Drought strikes Thanjavur district in Tamil Nadu

Starvation in Thanjavur? The very idea should have been unthinkable in Tamil Nadu's famed rice-bowl. But the great drought of 1987 has not spared this district either. With the earth parched and dry as dust, there has been little sowing this year.

Neither has there been any work for the district's six lakh landless agricultural labourers. There is rice in the district's grain markets, but its price has shot up from Rs 2.50 to Rs 4 per kg, and the poor of Thanjavur have no money. After eight months of struggle, the daily battle to survive is beginning to take its toll.

The Harijans in Agaranirmala village have been forced to catch rats, crabs and snails, which they fry with a sprinkling of oil. Some even sell the rats, at 50 paise a kg, but as demand has increased, the price has doubled to a rupee. Many have been forced to begin eating roots, leaves and wild berries.

Villagers digging for rats to eat

There have been reports of starvation deaths too. In Sadayam Kottagam village, in Nagapattinam taluk, 60-year-old Raman Veeramuthu had not eaten for three days, then stumbled and fell while trying to cut down a tree which could have been sold as firewood. He fell against a stone, was injured, fainted and was soon dead - either from the injury or accumulated weakness, or both.

At Serankulam village in Vedaranyam taluk, three-year-old Vetriselvi died in August after prolonged hunger, dysentery and a diet of leaves and roots. Her father, 30-year-old farm labourer Ratnam Nagooran, searched everywhere for work that would fetch the money with which he could buy food for his daughter, but he had very little luck. When Vetriselvi got dysentery, he rushed her to the local doctor, but after a few days she died.

And in the remote Pirinjamulai village in Thiruthuraipoondi taluk, the villagers talk of the death from starvation of 60-year-old Govanna Adiyappa Poriyaru who, along with his wife and niece, had been eking out an existence on an old-age pension of Rs 35 a month. His widow Muthamma is now ill too, and is in hospital.

There is no proper medical record of what exactly happened to Poriyaru, or to Vetriselvi; and District Collector M. Ramu denies that the deaths have been because of starvation. "Deaths owing to other natural causes were mistaken or were even deliberately portrayed as due to starvation," he said. But the real plight of the people is such that they either live or die in conditions of virtual starvation.

In the initial stages, the villagers had sold what jewellery they had, and then they pawned even their few brass and copper vessels.

Said Sana Neelamegam, a pawnbroker in Arunthavambulam village: "The villagers have been so desperate that they have sold me their vessels for 50 paise a kg." In the next stage, the villagers started hacking down trees to sell as firewood.

The tree-felling assumed such widespread dimensions that the price of wood crashed. Then came the resort to catching and selling rats. Said V. Thangayyan, vice-president of the Sadayam Kottagam village panchayat: "No one can help even the worst-affected families because all of us barely manage to subsist."

The collector says the district administration has provided 2.34 million man-days of work through various drought relief programmes this year. But even he admits that the people in the district face extreme difficulty in earning their livelihood because of the drought.

Felling trees: in dire straits

Last fortnight, the rains came to Thanjavur, and water was finally released into irrigation canals from the Mettur dam. But the landowners in the district decided to go ahead with direct sowing instead of transplantation.

This means that farm labourers will get only a week's work instead of two months. Then they will have to wait for the harvest season for the next round of work. Rain or no rain, the hard times will continue.