‘Everything is gone’: Punjabi farmers suffer worst floods in three decades | India

For days, the farmers in the state of Punjab in Indian Punjabs watched that hitting monsoon rains fell and the rivers rise with the concern of increasing. On Wednesday, many of them awakened because their fears have destroyed the worst flood farms for more than thirty years and eliminated their livelihoods.

Hundreds of thousands of acres will be harvested in a close way – and cotton and sugar cane crops were completely destroyed as more than five meters of muddy brown flood waters were completely sunk. The drowning cattle bodies filled the floor.

“The crops were ruined and even our homes are in danger of collapse, Parm Parmpreet Singh, a 52 -year -old farmer from Ajnala, said. His elderly mother and his family, including two young children, lived on the roof of their homes to protect them from dark flood waters.

“My whole source of livelihood, seven hectares of agriculture, all destroyed by flood waters, are despaired to sell the territory of his only option and to leave farming. “I have invested most of my money in seeds and fertilizers for the previous crop. Now everything is gone.”

While the monsoon season usually brought heavy rain, the excessive precipitation levels falling to Northern India this week caused unprecedented damage to Punjab, which caused flash floods and swollen rivers to violate their banks and overflow to fields and villages. So far, 43 people have lost their lives and about 2,000 villages in the state were affected and hundreds of thousands of people left access to electric and clean water. The smell of rotting animal carcasses hangs on many villages.

Parminder Singh Pinki, a deputy from the Firozpur region in Western Punjab, said, one of the areas where the floods are bad, Parminder Singh Pinki said, “This Punjab is the worst time faced,” he said.

“I have never witnessed such a destruction in my life.

India’s farmers faced difficulties that millions of people were upset about their high debts, low income and heavy crop losses in the face of increasingly and unpredictable weather conditions brought by a climate crisis.

Pinki was among those who accused the government of the ruling Bharatia Janata Party (BJP), led by Narendra Modi, against farmers and leaving them to their destiny during this year’s extreme monsoon.

“The government has been aware of weather forecasts for months and must have fulfilled appropriate measures and urgent answers,” he said. “But that never happened, and this failure led to such a great scale of destruction.”

He was repeated by Surinder Singh, a 75 -year -old farmer from the village of Sarala in Patiala. For days, he had watched the channel near his villages had increased, but he was weak to stop.

“The government will promises to relax, but farmers will not take anything,” he said. “We were finally left to look at ourselves.” Like many, he questioned the long -term applicability of Indian agriculture, employing half of the country’s labor force and keeping food at the tables of the country.

“I can’t imagine what’s staying for our next generations,” he said. “Floods and excessive weather events become more frequent and the future does not look better. Punjab farmers – even the food bowl of India – if they cannot feed themselves, how will they feed others?”

This crisis is not alone in India. Opposite the border, in the agricultural state of Pakistan, called Punjab, the destruction caused by floods was even more disaster, about 2 million people were released and approximately 4,000 villages dipped in flood waters.

The two countries shared several major rivers and the decision of the Indian government to release water from several intensely full flow in the direction of flow, led to more water raids on both sides of Punjab’s geographical region, trying to blame Pakistan officials for disaster.

The anger of the overflowing Ravi River, which went to Pakistan from the Indian border, broken down the 30 -km iron fences formed the extremely militarized boundary between the two contradictory neighbors, and forced India’s border security soldiers to abandon their extremely sensitive tasks.

Maratab Ali Gondal, a farmer from the Mandi Bahauddin Region in Pakistani Punistan, said that the rising levels of the Chenab River flowing from India were washing 90 acres of crops, including rice and sugar cane and caused millions of rupees loss.

Gondal said that in the previous months, local authorities had begging to build sets to protect the agricultural areas along the river, but nothing was done. “Water erosion took all my lands. Now there is flood juice everywhere. This is not India’s fault; [Pakistani] Punjab government’s negligence that sweeps my agricultural areas. ”

“This is not just my story – our farmers witness the worst time in the history of the country.”

The affected were not only agricultural lands. Recently built a few hundred meters away from the Ravi Bank, the extremely rich housing development park View Society residents found multimilyon rupey houses full of blurry flood water. Experts, fast forest and development throughout the waterways, only the possibility of flooding in the region, he said.

Umar, a resident of development this year, said that his house was filled with five meters of river water. “Many of us have invested our life savings here to buy or build a dream house,” he said. “But how could they be allowed to build if there is such a flood risk?”

Pakistan Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif, the nephew of Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, was accused of doing little to help those affected by the flood. In a social media article, he emphasized how portable toilets were established to help those displaced – but the image he shared turned out to be two years ago.