Drinking water is being supplied once a week in Bijapur as the Almatti reservoir simply does not have enough water to meet its needs and crocodiles are straying into agricultural land from a fast drying up Krishna river.
The delayed monsoon is wreaking havoc in the lives of the people of North Karnataka where several farmers are now putting off their sowing operations until they are assured of some rain. The people of Gadag are the worst hit as the district has received merely 92 mm of rain when it usually receives an average of 401 mm in June. Sowing has been done over only 13 ,000 hectares of the 2.24 lakh hectares of cultivable land in the district.
Things are no better in Haveri and Dharwad districts which have received only 241 mm and 239 mm of rain respectively so far this year, leaving them with a huge shortfall considering that Haveri gets 737 mm of rain on an average this time of the year and Dharwad, 538 mm. The people who desilted lakes in villages in anticipation of a good monsoon, are disappointed and are coping with a worsening drinking water problem with every passing day. Thankfully, the district administration has stepped in to supply them drinking water through tankers.
“Drought and flood have become a rule rather than the exception in our villages, forcing us to migrate to cities in search of work on construction sites. Even the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGREGS) has failed to stem the migration as we are not paid promptly for work done under it,” complains a villager from Holemannur, Somu Hudemani.