THARPARKAR: Some parts of Tharparkar received no monsoon rain in July and August this year, while others received only sporadic showers. This has pushed the district into drought-like conditions, but the government has yet to start relief measures or declare it a calamity-hit area.
The desert district, which covers 19,639 square kilometres, has no irrigation system. Its farming and the pastures that feed its livestock depend entirely on monsoon rain. The district is home to about 1.5 million people living in 2,325 villages. The Thar Desert stretches from eastern Sindh into the Indian state of Rajasthan.
People in the arid region depend completely on rain, but climate change has altered the monsoon pattern. The monsoon usually ran from mid-June to mid-August, but it now begins after mid-July. Annual rainfall across the district ranges between 200 and 250 millimetres.
More than 90 percent of the area’s population depends on rain-fed farming and livestock rearing for a living.
Historically, the area has faced three to four droughts every decade, including one or two severe ones, leaving people to bear the brunt. To cope with drought, nearly half of Tharparkar’s human and livestock population has traditionally migrated to the neighbouring barrage areas of southern Sindh.
Groundwater is still the only source of drinking water in almost all of Tharparkar’s villages. When the rains fail, it is not recharged, so it depletes and turns from saline to brackish. Some villages have already complained that their water quality is changing. Scarce and deteriorating drinking water may therefore become another problem for drought-affected people in the days to come.
According to a Sindh Relief Department report, Mithi/Tharparkar is one of the districts most vulnerable to drought. It was declared drought-hit in 1968, 1978, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1995, 1996, 1999, 2001, 2004, 2005 and 2007. The report said it was normal for 15 percent of Tharis, mostly male heads of household, to migrate during dry periods in search of wage labour and fodder for their livestock, but that the nature and scale of migration changed every year. By the end of October 2008, 20 percent of people had left Thar with their entire families, and 58 percent of earning heads (5,800 families) had moved to irrigated areas to find daily-wage work and secure feed for their animals.
When the monsoon fails, the district government has traditionally recommended to higher authorities by mid-August that the district be declared drought-hit and relief measures started, a practice dating back to the British colonial era.
Since drought is a regular phenomenon, the district government needs to be given the power to declare any area calamity-hit in a timely manner. The district disaster management committee should also be empowered, strengthened and well funded to coordinate and assist all relevant efforts to cope with the drought.
Paru Bheel, a migrant from Veri village in Diplo, told the media: “We had no proper rain, so there is an acute shortage of food and fodder for livestock.” He said he and his seven family members were migrating to a nearby district in search of work and fodder.
Partab Shivani, a representative of the Marooara Coordination Council, a network of civil society organisations in Tharparkar, said the Meteorological Department’s forecast had once again raised questions, as rains had fallen in adequate quantity only in Nagarparkar tehsil. He said Tharparkar needed to be declared drought-hit in time. “If relief is not provided in time, most of the population will migrate towards the barrage areas, vulnerable groups, mainly women and children, will suffer, and cattle will die,” he said.
Tharparkar Deputy Commissioner Muhammad Bachal Rahopoto has directed the mukhtiarkars to submit their reports so that the district administration can send a recommendation to the PDMA to declare Tharparkar a calamity-hit district.
The deputy commissioner said some local growers had begun preparing their land for cultivation after the initial monsoon showers, but had lost hope when no further rain followed.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) also held a meeting with humanitarian organisations and district authorities a day earlier to develop a district-level contingency plan for any disaster-like situation.