Record summer beats life out of Mungeshpur farms

NEW DELHI: It’s a little after high noon, and northwest Delhi’s Mungeshpur village, near the Haryana border, looks deserted, as if nobody lives there. Those manning the few local shops that are open despite the searing heat are half-asleep under fans. There are no customers, there is no bustle; the only occasional movement on the village road is of stray animals. With a population of nearly 10,000, Mungeshpur hit headlines as it reported maximum temperature across the country on Sunday at 49.2 degrees Celsius (°C).

Sixty-five-year-old Ram Niwas, an ex-serviceman, who grows vegetables and jowar (sorghum) in his fields, is among the handful of people out in the fields on Monday afternoon, braving the heat. Niwas says he has no option but to head out once during the day to check on his crop, which, he says, is struggling to survive the scorching weather. “Jowar is one of the most heat-resilient crops a farmer can grow, but even that has failed to survive this intense heat,” he says, pointing to his dry fields.

Ram Niwas uses water from a tubewell to irrigate the field as most ponds in the village are dry. “People would bring their cattle to these ponds, but the drop in water level has been steep. Now, we rarely take them out of the house and instead try to keep them cool by using a hosepipe. The milk yield has dropped to half,” he says.

Vikas Rana, another resident, who works with the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC), says they did not know exactly how terrible the heat was until he saw the newspapers on Monday morning. “We could feel it on Sunday, and no one dared to venture out. Most houses in the village don’t have air conditioners, and still rely on desert coolers. But, on Sunday, fans and coolers were ineffective. Some people poured water on the floor and used wet clothes to cool themselves,” Rana says. “In all my years in Delhi, I have never seen such a torrid summer and it appears it will only get worse.” Many locals HT spoke to said though power outages are not an issue, water supply is. A semi-urban area characterised by a combination of concretised spaces and open farm fields, it overlooks a number of industries in Haryana.