

KOTHAPALLY: Thevillage school in Kothapally, in southern India, has only a handful ofamenities - blackboards, desks and chairs, a playground with a wooden benchunder a tree. But it has one unusual resource: an automatic weather station.Nestled among farms, the government school is the only one in the southernIndian state of Telangana - and possibly in the country - to have a weatherstation on its premises, scientists overseeing the station said.
Ninth graders,all children of local farmers, record rainfall, humidity, wind speed and theair temperature as part of a bigger project led by an international cropresearch institute to customize the village's farming to its water availability."I understand how this works. I know if it rains well the previous day itis a good time to put fertilizer on the crops the next day," said VamshiVoggu, 14, who doesn't much like science lessons but enjoys his morningweather-monitoring job at school. "My parents are farmers. Thisinformation helps them," Voggu said during a class break, with his gigglyfriends chiming in on how farmers in the village benefit from the device.
Two decades ago,Kothapally faced an acute water crisis, with little available to irrigate farmsor to drink and women walking miles to fetch water. Nearly half the village'schildren were out of school, many herding cattle to supplement family incomes,villagers said. Around the same time, officials at an office of the non-profitInternational Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT),located about 60kms from Kothapally, were planning to replicate an on-campuswatershed management project in a village.
A localpolitician nudged them to the water-scarce village. The project, which broughtin rainwater harvesting pits, dams, farm ponds and the weather station, hasyielded rich harvests over the years, with the groundwater level rising byabout four meters and farming increasingly tuned to rainfall readings. As thestruggle for water has intensified in India in recent years, with many villagesand cities running out of the precious resource, Kothapally has stayed afloat.
"The numberof rainy days in this region is decreasing, which means longer dry spells andmore rains per day," said AVR Kesava Rao, an agro-climatologist who is anhonorary fellow with ICRISAT in Hyderabad. The changing weather patterns andimproved groundwater access have brought changes to traditional farmingpractices in Kothapally. Fields of mostly cotton have diversified to includewater-smart sorghum, maize, pigeon peas, vegetables and also flowers.
Recording thevillage's rainfall for the first time has also given key indicators of soilmoisture, to help plan cropping patterns, Rao said. ICRISAT scientistsoriginally visited the weather station once a month to take readings, he said."But we thought of involving the community and moved it inside the schoolabout a decade ago. Every year, we train children over two days on how to checkthe readings. The students are proud now of what they have in school," Raosaid.
Morning drill
When BinkamSudhakar joined Kothapally high school as its principal four years ago, he hadnever seen a weather station before. Now he considers it the school's best toolfor practical lessons on climate change, a departure from the rote learningcommon in the Indian education system. Every morning, before the schoolassembly, two students walk to the station with a notebook and pen, pull outthe mobile phone shaped display unit and check rain and temperature readings bypunching a few buttons. They then write the readings on the colorful weatherchart painted on the wall outside the school.
Local farmers saythe daily bulletins are hugely helpful. "This is very important. We checkthe rainfall here on our way to work," said Voggu Anjaiah, 50, who ownssix acres of farmland and checks the weather readings every day. "I growcotton, bitter gourd, green beans and pigeon peas. Earlier we grew only cotton.We did not know how much it rained. Now that we do, we understand when the soilmoisture is good and have started growing vegetables," he said.
But with manyfarmers illiterate, less than half of village farmers check the weather stationreadings like Anjaiah does. Some children read out the information from theboard to their parents who never went to school. Others students shareimportant updates, such as good rainfall the previous day, when they get homefrom school. The young weather recorders believe they are engaged in animportant task. "I never miss my turn," Vamshi said.
Turnaround
When Venkat Reddyof child rights organization MV Foundation first visited Kothapally in 1991, hesaw vast tracts of dry farmland and children working as laborers. Four yearslater, after intensive campaigns involving young people going door-to-door tourge parents, employers and village council members to send children to school,Kothapally was declared 'child labor free' by the local government.
"The entirevillage came together for its children," Reddy said by phone from thesouthern Indian city of Hyderabad. Student numbers improved in the villageprimary school, and enough students have stuck with learning that the villagenow has both a primary and a high school, which offers classes through tenthgrade. And as more children enrolled in school, the weather station readingsbecame accessible to more farmers.
"My parentsnever made a profit from farming. We were very poor. I was pulled out of schoolafter tenth grade," said Malleshwar Goud, whose 13-year-old son Gurulingamis in the ninth grade in the village school. Goud grows pulses, soybeans, maizeand vegetables on his farm and said he is no longer dependent on one yield tosurvive the entire year. He said he never checks the weather as his son sharesthe readings with him when he returns from school.
Though it was notplanned, Kothapally has become a laboratory for social change experiments,campaigners and scientists said. Reddy of MV Foundation said his organizationreplicated the Kothapally campaign to end child labor across villages inTelangana and neighboring Andhra Pradesh state, as ICRISAT expanded itswatershed management project to 13 villages in different Indian states. Goudhopes a good school and better crop yields through the year will protect hisson's future. "He will study until he finds a good job," Goud said.-Reuters