Nearly half the residents of Ambesavali village in Maharashtra's Beed district have migrated in search of work as drought leaves farmers and farm labourers without income, deputy sarpanch Dhananjay Gundekar told Down To Earth. "There is no agricultural work left and no money to survive," he said; villagers have gone to Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

The drought comes 11 months after floods in October 2025 destroyed farmland and standing crops across the Marathwada region. On 26 September the state declared drought in 265 of its 364 talukas, more than 70 percent, triggering relief such as loan-repayment measures and water tankers, which are now supplying 94 villages in four districts during the monsoon months.

Farmers say this drought could be worse than those of 2013-14 and 2015-16, with some losing up to Rs 2.5 lakh in cultivation costs. Ganesh Ghodake of Kurla village, whose six acres were washed away by the floods, now faces another crop failure: his cotton had not even reached knee height.

Photo: Unknown author / Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)

Source: Down To Earth