Chikhli was submerged, twice

Chikhli was submerged, twice

KOLHAPUR/ PUNE: As the residents of Chikhli entered their village, they were worried about how they were going to resume their lives in the face of adversity. 

Chikhli was 100 per cent affected by the flood. What makes it worse is that this village was already rehabilitated once in 1989. 

“Floods are not new to us. In Chikhli, specifically Prayag Chikhli, several tributaries join Panchganga river. Water levels swell up every year. But this year the water levels rose at least seven feet higher than usual,” said SR Patil, former sarpanch of Chikhli. 

Chikhli was flooded severely last in 1989. The Panchganga river entered the village several feet high causing large scale destruction. The villagers were rehabilitated by the government. 

“Then chief minister Sharad Pawar provided us with 96 acres of land divided into plots for building houses at Sontali, four km from here,” said Patil.

“However, the rehabilitation remained on paper, as most villagers preferred to stay back in Chikhli,” Patil said.

Out of the village population of over 10,000, around 7,000 still live in flood-prone Chikhli, while only 2,500 relocated to Sontali. 

“What were we going to do in Sontali? Our fields are here, our ancestral houses are here. The villagers did not want to travel 4 km every day to reach their fields. So, we decided to live here. Nobody took a follow-up of whether we relocated or not,” said a sugarcane farmer who requested not to be named. 

“Ours is a contented village. We never had any greed for anything extravagant. You will hardly find any servicemen here. People happily work in their fields that yield good crops. We have jaggery plants that fulfil all our needs. After 1989, we never faced a flood like this, so nobody thought we needed to relocate.,” added Patil. 

AGRICULTURAL LOSS
Farmers in Chikhli produce sugarcane. However, the sugarcane does not go to sugar factories. 

“We have 35 jaggery manufacturing plants in our village. We supply all our sugarcane to these plants. Every year, we export 5,000 vehicles full of jaggery, with each vehicle containing 750 quintals,” Patil said. This year there will be no production of jaggery. 

“Our fields are decaying. All we are waiting for now is for the fields to dry up so we can clear out the wasted crop. Every farmer will have to spend at least Rs 50,000 to clean the field. It is going to be a burden,” said Patil. 

Another farmer, on condition of anonymity, said, “We pay Rs 10 to 20 lakh in advance to labourers to come and work in the jaggery plants once the sugarcane is harvested. The advance has already been paid this year, but there is no sugarcane. We can only hope they will not take advantage of our losses.” 

LIVELIHOOD IN CHIKHLI
“Now on, if we see Panchganga rising to a riskier level, we will take our belongings and leave the village temporarily,” said Patil. 

There is fear among people which they find difficult to let go. “We were standing on the roof of a house for a week along with our animals. The memories of those days still haunt me. So next monsoon, at the slightest warning of a flood, I am leaving the village,” said a youth sitting in the crowd of villagers. 

When asked if the villagers are now ready to move to Sontali, Patil replied, “The problem has not changed. Our livelihood is still here. What would I do going there, when my fields, my jaggery manufacturing plant are here?”

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