Thirst for relief: central teams fan out across drought-hit Karnataka as losses near ₹60,000 crore

Three central government teams fanned out across Karnataka on Saturday to assess one of the worst droughts the state has declared in recent memory — and the numbers waiting for them are staggering. Karnataka has declared 217 of its 240 taluks drought-hit. Crop losses across 177 taluks have already been assessed at around ₹46,000 crore, and with 40 more taluks declared drought-hit on October 1 still being assessed, total losses could reach ₹50,000-60,000 crore, Deputy Chief Minister G. Parameshwara said on Saturday. The state has formally asked the Centre for ₹3,705.30 crore under National Disaster Response Fund norms, and has so far given affected farmers ₹2,500 each as immediate relief — a figure everyone concedes is nowhere near enough. The three inter-ministerial central teams, drawn from the Agriculture and Environment ministries and led by Joint Secretary Ajit Kumar Sahu, began a three-day ground assessment after being briefed at the Chief Minister's Krishna residence. Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar and Deputy CM Parameshwara laid out the rainfall deficit, crop losses, drinking-water shortages and fodder availability. One team will cover Tumakuru, Chitradurga, Davanagere and Vijayanagara; another will tour Hassan, Mysuru and Chamarajanagar; the third will inspect Yadgir, Raichur, Bagalkot and Koppal, between October 3 and 7. Both Shivakumar and Parameshwara said that in their combined four decades of public life, they had not seen such acute hardship. Even traditionally well-watered Malnad and coastal Karnataka are facing a severe rainfall deficit, and a special legislature session saw 150 MLAs speak about conditions in their constituencies. Tankers and hired borewells have been deployed to 861 rural habitations, and officials warn over 2,300 gram panchayats could face water shortages in the coming months. But relief is already tangled in politics and paperwork. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge has written to the Centre demanding a separate assessment team for Kalyana Karnataka — a region he says has been "very drastically hit" but is not assigned to any of the three teams — plus the full ₹3,705.30 crore without reduction, noting that figure is already far below the state's ₹18,748.23-crore estimated loss under NDRF formulas. Kharge says more than 31 lakh farming families are severely affected, and warns that using outdated 2015-16 Agriculture Census data to calculate input subsidies could exclude genuinely eligible small and marginal farmers — the state wants its current Bhoomi digital land records used instead. Karnataka has submitted two memoranda; a third and final one will follow once the teams report. The real test is whether the assessment ends in disbursal before the kharif season closes — or whether another drought year becomes another file moving slowly through Delhi while fields stay bare.