Effects of drought get magnified because we have failed to manage our village ecosystems. Rural poor of India survive on bio-mass: grasses, twigs, leaves, animal dung, crop residue. Lack of water can be disastrous.

Over the last century, individuals and communities have steadily given over their role to state. This in turn led to a high cost of water supply with repair and maintenance being almost nil. Plus, people lost interest in using water carefully.

Moreover, local technologies of using rainwater have disappeared, and exploitation of rivers and groundwater (through wells and tubewells) has become the key source of water. If you keep on exploiting groundwater without recharging it, groundwater tables begin to fall rapidly. This is a serious problem, which becomes an emergency in a year when rains are lower than normal, almost like spending continuously without saving. If the regular flow of income stops, you are dead.

Farmers committing suicide due to crop failures in Indian villages are quite common now. In times of extreme crisis, tribals of Rajasthan eat chapatti of a grass called godra. This drought has not even spared the grass. In a bad year, farmers in Madhya Pradesh migrate to Malwa region to grow Soya Bean. This year, even this crop failed. From Orissa came the reports of 61 starvation deaths. Godowns of the Food Corporation of India have been attacked in Jaipur and Chiru. Several people were killed recently when police fired live ammunition at a crowd that had blocked a highway for a water-tanker. In Kashmir, reduction in fruit production resulted in a financial loss of Rs. 303 crore, adding the final nail to the coffin of the state's economy.
Of 60 million people in the five worst affected states, approximately 9 million are children and 1.2 million are pregnant women. The immediate short-term measures by help agencies include water tankers, setting up of wells and hand pumps, purification of water sources, surface water storage, water purification tablets, vitamin A and oral rehydration salts.

"The main survival strategy today is labour migration. Of the 5,229 families residing in 65 survey hamlets in Rajasthan, 2,318 men and 1,412 women have migrated for work. There are more than 500 cases of entire families leaving their homes. This is particularly alarming, since family migration tends to be associated with extreme distress", says Jean Dreze of the Delhi School of Economics.

The animals as usual come last. When people are dying of starvation, where do they get fodder to feed their animals? No fodder is given to goats and sheep as 'these are unimportant
animals'.

Drowned in debt. Price of animals are low and not much harvest has been done. It is difficult to see how people are going to repay loans taken.

School perhaps lags behind the animals. Most children of drought-affected areas do not see the inside of a schoolroom because of migration.

Inequality everywhere. In Taranagar, there are three taps with potable water but Dalits take brackish water from another one. "Water is distributed in a highly unequal way. Big dams have been built to divert water to big factories, while the villages are starved of water," says Sheikh Ansaar, an activist of the Chattisgarh Mukti Morcha. "The water of tanks is used only by the big land owners," says Ramesh Singh, a landless peasant of Raipur district. The average water got by a person per day in a rural drought-prone area is zero to six litres. Compare this to the average of 220 litres, 190 litres, 155 litres and 70 litres got by each person in Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai.