BARH, UTTAR PRADESH: In central India, the worst affected area in the drought, one of the biggest impacts has been migration of farm labour. In a region that has recieved less than half its average annual rainfall, thousands of people, mostly young men, have fled to the cities looking for work. UTVi found that in Bundlekhand, they have left behind endless empty homes and hungry mouths.
Empty houses in barren fields this is a typical farm these days in Bundlekhand, the heart of central India that has seen the worst ravages of the drought House after house desolate because the farm labourers who lived here have fled gone to hunt for work in cities.
More than 50,000 people, according to our assesment, have fled from the Bundlekhand area alone, they mostly go to the nearby towns like Gwalior, Indore, Jhansi even as far as Delhi and Mumbai crowding the already bursting cities.
Most of those who have fled, have left behind women and children.
The fall out of this kind of migration is the terrible side-effect as it were of the drought disease. Migration is one of the glaring evidence of the human impact of drought on a rain-fed agrarian economy that contributes a fifth of GDP but brings livelihood to two thirds of the more than billion Indians.
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