The annual seasonal migration in search of employment, common in large swathes of drought-prone Maharashtra, is more acute this year than ever before. The village economy is facing crisis following the two droughts and a
hailstorm.
“In our villages, drought is now experienced as an inability to live here any longer,” laments Kesarbai Mulay, in her late 40s. “Life as we know it is coming to an end in the village.” Five hundred to six hundred people left the village in the last couple of months, she says. “Weddings in our families were cancelled, either because there’s no money or because girls don’t want to marry into drought-hit villages. They’ll prefer a labourer in a city to a man with a few acres of land here.” Her nephew Datta Mulay, in his late 20s, tried to make it in the city, going as far as Pune and Mumbai after his wedding was called off.
“They make you work 12-14 hours in the city, and the pay is Rs 8,000 a month. I couldn’t do it,” he says, adding that those without any cushion stayed back for the paltry pay and back-breaking hours, and are unlikely to come back and face creditors any time soon . – See more at:
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