After a seemingly agonizing wait for the monsoon rain, farmers of the state are seen starting to plough in their fields to cultivate paddy with the arrival of monsoon rain recently although a bit late. The arrival of monsoon rain has finally brought a smile to the farmers of the state who for several days were apprehensive of drought due to less rainfall and its subsequent impact of famine.
For cultivation of crops, farmers of the state have so far no other option but to wait for monsoon rain since as the state government fails to take up any measure to provide irrigation facilities to the dried up fields. Many River Lift Irrigation, RLIs constructed by the government years back investing cores of Rupees are lying defunct and become a haunted house. If the government takes up measures to provide good irrigation facilities by repairing these defunct RLIs and making good drainage, farmers’ dependency only on monsoon can possibly be reduced to some extent while increase yield, a farmer from Waithou Chiru village said.
He said that arrival of monsoon has lived up farmers’ hope and we are hectic on our field work leaving all other works because sowing of paddy crops depends on timing. Manipuri farmers are busy in rainy season for their field work. A saying goes ‘ in rainy season, even if a man happen to die, he is left at home with a Phoura (basket made of bamboo use for drying up paddy) covering the dead body’.
While most of the farmers till their field using modern machineries like Tractors, Waithou Chiru farmers are still compelled to depend on traditional plowing system using Buffalos or Cows since they use to carry out terraced cultivation on the foothill where tractors are not accessible to it.
