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Dying silently in Bundelkhand's drought -Supriya Sharma

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Dry ponds have become the graveyard of dead animals. Governments are neither counting the dead, nor helping those still alive.

It breathed its last on the morning of April 20. Its tiny legs collapsed as it inched close to a handpump near the village temple.

Villagers took the body away.

The calf lay on the dry bed of the village pond in Achchara in Madhya Pradesh's Tikamgarh district, one of the 13 districts of Bundelkhand, the arid region in the grip of one of its worst droughts.

“When drinking water is scarce for people,” said Munna Ahirwar, a resident of the village, “who has the capacity to fill water for the animals?”

The farmer said half a dozen cows in the village had died by falling into wells.

As drought intensifies in Bundelkhand, farmers in the region have been releasing their cattle in the wild. This is an old tradition called anna pratha.

Every year, said farmers, the cattle would come back. But this year, thirsty animals are dying, often just when their search for water ends.

While many ponds in the region have dried up, some have small patches of moist earth. For frail animals, the patches are quicksands, said Ravi Tomar, an activist with the non-profit Parmarth. Their legs get stuck. Unable to extricate themselves, they collapse and die.

Abhishek Mishra, an activist in Mahoba district in Uttar Pradesh told Mint that 3,000 animals had died in that district alone.

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