandal-wise crop estimate reports, also taking the help of mandal-level officers.
“We need help, badly,” she told officers, asking them to get the reports soon.
Funds from Centre sought
When contacted, Ms. Sreedevi said that the district administration had a contingency plan, but for it to be useful and assistance to flow in from the State and Central governments, detailed mandal-wise reports were needed, on the basis of which drought declaration by the State government could be facilitated.
Once this was done, funding from the Centre under different schemes would become easy.
Joint Director (Agriculture) D. Usha, Assistant Directors P. Mahipal (Fisheries), G. Durgaiah (Animal Husbandry) and S. Rama Devi (Groundwater) were asked to coordinate the preparation of the required reports using the respective machinery at their disposal. They have been entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring that the reports were generated in two days.
