Normally associated with weddings and celebrations, the puri has a different connotation in this part of Madhya Pradesh. It is a clear indication that the family is about to move.

Some days later, Rani Bai, member of a self-help group called Banjari Mata in Shahpur, reported: “Like the other five members of my group, Sunita, her husband Ramsori and their son have left for Agra in search of work.”

Rani Bai added: “When I last met Sunita she said there was nothing left for them to do in the village -- they were just not able to make ends meet and support themselves. Thus they decided to leave for Agra, where Ramsori would drive a rickshaw and Sunita would look for work as a domestic help.”

The story is a familiar one across Tikamgarh. Battered by a third consecutive year of drought, thousands of families in the district have been torn apart by forced migration.

While the average annual rainfall in Tikamgarh is around 1,000 mm, in 2004 and 2005 the region received 625 mm of rain. I n 2006, the amount of rainfall received till the last week of September was only 380 mm.

Farmers were barely able to get a yield from their first kharif crop, and there was never any possibility of sowing a rabi crop. Consequently, after the scarce monsoon, t here was no work available for wage labourers. ( To read an earlier report on the drought situation and CSO and government responses, click here.)

Sixty-year-old Hasmat Khan of Bijrotha village says he has not seen a drought of this magnitude in his entire life. “Have you heard of a mango tree drying up? No? Come, let me show you one that has dried up this year in my village,” he says agitatedly, pointing to the dried mango tree that stands near the dry village well. “Look what is happening in our village. No water, no crops, no food… and no government help!”

Most villages are semi-deserted, inhabited only by children and old folk left behind either because they are a liability in big towns like Delhi and Gurgaon, or because someone has to look after the livestock.

While families with marginal landholdings have been migrating for the past few years, those with larger holdings have been forced to sow on progressively smaller areas, since most of them are dependent on rainfall for their crop.

Rani Bai says that the last time her family was able to get two crops from the land they own was three years ago.

Her husband, Chaturbhuj, a graduate, says they have almost 10 acres of land and, in 2006, he planted channa and peas, hoping to get good yields and make a quick buck. “I never buy wheat because we always get what we want from our land. Last year, I thought I could get a good price for my cash crops, so I left wheat out of the crop mix. I now rue the day... I do not have wheat for my family.”

The Public Distribution System (PDS) shop in the village is not functional, and the family was forced to buy 10-12 quintals of wheat at Rs 12 per kg.

According to estimates by Self Reliant Initiatives through Joint Action ( SRIJAN), a PACS Programme CSO working in the area, even if the PDS were fully functional in this region there would still be the need to supply foodgrain to over 70% of the population that is forced to buy wheat in the open market at rates ranging anywhere between Rs 11 and Rs 13 per kg.

Even after very low rainfall in the past three years, the government response has been ad hoc. The state government disburses drought aid annually without a uniformly-applied definition of ‘drought’.

Objective approaches to drought alleviation have tended to be confounded by political interests. A variety of figures have been reported for expenditure on drought relief, due to differences between budget requests, initial allocations, supplementary allocations, cost components and records of expenditure.

There is no talk of rehabilitation of disused or faulty boreholes, provision of new boreholes, extension of pipelines, or provision of water tanker services to disadvantaged rural communities.

When crop production or household income declines, rural households can usually draw on alternative sources of cash or food, such as livestock sales, asset sales, and borrowing.

In most villages in Tikamgarh, though, the drought has forced farmers to sell some or all of their livestock.

“Many like me have either sold their cattle and livestock or given them away for free to families in other villages, in the hope that they will at least look after the animals,” says Kuniji, a government teacher in Ghotet village, Jatara block.

When all such sources of income dry up, migration becomes the only option for survival.

Seema Soure, who teaches in Jaura village, says: “Ninety per cent of people in the village have gone. Only those who have livestock have remained.”

For most, the journey starts with a phone call. Those who have already gone to Delhi, Gurgaon or Jammu have the phone numbers of contractors who need labourers for manual work, or, sometimes, masons.

When desperation strikes, people call up a contractor in, say, Jammu, who tells them the number of people he can take on, the travel destination and the kind of work available. He instructs the villagers when and where to arrive, and whom to bring along.

Those who don’t have such contacts book themselves on the first available train to Delhi, where they camp outside Nizammuddin railway station and wait for contractors to hire them.

Some contractors arrange for a truck or a bus to pick up labourers directly from the village, through a local contact. The trip starts around 4 pm and they reach Delhi around 6-7 am the next day. They have to fend for themselves throughout the arduous journey. Hence the puris, and why the old, the infirm and the very young are left behind -- along with young girls.

Life for the migrants is not easy either. Says 43-year-old Ratnalal of Shahpur: “Often, after working for several days in a city like Delhi, the contractor suddenly disappears with our dues. Then we are at the mercy of other contractors in the area.”

