Deluge of Despair

In drought-prone Marathwada, too much rain has left farmers ruined and the State groping for answers.

The long monsoon is turning cruel for the Marathwada region in central Maharashtra, which is more accustomed to parched earth than flooded fields. Between June and September this year, the rains poured down 32 percent heavier than usual, swamping crops and sweeping away livelihoods. What was meant to be the lifeline of the kharif season has instead become its undoing. The State Revenue Department pegs the damage at more than Rs. 8,500 crore ($1 billion).

The scale of destruction is sobering. Of the 48 lakh hectares sown this year across Marathwada’s eight districts, 21 lakh hectares lie devastated. Soybean, the region’s prime cash crop, has fared worst: nearly half of its 12 lakh hectares are under water. Cotton, spread across 8.5 lakh hectares, has seen 3 lakh hectares damaged. Tur (pigeon pea), a staple pulse, has lost nearly 2 lakh hectares. Even resilient staples like maize and jowar are wilting on 2.5 lakh hectares. Latur and Beed, infamous for farmer suicides in past droughts, now find themselves the epicentre of excess with crops on nearly 9 lakh hectares destroyed between them.

For the region’s 7.8 lakh farming families, the deluge has not just drowned crops but also hopes. Many are now without an income. Labourers, dependent on seasonal farm work, find no employment. The rural credit cycle which has long been stretched thin by debt has been thrown into utter disarray. Farmers complain that the crop insurance payouts for 2024 have yet to arrive, adding to panic and despair. In tea stalls and village chaupals, anger simmers as much as grief.

Marathwada has long been India’s shorthand for agrarian distress. From the severe droughts of the 1970s and 1980s to the spate of farmer suicides that earned international headlines in the 1990s and 2000s, the region has often been a case study in the state’s failure to build resilience. The same districts that once pleaded for tankers in the summer are now gasping under floodwaters, a cruel inversion of fortune.

This sense of betrayal is not new. Marathwada’s farmers have long walked the razor’s edge of climate extremes: recurring drought, failing borewells and meagre state support. Now the pendulum has swung the other way, but the result is the same - ruin. The irony of a drought-prone region being ravaged by too much water underscores the volatility of India’s monsoons, which climate scientists warn are becoming increasingly erratic.

The demands are predictable. Farmer unions insist on immediate compensation, quick settlement of insurance claims and loan waivers. Some have pressed for free seeds and fertilisers ahead of the rabi season to salvage what remains of the year. While such relief is urgent, it is merely palliative.

Unless serious structural reforms are undertaken, the cycle of boom and bust will only tighten its grip over the benighted region. For the State government, the crisis presents a double bind. Immediate relief must be rushed to villages to prevent social unrest and migration. But the long-term challenge is far harder: how to make Marathwada’s agriculture resilient to a climate that no longer behaves. That will require more than handouts. It demands serious investment in better irrigation, diversification away from water-guzzling crops like sugarcane, stronger crop insurance systems that actually deliver, and rural infrastructure that can withstand both drought and deluge.

Farmer suicides in Marathwada have long scarred Maharashtra’s politics. The ruling Mahayuti coalition well knows the political consequences of failing to provide timely relief. Unfortunately, history suggests a familiar cycle of hurried compensation packages announced with fanfare which are usually followed by slow relief measures. Frequently, regardless of the party (ies) in power, structural reforms are postponed until the next disaster.

The broader lesson extends beyond Marathwada. India’s agriculture, which employs nearly half the population, remains perilously dependent on the vagaries of the monsoon. While the country has grown adept at managing droughts, floods remain less predictable and more destructive. As climate change intensifies, the risk of such ‘wet droughts’ will rise. Policy, however, remains rooted in firefighting rather than foresight.

Marathwada’s latest tragedy is therefore both local and national. It is a reminder that India’s climate vulnerabilities are not confined to Himalayan glaciers or coastal cyclones, but are also playing out in the dry heartlands of Maharashtra. Unless governments build systems that buffer rural economies from such shocks, each season will bring with its harvest of sorrow.

(The writer is a farmer and resident of Latur district. Views personal.)