Unseasonal rains ruin Rabi crops

New Delhi: Unseasonal rains may have brought relief to the parched cities but it's added to the many woes of the Indian farmer who are already coping with inflationary pressures.

The loan waiver won't mean much to those who were waiting to harvest their crops, which have now been damaged by the torrential rains.

Several places in North India have paid a heavy price for Friday's heavy rainfall.

In Kanpur for instance, the showers destroyed almost 30 to 35 per cent of wheat crops

"There was a storm and then heavy rains. It has destroyed the crops. We are ruined," Farmers of Kurmi Kheda in Kanpur say.

And in the cereal bowl of Punjab, the rains wreaked havoc with an afternoon's downpour straightaway reducing the wheat output by 15 to 20 per cent.

Last year's severe winter had forced many farmers to borrow money to invest in a fresh Rabi crops.

But the rains have poured water on those hopes and now the farmers will take time to recover from these losses.

"We have lost our crops. It's bad news for the government too which was banking on good crops," Sukhdev Singh, a farmer, says.

It's the same story in Madhya Pradesh where wheat and gram have taken the pounding during Friday's rains. In Rajasthan too, food prices are likely to rise with the Rabi crop destroyed by the rain.

"The rain has washed all my crops," Sataram, farmer in Bhadko village of Barmer district, says

At a time when the government is facing people's ire over rising prices failed crops can only add fuel to the fire.

As for the farmers looking at the harvest they couldn't reap the government's euphoria over farm loan waiver means nothing.

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