Tur dal? We haven't eaten it for several months," says Ganesh Jahangir Pawar, 50, a two-acre farmer in Wardha's Amgaon-Khadi village. The only time in the last one year that he bought tur was during Diwali. "Only a quarter kg."
But of late, he has not been able to buy food grain at all. He will need a thousand rupees a month, he says, to feed his family of six, including four children, to meet their minimum nutritional requirements.
Already heavily in debt, Pawar is broke and has no work to fall back upon. His family, he says, is eating much less. "Rice and dal are out of question," says his wife Alka. "So are sugar and milk."
His helpful neighbour, Sudam Pawar, 35, lends him sorghum flour to keep the family afloat. Other villagers give them various vegetables.
Pawar sits staring vacantly at his infertile farm — land that he's left for cattle to graze on. "Soybean failed, Jowar failed, Tur failed too." He says he's indebted to his villagers who are feeding him.
It's more or less the same story in every household of his village, says Sudam Pawar. "Most of us are in bad shape."
Farm experts and food analysts say that spiraling food prices, which coincide but not necessarily correlate with an unprecedented drought in some parts and flash floods in others, have left the agrarian masses desperate.
According to the latest government data, prices of rice and wheat increased by 12 percent and 7 per cent respectively over the last 12 months, while that of pulses rose by 23 per cent, onion by 50 per cent and potatoes by a whopping 100 per cent.
Delhi-based food analyst Devinder Sharma says there is no reason why food prices should rise phenomenally. Hoarding of food grain, he says, is rampant. "The union agriculture minister says prices will rise and the next day the prices go up." Inflation, he says, has links with the GDP. When everything is down, the price rise keeps GDP in good health. The government, he says, owes answers.
If the city dwellers are fuming at rising food prices, the farming population across Vidarbha is terrified at what lies in store for them until the next monsoon.
"It's seven months to go before the next farming season," says Vijay Jawandhia, a farmers' leader in Wardha. But the seven months, he says with concern, will be the countryside's excruciating test. "This is one of the worst drought years."
Jawandhia might not be wrong in his assessment. All the major river basins are dry. According to the irrigation and water supply agencies, several dam storages are just about 30 per cent of their capacity. And major crops, like soybean and cotton in Vidarbha, have failed. Topping it all are the high food prices.
"We are eating what even pigs won't," says Subhadrabai Gunwanta Pawar, 60, in Dhamni, about 13 km from Yavatmal. In the last winter, Rahul Gandhi visited this village to see the aam admi's plight. "This," she says, showing substandard sorghum grains, "is what we eat these days, with salt and red chilly powder."
The fair price shop owner in Dhamni, Sitabai Korate, 60, an adivasi, says she'll distribute what she gets from the district civil supplies office. An 11-acre farmer herself, Korate admits to staggered ration supplies. "I am not getting the full quota".
It's mid-November and Korate hasn't yet received the monthly food quota. She says the quality too is questionable. "He khanya parij ilaj nahi (no option but to eat this)." Attempts to contact Maharashtra's civil supplies minister Anil Deshmukh did not yield results.
"How will the farm labourers and those below poverty line run their families?" asks former sarpanch, Babarao Pawar, 42. The 55 families of his Pardhi nomadic tribe clan will have to restrict their food intakes for some time, he says. "There's no work on farms and people can hardly buy grain in the open market."
The villagers have therefore fallen back on their old skills — catching birds and rabbits from the nearby forests and selling it to the restaurants for money. "If we do not do this, we will starve," say Parkash Pawar, 45, and his wife Kautuka, 43.
The Pardhi families tread through the shrubs of nearby forests and catch what are now nearly extinct small birds: baters and titars, besides rabbits. Babarao says the pressure on the forests increases if his clan is forced to hunt for small kill.
The public distribution system in Vidarbha, says Kishor Tiwari of the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti, has collapsed. "People are clamouring for food." On the ground, the price rise is hurting thousands.
"People are buying much less and only the few things that are cheaper," says food grain trader Manoj Jaiswal in Yavatmal's Jodmoha village. "Look at him," Jaiswal says, as he gives half a kg of tur dal to his customer, Jaituji Kowe, a 35-year-old farmer from Anta-gaon. "This is what his family of five will eat for a week."
Kowe, a below poverty line labourer, says the PDS shop doesn't even get the quota of pulses it should. So he has to buy it from the open market. "We add more water to it, so that it lasts us more days," he says. "And now we have water scarcity also."
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