what is the consumption and production of water in cape town and latur?
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Shivanand Baswantpati’s pomegranate trees, once a steady source of income, lie withered and prone across his rocky field, fit for nothing but firewood.
The farmer recently uprooted them in desperation at a persistent lack of rain, hoping a hardier crop of soybeans will fare better in the apparently changed climate.
Mr Baswantpati strikes a gloomy tone as he leans on the defunct pump attached to his 170-metre-deep borehole near the western Indian town of Latur — dry for the past two years, like thousands of others across the region, with underground aquifers depleted.
We have no water and we don’t expect any,” he says. “All the work we did in these fields has gone to waste.”
He is one of millions of farmers recoiling from two unusually dry monsoon seasons — the midyear period typically accounting for four-fifths of India’s annual rainfall. The problem has dragged down yields and rural consumption nationwide — a heavy economic drag on a nation where two-thirds of people live in the countryside.
But the scale of the problem in Marathwada, a region of 19m people east of Mumbai in the state of Maharashtra, has captured national attention. Environmental campaigners say the crisis is exacerbated by corruption and water mismanagement.
Last month the state government began sending water by train to Latur and briefly banned gatherings of more than five people to prevent fights over water. National media have adopted a grim routine of tallying suicides by farmers in the region, with 320 in the first 110 days of this year, after an annual toll of 1,133 in 2015.
The farmer recently uprooted them in desperation at a persistent lack of rain, hoping a hardier crop of soybeans will fare better in the apparently changed climate.
Mr Baswantpati strikes a gloomy tone as he leans on the defunct pump attached to his 170-metre-deep borehole near the western Indian town of Latur — dry for the past two years, like thousands of others across the region, with underground aquifers depleted.
We have no water and we don’t expect any,” he says. “All the work we did in these fields has gone to waste.”
He is one of millions of farmers recoiling from two unusually dry monsoon seasons — the midyear period typically accounting for four-fifths of India’s annual rainfall. The problem has dragged down yields and rural consumption nationwide — a heavy economic drag on a nation where two-thirds of people live in the countryside.
But the scale of the problem in Marathwada, a region of 19m people east of Mumbai in the state of Maharashtra, has captured national attention. Environmental campaigners say the crisis is exacerbated by corruption and water mismanagement.
Last month the state government began sending water by train to Latur and briefly banned gatherings of more than five people to prevent fights over water. National media have adopted a grim routine of tallying suicides by farmers in the region, with 320 in the first 110 days of this year, after an annual toll of 1,133 in 2015.
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