ನೀರು ಜೀವನ – Water is Life

Team Pondzee Scheme’s (Cameron, Meagan, Wenesso, and Ayan) last week in the field was fruitful as it was chai-infused. Unsurprisingly, surveying farmers in the Kanakapura Taluk, the Indian equivalent to a county, was chock full of stimulating cultural experiences, stunning tropical landscapes, and comprehensive data collection with the aim of evidence-based policy recommendations. Our Taluk is further afield from Bangalore than most of the others, but its distance rewards you with some of the most beautiful landscape in Karnataka, which somehow manages to effortlessly resemble a tropical Tuscany.

We are here to survey farmers to evaluate the effectiveness of the Krishi Baghya scheme, (KBS) a project to mitigate climate change’s impact on crop yields. However, the farmers we visited this last week shared with us more than just water storage data. We shared stories about family, laughs, freshly cut-flowers for the festival, and of course the ritualistic chai. The warmth of the chai opening up even hesitant-elders and children alike, many of whom had yet to meet a foreign national.

The warm smiles and light-heartedness typical of Kannadigas waned, however, with every mention of a failed borewell or the rains that did not come, leaving struggling farmers holding nothing, or worse yet, debt from seeds too dry to sprout. Groundwater is rapidly diminishing because of overuse. The once predictable Southern India monsoon is growing erratic due to climate change. As such Kanakapura’s farmers rely heavily on borewells. Despite our Taluk being the most well-off, the income loss due to crop failure, was a major challenge for beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of the KBS.  

We found that education, across all Taluks, was the most significant factor in determining whether or not farmers availed the KBS, coming ahead of income in significance. We also found that beneficiaries of the scheme diversified their crops, which buttressed income against total crop failure. We observed a healthy mix of locally adapted crops, such as ragi and millet – which required less water, and more lucrative crops such as mangoes, coconuts, or mulberry. These are just some of our preliminary findings, which will be fleshed out in our memorandums for Karnataka State Department of Agriculture.

We also had a woman farmer, Pushpa, who defied the statistics. Without any formal education, she had managed to purchase a 3 acre farm on her own. She now grows roses and with the farm revenue, she employs many local women in the village. Even without roses, the farm was stunning. Her farmpond was an economic lifesaver, allowing her to invest in better crops and farm infrastructure. We were in luck. We came the day before a large festival, so there were many women working the fields picking roses – the beauty of the roses harmonizing perfectly with their brightly colored saris.

Southern Kanakapura is very close to Mysore, a majestic city know for the opulence of the maharaja during the Raj, as well as it is known for sericulture. Many beneficiaries grow mulberry, the small bush which the silk worms crave, in order to produce silk and sell in the bustling and ancient silk markets in Mysore. We were fortunate to see these worms at every stage of our visits throughout the Taluk.

All good things must end, and our incredibly stirring and productive time in the field has drawn to an end. We’ve learned that collecting data should not be a robotic process. Yes, we needed strong, clean survey answers to make our analysis relevant, but stories, smiles, and chai-time matters just as much. It’s in those stories that data comes to life. The prosaic saying that water is life ever rings true in the rich fields of Kanakapura, fields which are made more resilient because of the KBS. ನೀರು ಜೀವನ