In 12 states there are 299 districts which have been declared by their state governments as affected by drought.
We know which districts these are, and the central and state governments have announced repeatedly since September 2009 what measures are being taken to lessen the impacts of crop losses and livelihood shock.
What I failed to see in all forms of reportage on the subject was: how many people are affected? There was no mention in the government bulletins, there has been no estimate made by the agri academic network, and of course the media won't make the effort.
It has proven tedious, finding the numbers and working on them, but the result is a shock: at least 459 million!
They may not all be people belonging to rural farming households, but there is a very good likelihood that in their families, there is at least one direct way in which they are linked to cultivation, livestock, agri inputs or selling produce.
It is an enormous number, and the surprise is that we haven't seen it yet, even at state level. The data comes from the Census Bureau, using the 2001 district rural population totals and using an annual inflator for the period 2001-2011 provided by the Bureau.
The rest was a matter of getting the list of district names to match the 'drought' districts.
Here is the state list:
| Andhra Pradesh | 60,192,000 |
| Assam | 25,484,000 |
| Bihar | 56,155,518 |
| Himachal Pradesh | 5,944,000 |
| Jharkhand | 23,547,000 |
| Karnataka | 28,599,566 |
| Maharashtra | 53,560,803 |
| Manipur | 1,775,000 |
| Madhya Pradesh | 35,442,875 |
| Nagaland | 1,818,000 |
| Rajasthan | 42,943,833 |
| Uttar Pradesh | 124,236,290 |
| Total 299 districts | 459,698,885 |
And here is a list of 25 districts with the highest rural populations among the 299:
| District 2009 | %age of rural | ||
| St. | District | rural popn | popn in dist. |
| UP | Allahabad | 4,296,930 | 75.55 |
| UP | Azamgarh | 4,197,028 | 92.45 |
| UP | Jaunpur | 4,173,584 | 92.60 |
| AP | East Godavari | 4,073,785 | 76.50 |
| BIH | Muzaffarpur | 3,888,762 | 90.70 |
| UP | Sitapur | 3,672,037 | 88.05 |
| UP | Sultanpur | 3,528,704 | 95.26 |
| MAH | Ahmadnagar | 3,466,428 | 80.11 |
| AP | Guntur | 3,454,328 | 71.20 |
| UP | Hardoi | 3,446,228 | 88.01 |
| BIH | Gaya | 3,430,031 | 86.30 |
| AP | Mahbubnagar | 3,414,341 | 89.43 |
| KAR | Belgaum | 3,388,382 | 75.97 |
| BIH | Saran | 3,375,774 | 90.81 |
| AP | West Godavari | 3,316,613 | 80.26 |
| MAH | Nashik | 3,272,912 | 61.20 |
| MAH | Pune | 3,246,651 | 41.92 |
| UP | Ghazipur | 3,231,019 | 92.32 |
| AP | Chittoor | 3,188,642 | 78.35 |
| UP | Kushinagar | 3,180,853 | 95.42 |
| BIH | Patna | 3,154,918 | 58.43 |
| AP | Krishna | 3,090,369 | 67.92 |
| RAJ | Jaipur | 3,072,489 | 50.64 |
| AP | Nalgonda | 3,058,764 | 86.68 |
| AP | Karimnagar | 3,056,271 | 80.56 |
When the central and state administrations roll out their drought management programmes, you would expect them to have in mind the number of people, block by block and tehsil by tehsil, they need to reach. I find it disturbing that the language emerging from the drought-control measures has, with a few exceptions only, been focused on "saving rabi" and "shortfalls". What about the people?
- rahul.goswami's blog
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How does this large number 459 million compare
Are we saying that the number of people affected by drought is FAR MORE than the population of the world's third most populated country? This is HUGE!
and it is shocking to se the apathy of the media nd government. How can we get people to sit up and notice this?