It seems that all is lost for farmers in Kurnool district as there was no response from government over the drought report on kharif.

District officials who sent the drought report of kharif season to state government long ago, are yet to receive a word from it.

No official inspection was conducted during the rabi season.

Interestingly, the government had already declared the district as affected by drought and appointed Mr Mukesh Kumar Meena as special officer to assess drought.

Mr Meena is familiar to the district as he had worked as collector here.

He came to the district some two months ago, on a one-day visit in the name of a review and inspection of drought in the district. After that, he has not visited the district again.

Farmers fumed at people’s representatives of the district, saying that though they had received scanty rainfall during the kharif and there was none to assess the situation, a central drought committee had visited Anantapur district, recently.

According to the district authorities, 80 per cent of the crops were hit by drought in kharif. They sent a report to government seeking Rs.148 crore as input subsidy.

In all, a Rs.2,000 crore package was needed to tackle the drought in the district, according to officials.

They say that mere input subsidy will not meet the needs of farmers.

As if kharif woes were not enough, only 10 per cent of crops over three lakh hectares were fruitful in the ongoing rabi season.

With most water in the Srisailam reservoir alre-ady used for power generation, farmers have no way of escaping from the prevailing drought conditions in the district as water scarcity looms large in the coming summer.