Abstract:
The Bundelkhand region reeling under the severe recurrent droughts and famine conditions for the last few years, resulting in loss of agricultural livelihood, decreased grain production, depletion of surface and groundwater resources, and drinking water crisis making life miserable for the local population. This paper is an attempt towards a critical assessment of drought scenario in Sagar and Chhatarpur, two important districts of the Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh, so as to plan for mitigation measures. Analysis of annual and seasonal long-term rainfall records revealed that the drought conditions in Sagar district occurred with an average frequency of I in 3 years at Kesli, Deori, Garhakota, Rehli and Shahgarh to 1 in 5 years at Sagar, Rahatgarh and Malthone whereas the average drought frequency in Chhatarpur district varies between 1 in 3 years at Chhatarpur to 1 in
5 years at Nowgong, Rajnagar, Laundi and Badamalhera blocks. Relative departure index, a weighting scheme developed to assess the drought proneness of individual blocks in a district based on drought severity has been used to prioritize the development blocks for drought mitigation. Kesli, Shahgarh and Banda in Sagar district and Buxwaha, Bijawar and Nowgong in Chhatarpur district are the priority blocks for initiating the drought mitigation activities.
The probability analysis of the annual and seasonal rainfall revealed that 6 out of 12 blocks in Sagar district, namely Banda, Shahgarh, Garhakota, Rehli, Deori and Kesli and 3 out of 7 blocks in Chhatarpur district namely, Chhatarpur. Bijawar and Buxwaha have been identified as drought prone blocks. Dry spell analysis has been performed for planning life saving supplementary irrigation for minted crops to reduce the water stress during critical dry spell periods. The first critical dry spell for Sagar district commences from third week July for duration of 16 days, whereas the second critical dry spell commences from third week of August for duration of
17 days. The non-parametric Mann-Kendall test have been employed to identify the possibility of any increasing trend in the duration of dry spell lengths and an increasing trend, even though not significant has been observed in all the drought prone blocks. The crop water requirement have also been assessed for the various drought prone blocks using the Penman-Monteith method and irrigation water requirement estimated considering the effective rainfall based on USDA Soil Conservation Service method. This would enable the administrators to plan for various water resources development programmes and activities directed towards drought mitigation.
