Orphaned by Drought and the State

By T S Sudhir

The sun has long set when I reach Ganesh's home in Marava hamlet, a 30 minute drive from Kadiri town. This is Anantapur district in Andhra Pradesh, that according to records is the second lowest rainfall receiving district in India after Jaisalmer in Rajasthan. Ganesh's parents migrated to Kerala in search of work ten days back and this 8th class dropout now works at a mango orchard, earning 150 rupees a day. With loneliness and tears for company, Ganesh sleeps on the street outside his home, under the night sky.

You realise he is still a child as he fights his tears, not comfortable showing his fears before a stranger. ``If they were here, I would have focused on my studies. They migrated because of our difficulties. When I come home, there is nothing to eat. I cannot cook so I eat whatever little I can make and go to sleep alone. I feel sad,'' says Ganesh.

In another hamlet Kareddipalli in Kadiri mandal, Seethamma is worried for her four grandsons and a granddaughter. Her two sons and daughters-in-law migrated to Kerala in March in search of work, leaving the frail woman with the responsibility of looking after the little ones, all of them between 3 and 11 years old.

This is the story of Anantapur, a land shunned by the elements and by its people. A survey by seven NGOs in May revealed that over 1000 children in 26 villages, have been left behind by their parents who have migrated out of Andhra Pradesh, a majority of them to Kerala, Bengaluru and the Gulf. They did so because rainfall last year in the district was 284 mm, compared to 722 mm in 2010-11. By April, over 40 per cent of the agricultural borewells in Anantapur had dried up and a severe drinking water shortage was reported in 70 per cent of the villages.

This is a humanitarian crisis because never before such a large number of homes have been populated only by minors.

Even Gods are not spared in this harsh land. The temple tank of the Sri Narasimha Swamy temple in Kadiri town is almost bone dry. Nor are VIP areas immune to the water crisis. Locals line up with their pots in the lane next to Kadiri MLA Chand Basha's residence in the town, shelling out six rupees for every pot of water. Anantapur Joint Collector TK Ramamani admits most of the borewells which were hired by the government for supply of drinking water to nearby villages, have dried up.

``The borewells worked only for two to three days. That is the drastic situation of groundwater,'' says Ramamani.

Anantapur reported crop loss to the extent of 4000 crore rupees in the 2016 kharif season, making agriculture a dead occupation. Lack of water, both for irrigation and drinking, and hardly any employment opportunities have translated into a mass exodus. It is estimated that close to 5 lakh people have migrated from Anantapur, most of them in the last 3 years. Anantapur's population according to the 2011 census was 40 lakh and this means nearly one-tenth of the district's population has migrated.

This summer of 2017 is being spoken of as the worst ever, coming as it does on the back of five years of consecutive severe drought. In fact, in the last two decades, 18 years have seen drought of varying degrees.

SM Basha, an activist with the Human Rights Forum asks if I can spot a bird in the sky. We look up and find none. ``There is no water for drinking or for cattle. You see, no bird is even visible in the sky. Even people with 50 acres of land are migrating. It is a pathetic situation,'' says Basha.

The plight of very young children left to fend for themselves is what makes the situation heart-rending. I meet Swapna, Jyoti and Geeta, all of them around 7 years old, who do not even know the name of the place in Kerala where their parents work.

Sudarshan Reddy, their teacher at Kareddipalli school say the children suffer huge emotional trauma.

``Sometimes they are not able to cook so they come to school on an empty stomach. Some children do not have even grandparents at home. For such children, there is no one to look after them even when they are unwell and sick. They cry a lot when their parents go away. They even run after the auto for up to a kilometre. So much trauma. Children really suffer, especially those who are only 5 to 6 years old,'' says Reddy.

It isn't easy for the parents either. Adilaxmi is a widow who works as labour at Ernakulam in Kerala. She has taken a break from work for a week to return home to her three young children, who live all by themselves in Kareddipalli. When she is away, the eldest, 12-year-old Syamulamma has to play the role of a mother, cook for her siblings, get them ready for school. Adilaxmi's phone number is written on the wall outside their home, for villagers to call her in case of an emergency.

``People know that the children stay alone without parents. That is why I get worried and came here now. I will go back in five days because here there is nothing to do,'' says Adilaxmi.

When I reach Kareddipalli, Syamulamma is in fact, just getting back from the ration shop, 3 km away. It is as if childhood has passed Syamulamma by. Forced to be an adult when she is not even a teenager yet, takes a physical and emotional toll on the child.

``I often break down and cry, when I can't cope and remember my mother. My sister is in class 5 and brother is in class 6,'' says Syamulamma.

With vacation time in school, there is no mid-day meal available for the children to eat. Instead the students get coupons that they need to exchange at the fair price shop, for designated amounts of grains and pulses and 15 eggs for 42 days. For children who stay alone and cannot cook, it often translates into sleeping on an empty stomach.

Hunger is a constant, unwanted companion in these parts.

Former IAS officer Jayaprakash Narayan calls converting an asset for society into a problem a sin. ``Either they will be completely malnourished and therefore underdeveloped as human beings physically, or there will be psychological scars of a kind that will make them dysfunctional in society and perhaps even violent and criminal. So we are destroying the children's future and creating a problem for society,'' says Narayan.

Joint collector Ramamani who took charge in Anantapur only this month is surprised to see how small the kids are, when I show her their photographs. She concedes no thought has gone into it and says anganwadi workers should have been drafted into the task during the summer break.

Human rights activists say the apathy of the government shows the children haven't just been left behind, they have been reduced to left overs.

``Today we have governments that pass a Bill on right to education, what about right to food?'' asks L Ravichander, Human rights activist. ``Are we getting into this western module that somewhere food is taken for granted and education is what we have to promise to the child. I would have thought that in the Indian context, right to food and right to human existence is far more important than anything and everything else.''

The political leadership comes up with textbook defence, which is out of sync with the situation on the ground. ``Chandrababu Naidu has released ads in Kerala papers, asking our people to return. We will give them jobs near home,'' says Chand Basha, MLA from Kadiri. He is one of the turncoat legislators who jumped from the YSR Congress to the ruling TDP.

At a gathering of children who live alone or with their aged grandparents in Kareddipalli, 13-year-old Shyamala sings a song remembering her father. It is rarely that children get to articulate their feelings of loneliness after parents go away in search of work. As she gives vent to her emotions, you realise that the neglect of Anantapur over the years by successive governments has created a generation of orphans of drought and apathy.

The children of a lesser God.

(Courtesy: Firstpost)