Humla. Hundreds of hectares of farmland in Humla are still dry even as Shrawan begins. Although the seeds of paddy and millet are ready, there is no water in the fields. Farmers keep looking at the sky as if they are farmers. Farmers who grow paddy based on monsoon are disappointed after there was no rain this year.

Farmers from Adanchuli rural municipality say, ‘The seeds are ready to sow paddy and millet, the seeds have sprouted, but there is no water. There is also no water source for the canal. We are living on water from the sky.’

Farmers here say that the problem is due to the lack of good rainfall throughout Asar and the lack of alternative irrigation plans. Although there are irrigation canals in most places, they were damaged by the floods that occurred last Baisakh. After the rivers rose due to water from the sky, only weeds have grown in the canals made for sowing fields with the water from the same river. The plans are mostly individual. There are no irrigation plans.

In Adanchuli Rural Municipality, the federal, provincial and local governments allocate crores of rupees for development plans every year, but the budget is being spent on individual walls, gates, motorable roads and colored boards. But there is no plan or program to bring water to the farmland. Even though there is an embankment in the name of the river, the federal and provincial governments have made and implemented plans such as building their own land and walls, and fencing individual farms.

‘The seeds have started to dry up because they cannot plant rice, millet and other crops. There is no greater torture for farmers than this. There is no water in the fields, no one pays attention to it,’ said local Lalit Budha. The rural municipality has made public the budget for ‘modernization in agriculture’. Viable plans such as solar pumps, deep boring or construction and repair of canals are still stuck in the file.

‘The fields are drying up, the voices of the farmers are not heard. Seed distribution and an unorganized irrigation system have caused problems,’ he said. (RSS)