NAGAPATTINAM, India (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Vinod Kumar remembers a time, not so long ago, when the fields in his village in the southern state of Tamil Nadu were green all year round.
In Nagapattinam, in the Cauvery river delta region of southeast India, drought and irregular rainfall have blighted lives for about a decade now.
Now, as the water table falls from overuse, he is only able to pump enough water to cultivate half his land. Lush green rice paddies lie on one side of the road, barren fields on the other.
“Today, you have to pay more, go 200-250 feet to hit water. Plus there are barely any men left here to work on the fields,” he said.
Still, tens of millions of people – mostly young men – have moved to cities for work in the last decade, analysts estimate, leaving behind women and children and the elderly to eke out a living from the land.
His family, like hundreds of other low-caste families in the district, does not own any land of its own.
We can no longer depend on the land like we used to,” he said on a visit home, to a modest hut by the side of a dry irrigation ditch.