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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

As crops and jobs dry up, kids in Marathwada the worst hit -Priyanka Kakodkar

-The Times of India

BEED: Ahead of Republic Day, students of the Kotan zilla parishad school are busy preparing to write an essay on the searing drought that has engulfed their village and the state. When asked what she will say, Pratiksha Pachpute breaks down.

“If there was no drought,” says the 14-yearold, her face stained with tears, “my parents would still be with me.” Life has changed for the 8th standard student after her parents migrated, like most farmers in her village in Beed district, to the sugarcane factories of western Maharashtra and Karnataka. They left shortly before Diwali, seasonal migrants who will cut cane there for six months. Most huts in the village are deserted, their wooden doors bolted. Only the elderly and children have been left behind, with a few sacks of grain and some money. “Usually, 50% of our village of 2,300 migrates. This year, it is 80%. Both crops were ruined and there is no work under the employment guarantee scheme,” says Kotan sarpanch Mahesh Khengre.

Pratiksha and her younger brother have been left with their grandparents. The children wake up 5 am to scour the nearby wells for water for at least two hours. Then it is a one-hour walk to the school. After the day ends by 4.30pm, Pratiksha heads home to do the cooking. “If my parents were there, I would have more time to study,” says the teenager who dreams of becoming an engineer. Now she is not sure she will be able to finish school.

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