Water scarcity is often the reason for conflict among different communities .

The yatra team ,after a series of meetings and discussions with local communties found that a proper management of water is urgently required.The team witnessed many traditional systems of water conservation.Growing needs , and depleting water resources both call for local water management.
In Andhra pradesh and Tamilnadu the local community is using local water bodies for irrigation and other purposes.They used to have ponds , through which the rain water is conserved and havested.

Andhra Pradesh was known for its traditional water bodies at one point of time .Today large number of such bodies have vanished .
In Adilabad district there were at least 350 ponds but today only 10 are left.The water bodies are managed by the local people only.
Village Etchora in Adilabad have the total supply of water through ponds . No pump or machinery is used.The ponds catered needs of the vilage.Another important thing that was noticed was traditionally 10% of the total produce of the village was used for the to maintenance school and other community institutions.There was a “community system”.Later when Britishers entered the village and introduced the Patta system.This broke the community system of the village.

Similarly in Mysore there were around 50,000 small and big ponds.The community in the District still believe in the tarditional system and at one of the village the villagers were digging the pond with the help of cattle and it was also decided whosover from the village goes to the site should dig it .A community approach was seen here.Moeover there was a concept of plantation around such water bodies “Nirmal Shrubs” as they are called were palnted around, so as keep the surrounding clean.

At another place a chain of ponds was catering the local water needs.The ponds were made in way that, allows excess water from one pond to flow naturally through a trench into the next one . Thus, rainwater flows horizontally, at lower velocity, with minimum degradation of silt.

Yatra team found that Andhra Pradesh and Tamil nadu has impressive local water harvesting systems. When the country is facing water crisis and it is only going to worsen in future, an initiative to conserve and harvest water by traditional methods can be a good and a sustainable solution.

Brick making in agricultural fields..More and more farmers in MP are turning to brick making.The reason?Not enough water for irrigation and the agri produce do not fetch enough money .

The food is fallng short for the uncontrolable and ever increasing population of the country .As far as food is concerned the rich is getting whatever he can think of whereas the deprived community is still restricted to simple Dal –Roti .The condition of both farmer and farming is alarmingly unhealthy. The growing agrarian crisis is giving a clear signal of the food scarcity in the days to come. A major portion of the population in the underdeveloped nations is mal nourished. Especially the children aged 5 years or less. In fact their nutritional levels are shamelessly comparable to children in Eithopia. Human development report 2007-08 predicts worse situation in the time to come. According to this report climate change is impacting one in nineteen people in developing nations and only one in 1500 people in developed world .The nation which claims to have an economic boom with a pretty good, organized and stable political situation there are still people who sleep without food, die of starvation and children are mal nourished .It is just not sad but unfortunate.

Climate change is going to reduce the agriculture up to 40% and it will lead to less food and growing resentment among the deprived section of the society .The resentment often leads to what we term as ‘Terrorism or naxalism’. A deprived person will have no choice but to snatch things from the so called rich section of the society. Taking example of water ,nobody thought that a day will come when it will sold .Today we have packaged water and what not .If this can happen with water why cant it happen with food. We already have a number of packaged food in the market and cost is going to rise in future.

Thus,there is an urgent need to re launch agriculture and revive the policies so that it addresses to the growing needs of the country. One important thing is to take the climatic advantage and go for ecological farming.

Agriculture Education : Social Respect

"Agriculture should be included in the school curriculum"-this has been felt by a number of people that yatris have interacted with on the way.It is a general opinion that if agriculture is introduced to the farmers in the early stage it will develop their interest in the subject. Especially the student s who come from agriculture families will venture into the field with greater confidence of making it big with their expertise and knowledge .
Today the farmer do not want his kids to continue farming as it doesnt fetch good money.Most of them also feel that in this Agrarian country farmers are not respected and are among the ones who are ignored the most.

At some places teh situation is worst .The social impact of the agarian crises can be very well explained by this fact that the farmers are not getting brides because no one wants to marry a farmer who is poor, debt ridden and doesnot own land.This was a serious issue in Tamilnadu.

A Journey Tough – Tougher

As the yatra is in Dhoulpur today ,all charged up and with so much to share .The journey has not been very easy (as expected) but team managed it all and supported each other well.The weather, winds ,all came on one side to make the route more difficult.The elevation through out made things little problematical .The yatris had slogans like Ghat started and Ghat ended that they used to tell the fellow men know that here comes elevation and 'Thank god the elevation is over' And there were more than 100 such ghats. Another problem was water.Few members of the team including the leader Dr.Joshi ,fell ill with Diarrhoea.The water consumed from different sources caused this .DrJoshi fell ill for about a week but that didnot deter him or other yatris from continuing the march.Dehydration was another problem faced by the yatris as the hot weather persisted throughout the route.

The team depended least on the organisers as they arranged for their stay themselves.As far as the food was concerned the yatri's collected the ration from the community on the way .What ever they could get they cooked themselves.Though organisers were always a support but the team was managing by its own.

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