- Though the country witnessed more rain than expected in July, Jharkhand’s rainfall this year is still below normal.
- Of the ten droughts Jharkhand has declared in the last 25 years, Palamu has been hit hardest every time. A looming El Niño now threatens another failed season.
- Lift irrigation, canals and ponds built over five decades to drought-proof Palamu now lie broken, abandoned and unmonitored.
“This is all barren land now, but here we used to farm,” says Koushal Kishore Vishvakarma, a resident of Darudih village in Palamu district, Jharkhand, pointing to a long stretch of dry land spreading across the region. “It’s covered in grass because of the fresh monsoon rain, but it’s nothing more than grazing land now,” adds the 52-year-old farmer.
Twenty years ago, this was not the case in his village or the villages around it.
“Can you see that river there?” he says, standing at least a kilometre and a half away from a small perennial tributary. “From there, water used to come all the way here.”
Lift irrigation, once a lifeline
His village is one of many where a lift irrigation system once watered upland fields that gravity alone could not reach. These systems use pumps to draw water from rivers or reservoirs and carry it uphill.
“Ten surrounding villages benefited from it. Even in summer, people used to grow crops and vegetables,” he recalls. On his own 10 acres, he says, one year of farming used to produce enough food for two years, with more than 50 quintals left over to sell every year.
The system ran for just five years. Then a pipe was damaged, villagers say, and it was never repaired.
“Now we grow crops only in the rainy season, and only in the lowland paddy fields. No farming in rabi (season),” he says. “With great difficulty, we barely manage a little paddy.”
Even this is becoming difficult as Jharkhand has declared drought ten times in the past two and a half decades. The latest consecutive droughts, in 2023 and 2024, hit Palamu particularly hard.
“That year, the situation was so bad that almost everyone in the village migrated out for work,” Vishvakarma adds.
This year’s extreme heat has already impacted the few farmers who grow vegetables, damaging their crops. “Forget the days; we’ve never experienced nights this warm in summer,” he says.
A delayed, erratic monsoon is adding to the worry, along with the India Meteorological Department’s warning that the ongoing El Niño conditions are expected to strengthen further during the southwest monsoon season.
Infrastructure for climate resilience left to fail
The lift irrigation system in Vishvakarma’s village was one such policy, designed to keep water available through the agricultural season, or whenever rainfall fell short. It no longer works.
“Given the geography of Palamu and the Chotanagpur plateau, lift irrigation was a good scheme. It was a huge investment; we laid heavy metallic underground pipelines, one project serving multiple villages, but it was a total failure on the maintenance side,” says Shyam Bind, Soil Conservation Officer, Palamu. “Once a system is handed over, it’s either never maintained or the middleman takes all the money.”
The state has 17,285 surface water lift schemes but “this scheme is no more,” says Bind. Asked whether any records of these schemes exist in the district, he says there are none.
Lift irrigation was not the only response. “In 2015-16, we had a policy to build dobhas,” says Bind, referring to a small farm pond, about 20 feet by 20 feet and 12 feet deep. “The target was 3,624 in the district, and we built about 2,500. It was a one-time project and very successful,” he says.
But in Jharkhand, where most farmers are small and marginal with landholdings under two hectares, that too fragmented, one dobha often is not enough. When asked how many of the 2,500 dobhas still work, the department has no records. No audit has been done in the last ten years.
Bind admits that without maintenance, a dobha can fill with silt and stop holding water within two to three monsoons.
Between 2021 and 2026, Palamu built 321 larger ponds, each one to five acres in size, he says. But there is no plan to build new ponds. “This year, we are only reviving old ponds. We have one policy to build five check dams,” he says. He admits that if a strong El Niño hits, Palamu will be among the worst affected.
Mongabay-India visited one recently built pond in Basaura village, which was constructed in 2025. “We’ve built a well at the centre of this pond, so groundwater percolation improves, and there’s water even in peak summer,” says Bind. But the pond barely has any water. “Yes, the result is not as expected, because the groundwater is very low there, but in two to three years it will revive.”
A history written in drought
The pattern was old. In 1966, the undivided state of Bihar was hit by famine; it was one of the worst droughts of the century. More than 48,000 villages faced famine, and 18,000 villages suffered acute water shortages. Nearly 10 million cultivators and agricultural labourers lost their livelihoods. Among all 17 districts of (then) Bihar affected, Palamu was among the hardest hit.
“We survived by eating dry-ber (Indian jujube); there was nothing to eat,” says Shrikrishna Oraon, 72, a resident of Budhibir village in Palamu district.
The government’s response was a massive water management drive. It dug kutcha wells, bored tubewells, ponds, check dams and minor irrigation works, aiming to provide every village with a reliable drinking water source within 1.5 kilometres.
