Mangror, Ropar, Punjab

Jasvir Singh is a busy man these days. Ever since it began raining last month, he and his family have not stopped planting. Paddy, sugarcane, maize, cattle fodder, what have you. And gleaming in their eyes is the hope of fulfilling their long-cherished dream of having a house of their own.

Their village Mangror in Ropar district falls in the Kandi belt in the Shivalik foothills. Groundwater levels have been falling alarmingly here in recent years, a main reason for this being the paddy crop which covers 60 per cent of the area during the kharif season. Add to this insufficient monsoons for the last two years. Traditional tubewells ran dry and farmers had to pump water through submersible pumps. These not only cost five times more to instal, the farmer needed generator sets to tide over the long power cuts.

This is exactly what happened to Jasvir last year. "Due to the prolonged dry spell, my 25-year-old tubewell ran dry." Due to the good price that paddy fetches, farmers like Jasvir—who owns eight acres—try to plant as much of it as possible during the kharif season. But last year Jasvir could plant paddy in just 1.5 acres and sugarcane in about three acres. And his purely rainfed tract of land in the foothills remained barren. "We found it difficult to pay the school fees for our two children. My husband has become a defaulter on his tractor loan he took two years ago," says Baljeet Kaur.

Now Jasvir has borrowed Rs 50,000 from the village cooperative society and installed a submersible pump. But the good news is that his new motor has been largely idle and he has been able to plant paddy, thanks to the rains. He has also been emboldened to take five acres of paddy on contract from a fellow villager to cultivate. He hopes to earn more than Rs 1,00,000 from this season's crop.

Jasvir epitomises the situation of the average Punjab farmer this year. Says Dr G.S. Nanda, director, research, Punjab Agriculture University, "The fallout of the good rains this year is that the area under paddy is going to go up." This may not be such good news for agronomists advocating a reduction in the area under rice to prevent further depletion of groundwater. But for Jasvir and his happy ilk, it's time to make good the losses of the last couple of years.