ITANAGAR (Arunachal Pradesh): Radha Mura is a sharecropper in Alubari in Namsai district. Like many rice farmers in the state, she is worried that there won’t be enough rice.
There is no rain, she says, almost pleading at the clear blue sky while she transplants paddy in a chapped land with her school-going daughter and a friend.
“All I need is rain, so that I am able to feed my family of six,” she says in Assamese.
She says that she depends on the rain for wet rice cultivation on a major part of the field as only half of her field has irrigation facility.
“Usually, we are done with rice transplantation way before 15 August (Independence Day), but this year, we are planting whenever it rains,” she says. “I don’t want to waste the rice seedlings, so I plant whenever there is a little rain, though I know most of it won’t survive if it doesn’t rain.
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