“That’s when people started digging this ahara (pond),” recalls Oraon. “My elder brother was among those who worked there. People weren’t paid in cash. They received five kilos of grain, mostly bajra and sorghum. Wheat was almost unheard of.”
The water shortage was so acute, he recalls, there was just one well in the entire village. “Many ponds were dug around here,” recalls Oraon. “But no wells were built in this area then.”
Standing beside the ahara, he points to the surrounding paddy fields. “None of this was farmland back then. Farmers grow paddy here today because of this pond.”
In the 1970s, the centre launched the Drought Prone Areas Programme (DPAP), promoting watershed development, irrigation and soil conservation in drought-hit regions like Palamu. Since 2005, much of this work has continued under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).
The 2017–18 Irrigation Census records 160,077 dug wells, 3,340 tubewells, 71,961 surface-flow schemes across Jharkhand, along with 2,792 water conservation and recharge structures, including ponds and aharas.
There is no consolidated district-wise data, says Land Conservation Officer Bind. Under MGNREGA, Palamu has built several pieces of drought-proofing infrastructure, including more than 3,000 personal wells, a dozen community irrigation wells, and hundreds of farm ponds and check dams.
Waterless canal
The dry canal cutting through Chiyanki village is another reminder of Palamu’s long search for water.
It is part of the Mandal Dam project, launched in the 1970s to irrigate hundreds of villages across Palamu, Garhwa and Aurangabad. Decades later, much of the canal network remains dry despite hundreds of crores spent on the project.
“If water flowed through this canal, all this land would be under cultivation,” says Basant Singh, a resident of Chiyanki village, showing a long stretch of fields. The 55-year-old farmer says, “Many families settled here hoping irrigation would transform agriculture. It never did.”
Today, Singh says, farming in the village has shrunk to less than half of what it once was. Two of his sons now work as daily-wage labourers in Bengaluru. “I’d say one out of every four men from this village has migrated,” he says.
Despite decades of investment in canals, wells, ponds and lift irrigation schemes, nearly 92% of Jharkhand’s farmland remains dependent on rainfall. In Palamu, less than 5% of agricultural land is irrigated, according to Akhilesh Saha, Deputy Director of Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Palamu.
“To a great extent, the government has addressed drinking water shortages,” says Saha. “But irrigation remains a major challenge. And when the crops fail, it directly impacts food security.”
When even the monsoon fails
Even where irrigation never arrived, farmers could once rely on the monsoon. Today, that too is becoming less dependable.
The India Meteorological Department has warned that the ongoing El Niño could strengthen into a strong El Niño later this year, raising the risk of below-normal rainfall across parts of India. For Palamu, where most farmland still depends on rain, another weak monsoon could deepen an already fragile situation.
The signs are already visible. Between June 1 and August 4, Palamu received 48% less rainfall than normal.
The delay has almost brought paddy sowing to a standstill. By July 21 last year, farmers had completed 107% of the district’s sowing target. Around the same date this year, they had managed less than one percent.
“There is still time for sowing,” says Saha. “But if rainfall doesn’t improve soon, this year’s crop will be drastically affected.”
The department’s own records point to a longer-term shift. “Over the last 20 years, annual rainfall has declined and the number of rainy days has fallen from around 90 to about 50,” Saha says.
The changing climate is already reshaping agriculture. “Paddy was once grown across all categories of farmland in Jharkhand. Today, around 150,000 hectares have shifted to maize, pigeon pea and coarse grains.”
“If the government’s warning of a strong El Niño proves true, we might not get rainfall in the coming months or during the return monsoon, which could lead to drought. The next few months of data are very crucial,” he says.
The agriculture department has prepared a contingency plan. If sowing is delayed beyond July, farmers are advised to switch to short-duration paddy varieties. If they miss the sowing window altogether, officials recommend pulses and oilseeds instead.
Saha says a similar strategy helped during the 2024 drought. But when asked how many farmers adopted it, he says the department has no estimate. He also points to crop diversification and free seed distribution as ways to help farmers adapt.
Basant Singh says he never saw that support reach his village. “I don’t know anyone here who received those seeds,” he says with certainty. “We had two years of drought in a row. It got so bad there wasn’t even any grass for the cattle.”
Back in Darudih, Koushal Kishore Vishvakarma walks across the same stretch of land where this story began. “If the rains come on time, we can somehow survive. If they don’t, there is nothing we can do.”
After six decades of drought-proofing programmes, from wells and aharas to lift irrigation schemes, ponds, canals and check dams, farming in Palamu still depends on a single question: Will the rains arrive?
Banner image: A pond recently dug by the government in Palamu. When Mongabay-India visited in late July, the pond held little water. Image by Ashwini Kumar Shukla.
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