Nepal Tarai reels under COVID-19 lockdown

After 15 people in Nepalganj tested positive for coronavirus on Sunday increasing the total testing positive in the country to 75, there are fears that the city in western Nepal bordering India will be the next hot spot.

In fact, health experts say that the entire Tarai where 52% of Nepal’s population lives is at risk because of its proximity to the border, as well as because the lockdown has not really stopped mobility in the plains.

Although the original infections in Nepalganj came from India from the same source as other clusters in Udaypur, Rautahat, Birganj, it looks like the virus is now spreading in the community.

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The new cases in Nepalganj has made the government wary about lifting or easing the lockdown that has now lasted 43 days, and was to end on 7 May. Sources said it may now be extended by another two weeks.

The prolonged suspension of mobility and economic activity due to the lockdown to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus has disrupted the lives of people living right along Nepal’s Tarai belt.

The shortage of diesel for water pumps to irrigate maize fields as well as the lack of agro-chemicals to prevent pests from damaging flowering mango trees has brought seasonal maize and mango production to a halt. Additionally, just-harvested potatoes remain in storage because they cannot be transported to market.

Former politician Jay Prakash Gupta of Saptari has been stuck in Thalara village 16km northeast of Biratnagar, where he owns a farm, ever since the lockdown began. He says the lockdown is being widely flouted, and here are crowds in the village marketplace.

“What is surprising is that even people who own farmlands are not planting vegetables and are coming to the market to buy them,” he says, and by mingling they are putting everyone at risk.

Bajrang Nepali in Mahottari district says that not everyone understands why there is a lockdown. Ram Prasad Yadav from in Kapilvastu district says: “However, the economic strain caused by more than a month of shutdown has increasingly led to people going to marketplaces in secret to search for work.”

In previous years, Nepal’s villagers would go to Haryana and Punjab in India this time of year after harvesting the wheat to work on the commercial farms there. They would earn up to Rs25,000 in two months.

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“When they returned in time of the paddy harvest, the farmers invested the money that they earned in agriculture, but the lockdown has meant that they are short of cash,” says Chandra Kishor, a journalist based in Sarlahi.

The seasonal migrant workers, who belong to poor families, are now running out of food. Although local authorities are providing food for the neediest families, the food is not enough for those with large families. “How long can a 15kg relief package last for a family of 10?” asks Chandra Kishor.

With the Nepal-India border being sealed due to lockdowns ops both sides, farmers are worried about essential supplies like salt and oil, seeds and fertiliser that they used to cross over to India to buy.

As the lockdown stretches on, farmers are beginning to worry about how to procure paddy seeds and chemical fertilisers for rice-planting season, says Sanjay Gupta in Rupandehi. “How will we be able to plant paddy when the border is closed?” he asks.

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However, the lockdown has also provided new opportunities for the poor and farmers in rural Tarai. Chandra Kishor says it has encouraged self-reliance, and forced farmers to use bicycles to take their surplus produce to market.

Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic has made villagers more aware about health and sanitation. Gathering in public places, and sharing tobacco prepared by the hands of another person, a customary practice in villages, has stopped. Hand-washing has increased.

The lockdown has also instilled an understanding in people across villages to approach farming in a more systematic and well-managed way so that they are more productive.

“There has been a realisation that people who return from working abroad after the lockdown should be mobilised in agricultural production at home,” says Bajrangi Nepali. “May be this crisis will force people who left the land to return to farming.”

Back to the future of farming, Nepali Times