In a state where cash-for-votes has been made efficient and all-prevalent, A Manonmani, a 62-year-old landless labourer in Nagapattinam, says she has never taken money from political parties ahead of elections.

This year though, she has changed her mind. “I will vote for whichever party gives me the most money. I have no choice,” she said, with her fist tightly clenched in anger. A 12-hour day of hard labour under the searing heat gets her ₹200.

During a good season, she gets work for about 10 days a month, and another seven days a month of work under the MNREGA—from which she earns ₹150 a day. But this happens when farmers have a good season and need labour. “The last three years or so, I have barely got any work. I depend on the free rice the government gives and cannot afford to fall sick. I cannot refuse any money that comes my way,” she said. She expects anything between ₹1,000 and ₹5,000. “The politicians have never spent a day in hard labour. How can we expect them to be sympathetic to our cause,” she said.

An off-season paddy field looks parched in Nagapattinam.

Nagapattinam, one of the districts in the Cauvery delta region, has been hit with consequent natural disasters. While November 2018 saw the district get battered by Cyclone Gaja, the summer of 2017 saw Tamil Nadu reeling under its worst drought in 140 years.

Unlike the rest of the country, Tamil Nadu depends on the north-east monsoon for its water. After its withdrawal, the state received only 166.2 mm of the 437 mm it usually receives—a deficit of 41 per cent. The last time a drought of this scale hit Tamil Nadu, it was in 1846 when there was a deficit of 42 per cent.

In Nagapattinam, 80 per cent of the paddy sown by 1.35 lakh farmers did not flower. The state government declared drought across 32 districts in the state, with 21 of them being categorised severely hit. Districts in the delta region, including Nagapattinam, Tanjore and Thiruvarur were some of the worst affected districts. “There is no point in digging borewells as the water is too saline. We are not getting water from Cauvery, and the government is not desilting any of the water bodies in our villages,” said T Damodaran, a small-scale farmer from Viknapuram village in Nagapattinam. Pointing at Odamboki, one of the distributaries of Cauvery river on which he depends, he said: “The river is shrinking right in front my eyes. It will die soon.”

S Ganapathi, who owns 30 acres of land, says he has no source of water for farming.

Without the support of the government and an appropriate minimum support price, droughts worsen the agrarian crisis and force farmers to migrate to cities in search of employment. In the Cauvery Delta region, the resentment of Tamil Nadu farmers towards Karnataka has worsened. This is despite the Supreme Court settling a long-running dispute between the two states. In an April 2018 order, the apex court gave Tamil Nadu 404.25 thousand million cubic feet (tmcft) and Karnataka 284.75 tmcft of water respectively. “We still haven’t seen any water come to our farms. Our crops are still dying. What is the use of a Supreme Court if we can’t get the water when we need,” said Damodaran.

T Damodharan, a small-scale farmer, pointing at the shrinking Odamboki. He is angry with Karnataka for not releasing water.

There is palpable anger against the government and political parties across the spectrum. To take this anger to the national stage and tell the country about their plight, several farmers from Tamil Nadu made their way to Delhi in March 2017.

These farmers were met with a deafening silence from the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). They concluded that to get the Central government’s attention, it is best to be in the news. And they could do this only by taking extreme, sometimes bizarre measures. They held rats in their mouths, stripping down, shaved half their head and even displayed the skulls of their fellow-farmers who committed suicide. Cauvery S Dhanapal, farmer leader, was in Delhi during the protests and was amongst the first to suggest the idea of drinking urine as a form of protest. “The the situation was bleak in Tamil Nadu. Farmers were committing suicide every day and there was no assurance from the government. We had no idea how to keep the attention of the media. We knew we couldn’t go back home without an assurance,” said the general secretary of Cauvery Farmers Protection Association.

Amongst several demands, the main ones included an increase in the minimum support price (MSP) to ensure a 50 per cent margin over their production costs and loan waivers. After a few days of protesting, Dhanapal said he was not sure if this was the right way to protest and make demands. “With all these tactics, we stayed in the headlines. But did it help us get a meeting with the prime minister? Did it help in improving the dignity of farmers? No, and no,” he said.

After weeks of braving Delhi’s summer, Tamil Nadu chief minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami finally spoke to them. He assured farmers of a meeting with the prime minister. “The Union government’s response to farmer protests was knee-jerk. It was not cohesive. First, Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) was flashed as an answer. Then doubling farmers’ income. Then the whole hype around MSPs at 50 per cent above the cost of production but incorrect cost formula was used. Finally, the PM-KISAN scheme was announced. The fact that they responded showed that there was pressure on them,” said Kavitha Kuruganti, co-convenor at Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture. “However, no farmer should have to resort to such dramatic measures. It is undignifying. If we are a sensitive society, they wouldn’t have had to go to these extremes,” she added.

Media favourite and farmer leader from Trichy, P Ayyakannu, who led the Tamil Nadu farmers to Delhi, has no plans to stop. Train tickets to Varanasi for 200 farmers have been booked. He recently announced his plans to contest in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home constituency, Varanasi. “We will carry out a naked march in Varanasi, begging people for money so that we can contest in Varanasi. With enough money, we will file our nominations,” he told Newslaundry.

Criticising Modi for running the country like a dictatorship, Ayyakannu said his party doesn’t consider farmers as even humans. “We were treated worse than rats in Delhi. Every day he has time to meet corporates and give them several benefits. Why can’t he meet us for one day,” he said. As the president of the National South Indian River Interlinking Farmers Association, he claims to have the support of five lakh farmers in Tamil Nadu. “I have sent a letter with a list of demands to both Congress and the BJP. Even if one of them accepts the letter, we will not go to Varanasi,” he said.

As the country goes to elections, some 42 per cent of its land is under drought. “About 6 per cent of the land area of the country is currently in the ‘exceptionally dry’ category, which is nearly four times the 1.6 per cent area at the same time last year. The area under ‘extremely and exceptionally dry’ categories is 11 per cent of the entire country, more than double the 5 per cent area in March 2018,” India Spend reported, using DEWS data. Another study found that only 10 out of 30 states and union territories had more than 50 per cent drought-resilient area—with Tamil Nadu being the best performer with 56.74 per cent—clearly not enough to reduce the agrarian distress the state is facing.

This is one of the worst droughts in recent years, said veteran rural reporter and founder of Peoples Archives of Rural India, P Sainath. “In some areas, the anger might be so great that people may vote for the hind leg of a donkey, if it means throwing out the despicable incumbent,” he said, adding, however that drought is one of the several factors that impact in rural India. “So will the drought have an impact? It will. Will it have an impact against governments? Yes, it will. Will it transform the situation? That is another conversation. That will vary according to the strength of opposition, alliance math, and how organised the anger is,” he added.

The 200 train tickets for Ayyakannu and other farmers are still on the waitlist.