The old well, dug by his grandfather in 1982, now gave only a muddy trickle by March. Zaid used to grow two crops: cotton in the kharif (monsoon) and wheat in the rabi (winter). But the groundwater table had dropped so low that the electric pump now sucked air for half the day. His neighbor, old Ramesh Kaka, had sold his buffaloes and left for Pune to drive a rickshaw. “No water, no crop, Zaid,” he’d said. “The climate has changed its contract with us.”
Last October, unseasonal hailstones the size of marbles shredded his standing sorghum an hour before harvest. In February, a sudden heatwave—45°C in what used to be cool winter—turned his ripening chickpeas into tiny, bitter bullets. The mango showers of April never came; instead, a dust storm buried his vegetable nursery under red grit. zaid farming challenges india climate water soil
Zaid began small. He dug nine small kunds (circular recharge pits) to catch every drop of rain that fell on his roof and shed. He stopped tilling the soil—the old zero tillage method his grandfather had used before the tractor came. He mulched with sugarcane trash from the neighboring mill. He planted Pongamia trees on the western edge as a windbreak. He switched to bajra (pearl millet) and drought-tolerant pigeon pea—not because they were profitable, but because they survived. The old well, dug by his grandfather in
But that night, a single bokan (scorpion) crawled over his foot. In the old way, it was a sign: survival is not about fighting nature, but learning its new language. His neighbor, old Ramesh Kaka, had sold his