Usually, a skilled mason earns Rs 120-Rs 150 a day, while a manual labourer may make about Rs 60-Rs 70 a day. Raghuveer of Shahpur makes around Rs 10,000 in two months and returns home if there’s no more work. If need be, he goes back again; he knows most of the contractors. He says he usually migrates for two to three months every year.

Due to the high levels of migration, many self-help groups (SHGs) have become non-functional.

Chitia Bai of Manimata SHG, in Bijrotha village, says four people have migrated from her group of 10. “Most of them will be away for nearly a month-and-a-half. Often, women do not even have money to pay for their bus fare, so they borrow from other SHG members and repay them when they return. Usually, the amount is between Rs 100 and Rs 200. Some members leave money with family members or other SHG members to pay their contribution towards the group, but they are very few and far between.”

Adds Mahatma Gandhi SHG’s Wafatan Bai (Bijrotha village): “Only five members of my group of 10 women are in the village.”

Forty-year-old Meera Bai of Bijrotha, who had just returned to the village from Delhi, was on a short visit to attend a social function. “I get Rs 60 on days that I do get work,” she says. “Here, for the last four years there has been no rainfall and we have not been able to till the three bighas of land that we have.”

“My eldest daughter is now of marriageable age. We have to work hard to get her married off,” she says candidly.

Meera Bai and her husband Pannlal leave their four daughters with her mother-in-law Shyama and go out in search of work. At times she’s away for more than four months at a stretch. She takes her son with her because he is barely two years old.

Twenty-five kilometres from Jatara, in village Ghotet, only the very young, the old and the infirm (and those holding government jobs) remain.

In Lidoria, Kunjilal is the only scheduled tribe member left in the village -- the rest have all migrated.

When our group is joined in Lidoria by two small children -- Anand and Mamata -- many in the group point to them. The children, who are studying in Class VI and V respectively, have been left behind by their parents. Their teacher Seema Soure explains that they are being looked after by a cousin of the family. “Someone or the other in the village gives them something to eat. That is how things work.”

When we ask Anand when his parents will return, he looks away. “After the harvest season, probably,” he says listlessly, with a distant look in his eyes.

As we leave, the villagers plead: “Please do something about the midday meal in our schools. At least we can prevent our children from starving.”

They said the children had not had a decent meal in school for as long as they could remember.

Drought brings with it other miseries too. Explains Raghuveer: “When there is close to 90% migration, the village is very lonely and deserted. Houses are then easy targets for dacoits and anti-social elements who come from places as far off as Kanpur, Jalgaon and Hamirpur. They steal and loot and they make their way back across the border to neighbouring Uttar Pradesh.”

“We have to stay awake each night to alert each other and protect the village,” he adds.

CSO intervention

In this situation, SRIJAN has successfully managed to push the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), at least to some extent.

For example, it took up area treatment in 50 hectares of land in Shahpur village in Jatara block.

The work, which included building check-dams, boulder-checks, field-bunding and grass and forest plantations, will benefit 17 families (mostly SC/ST) and generate 2,000 man-days of work.

SRIJAN was sanctioned Rs 6.57 lakh in 2006 for the work. Of the total funds released so far, Rs 2.60 lakh was for a check-dam, Rs 1.98 lakh for forest plantation, and 1.98 lakh for field-bunding and boulder-checks.

When an evaluation of the work was carried out, the government technical team saw that while the sanctioned amount for the check-dam was Rs 2.08 lakh, the actual cost incurred was only Rs 1.28 lakh; Rs 80,000 had been saved in material costs.

The officials were at a loss about the surplus and it was quite a while before the matter was settled and the amount taken back.

Raghuveer says that most of the villagers had never seen this quality of work before. “When the panchayat carries out work, the ratio of sand to cement is 6:1; SRIJAN’s work was done with a ratio of 3:1.”

The work showed promising results: during the 2006 rains, the field bunds prevented cowdung manure freshly laid in the fields from being washed away.

SRIJAN set up a model worksite in Shahpur village, with facilities like medical aid, water and a creche. Staff at the organisation report that the worksite became so popular that people started to come to the site only to get medical help for themselves and their families!

SRIJAN also took on the responsibility of distributing simplified application formats to demand jobs under the NREGS, and forwarding them to the panchayat. This way it was able to generate work demand for groups of 30-odd people. It also took on the responsibility of filling up job applications and disbursing wages.

Wages were fairly distributed to all beneficiaries and on time -- no later than one week.

While the villagers were being paid between Rs 30 and Rs 40 per day for work carried out by the panchayat, SRIJAN paid the same workers Rs 61.37 per day as wages. As a result, some landlords, contractors and sarpanches complained that the CSO was “spoiling the market” for labour.

However, despite SRIJAN’s work, the sad routine of departures from the village continues. The NREGS guarantees a family only 100 days of work in a year, and Ajab Bai of Bijrotha village says: “People cannot stay in the village throughout the year. What will they eat?”

(This story is based on a report prepared by Write Solutions, the PACS Programme’s communications agency for Madhya Pradesh)