Bagepalli

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?Bagepalli Karnataka • India
Bagepalli
Coordinates: 13°47′N 77°47′E / 13.78, 77.79
Time zone	IST (UTC+5:30)
Area • Elevation	• 707 m (2,320 ft)
District(s)	Kolar
Population	20,120 (2001)

Coordinates: 13°47′N 77°47′E / 13.78, 77.79 Bagepalli is a panchayat town in Chikballapur district in the state of Karnataka, India. Bagepalli is situated 100 km north of Bangalore on the Bangalore-Hyderabad National Highway. The region is just below the southern border of the Rayalaseema desert belt in Andhra Pradesh, South India. It is semi-arid and drought prone with 560 mm of erratic and spatial rainfall.

Though located in Kolar district of Karnataka state, and in spite of being so close to a fast growing metropolis Bangalore city, the region skirts the southern border of the Rayalaseema desert belt and shares the same language, culture and social structure, as also the stark poverty that afflicts southern Andhra Pradesh.

1 Geography
2 Demographics
3 Links
4 References

[edit] Geography

Bagepalli is located at 13.78° N 77.79° E.^[1] It has an average elevation of 707 metres (2319 feet).

The region is a semi arid drought prone one with low, erratic and spatial rainfall. The dust brown rocky terrain is severely undulating, with small hill ranges and outcrops that stud the topography. There is no mineral wealth and only a very thin and fragile soil cover.

An adverse land:person ratio creates a strong thirst for cultivable land since less than one-half of the total land is fit for cultivation, with the remaining taken over by the hills and rocky fields. Hardly 5% of the cropped lands are irrigated by an age old network of rain-fed tanks (small lakes), each irrigating 2 to 10 hectares of wet land. The low water table is tapped through bore-wells drilled to more than 100 meters depth. Even these dry up in the summer months, from April to September every year, when temperatures rise to a dry heat of 38°Celsius.

The average rainfall is 560 mm a year and this is, moreover, erratic and spatial. As a result there is only 1 rain-fed crop a year, whose stand is from late June till December. Groundnuts are grown on these dry lands, inter-cropped with red gram, cowpea, field beans, green gram, jowar, maize and castor on the field bunds. Irrigated groundnut, mulberry, onions and sunflower are the common bore-well irrigated crops. Ragi (golden millet) and a coarse variety of paddy are cultivated under irrigation tanks. Every fifth or sixth year is a drought, followed by near famine conditions.

During the 7 cropping months from June to December, daily wages fluctuate between Rs 15 and 25. During the off-season these drop to as low as Rs 7 per day. Seasonal migration by agricultural labourers is an annual occurrence during the summer months. They come back every June/July to scratch a subsistence cultivation from small patches of scattered holdings, far away from the villages and hugging the hillsides, averaging 2.6 acres per Coolie family.

[edit] Demographics

As of 2001 India census,^[2] Bagepalli had a population of 20,120. Males constitute 52% of the population and females 48%. Bagepalli has an average literacy rate of 63%, higher than the national average of 59.5%; with 56% of the males and 44% of females literate. 12% of the population is under 6 years of age.