Unseasonal hail and rain devastate wheat crops in Sirsa; farmers seek relief

The wheat was nearly ready for harvest when the weather turned. On March 31, hail and heavy rain swept across Sirsa district in Haryana, flattening fields across multiple villages and destroying between 60 and 70 percent of the standing crop in some areas. Before farmers could assess the damage, another round of rain arrived on April 2 and 3, compounding the losses. What had been a season of careful waiting—the crop weeks away from the combine—became a season of watching it deteriorate.

Across more than twenty villages, the destruction was substantial and uneven. Agricultural expert Gurjeet Mann surveyed the damage and estimated losses ranging from 5 to 30 percent depending on location and field conditions. The variation reflected the storm's scattered path, but the worry was uniform. "The wheat is almost ready for harvest, but continuous rain increases the risk of lower yield and crop diseases," Mann said. "The next few days and nights will be very worrying for farmers." Rain that falls in April, when the crop should be drying and hardening, brings disease and reduces grain quality—problems that cannot be undone.

The damage extended beyond the standing crop. Continuous rainfall over the preceding week had soaked wheat already harvested and stacked in open storage areas at mandis, the agricultural markets where government procurement happens. Wet grain cannot be stored safely and cannot meet the standards that government buyers enforce. This created a cascading problem: farmers with damaged crops faced rejection at purchase, and traders holding inventory faced the same risk. The government's procurement process, already slow, slowed further as officials waited for conditions to improve.

Lakhwinder Singh Aulakh, president of the Bharatiya Kisan Ekta farmers' union, moved quickly to demand action. He called on the Haryana government to conduct girdawari—the formal damage survey required to establish losses—and to compensate affected farmers. He also pressed for a survey of insured fields under the Prime Minister Crop Insurance Scheme to ensure that claims would be settled promptly. Insurance exists precisely for moments like this, but the machinery of claims processing moves slowly, and farmers cannot wait months for payment.

Traders in Sirsa, represented by Prem Bajaj and the Sirsa Traders' Association, submitted a formal letter to senior BJP leaders Jagdish Chopra and Inderpal Jangra. Their request was specific: relax the government's wheat procurement standards to accept damaged grain, and reopen the "Meri Fasal-Mera Byora" portal, the online system through which farmers register their crops and arrange sales. Without relaxed standards, they warned, damaged wheat would be rejected outright, leaving both farmers and traders holding unsaleable inventory. Chopra responded with assurance that the matter would be escalated to Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini and that relief would come "at the earliest."

The Agriculture Department issued an alert and directed farmers to register their losses on the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana portal—the crop insurance system. Many did. But registration is not payment, and the department's alert did not specify what relief would follow. The opposition Indian National Lok Dal called for the government to provide Rs 50,000 per acre in direct compensation to affected farmers, a figure that would acknowledge the scale of loss but remained a demand rather than a commitment.

What emerged in the days after the storm was a familiar pattern: farmers facing immediate financial pressure, traders facing inventory risk, and government machinery grinding forward at its own pace. The wheat that had been weeks from harvest was now weeks from becoming a financial loss that would ripple through rural households and market operations across the district.