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| Sunday, 21 July 2002 |
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The saga of continuing drought Withered lives by Jayanthi Liyanage
Travel along the Southern Sri Lankan coastal belt and from somewhere in Tangalle, the landscape begins to crack into a bleak, dry brown stretch of desolation. The hoarse whisper of dying grass becomes a furious bellow on the thickening fallows of the abandoned paddy stretches in Nala Gama, as cattle wring out the last wilting blades. And Buffaloes wallow in the swiftly thinning mud patches. Much of Bundala wetlands and the village is gone, hidden under the snarl of sand and salt. As salt dust blows over shrubs which had not enjoyed rain for years, desert tentacles creep in closer, swallowing lagoons in arid, desolate sands. Many interior village-pockets such as Andarawewa, Gonnoruwa, Keliyapura, Bandagiriya and Balaharuwa and larger areas such as Lunugamvehera, Thanamalwila, Kataragama, Wellawaya and Uva-Kuda Oya, have lost a life-sustaining legacy and a way of life that's centuries old. the "wewa" system, which in the absence of adequate rains have dried up, depriving sustenance "water" to the paddy cultivations and chenas. Today a wholly rain-fed, agro-economy lies in shambles. Nearly two circles of Yala and Maha, sky and earth, have failed to give water to the wewa to meet the agricultural needs. And resultantly there has been, no harvest for four seasons.
Last April's rain was short-lived and cultivators who were misled by it, and borrowed heavily, mortgaging valuables for farming expenses, found themselves in a bigger crisis than the devastating drought. This long, slow-drawn disaster has crept in so stealthily that the villager suffers on his own, battling the trauma of depleting domestic and cultivation water and purchasing power. "Bureaucratic lethargy" is yet to come up with a viable alternative for rain-dependency or raising the villager income. NGO and private-sector gifted drinking water tanks are very much in evidence in the drought-affected areas, while in Keliya Pura, many households had an adjacent rain-water harvesting tank. The "rain-fed" dependency goes deeper than having to be content for daily needs, with a water supply received once in every five days, as demonstrated in Tangalle recently. This has made distraught paddy and chena farmers, agitating for water for their precious cultivations, realise that the mere opening of a wier strung across an Oya, or the pumping out from a reservoir, cannot produce the required flow of water. The explanations of the Tangalle Irrigation Engineer to the farmer-community, that if they chose to cultivate, they do so at their own risk since the Kirama Oya water was sufficient only for one "water-shift" did not prevent 98 farmers from agitating for more water to save their budding rice cultivations. "One solution would be to construct Kekiri Ogoda reservoir for the Maha season," says A. A. P. Deshapriya, Irrigation Rehabilitation Engineer, Tangalle.
"The other is to rehabilitate the anicuts of Kirama Oya which now take as long as 45 minutes to open." Yet if rain does not fall within a month or two, crops have no chance of survival."We abandoned the field which fed us rice, to feed our cattle," said A. M. A. Ariyatilaka of Nala Gama commenting on his decision to a convert 10-acres of paddy land into grazing land, which was also a futile venture. Another abandoned 1,800 acreage, stretching to his left stood, in silent testimony. "Many of us trudge about 4 miles to the Tangalle town to bring well water for drinking and still haven't received any drought relief." H. Jayaweera of Veheragodella combats the drought by shifting his fields from paddy to banana. Every eight days, we get a two-day water supply from Chandrika Wewa. It just wets the field," he laments. "Banana needs water just once in 15 days and have a better chance of survival." U. G. Wijesiri, Grama Niladhari, Pahala Beragama of Hambantota, speaks of the two layers comprising the agro-based community in the dry zone. A unique symbiosis where one owns paddy land and buys from the other manual labour for cultivation, each nourishing the other. "The failure of rain has caused havoc to this system. "Labour has no market in June and July," Wijesiri says. "When its time to reap paddy, work is aplenty." In the dried-up Bundala Panu Wewa bed, villagers have dug wells for bathing, washing clothes and cooking utencils. "Elephants kneel and drink from the well," says A. G. Ranhamy, an aging mother from the Bundala village. "If we can't survive without our small cup of water, how badly must an elephant feel the need for water! There is no rain to feed the Bundala jungle.
Last time, when it rained, the Palu trees were full of Palu." "If there is rain, we can cultivate our own paddy and vegetables and that's enough for us," Ran Hamy says. "With peanuts, cowpie and maize, we can earn more. My four brothers used to cultivate my half an acre of paddy in the "Thattu Maru" system. Now my married son works at the Salterns and earns about Rs. 5,000 to keep me and his family of three surviving. Besides this, we get about Rs. 250 in Samurdhi stamps. Once the monthly loans are paid, hardly anything is left for us." Kumudini Premathilake of Red Cross, Hambantota Branch, said that they would be commencing a survey this week, to select 1,000 families requiring drought relief. We also gathered from the Divisional Secretariat, Hambantota, that the diversion of water from public canals for unauthorised cultivation could be a reason for the water shortages the authorised cultivations experience. Never has the need been more imperative for Government-driven long term solutions to minimise the effects of drought, and to preserve an occupational culture which has been the mainstay of Sri Lankan core-living. |
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