Maharashtra drought sees CM dropping guard with Bollywood

Finance Minister P Chidambaram has urged Prithviraj Chavan to avail of a World Bank loan to tackle the drought

Unlike his predecessor Vilasrao Deshmukh, Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan avoids fraternising with Bollywood. However, when actor Salman Khan's non-governmental organisation Being Human offered 2,500 plastic water tanks for use in Osmanabad, Beed, Jalna, Aurangabad and Nanded, Chavan met the actor and thanked him personally for an intervention badly needed in a state grappling with its worst drought in 40 years.

Every financial nerve and sinew of the state were being strained to fight the drought, Chavan told Business Standard. The state has spent Rs 2,000 crore to support a million heads of cattle, at Rs 75 a day, and provide water tanks. Reimbursement for crop failure this financial year is likely to be Rs 2,000-3,000 crore. The National Relief Fund has been allocated Rs 1,050 crore to provide assistance for drought-affected rabi crops.

A total of 15 districts, accounting for 11,801 villages, have been declared drought-affected. There is acute water scarcity in 1,779 villages and 4,709 smaller habitations. Some of the villages are facing drought for a second consecutive year. In the Vidarbha region alone, 6,200 villages are affected by drought. A total of 331 villages in Amravati, 800 in Yavatmal, 300 in Gadchiroli and 120 in Wardha district in eastern Maharashtra are severely affected. While Vidarbha gets drinking water once in 12-14 days, Solapur, Satara, Sangli, Pune and Nashik also face an acute crisis; Solapur gets drinking water once every two days.

Considering the state's well-managed finances (at 1.4 per cent of gross state domestic product, or GSDP, the state's fiscal deficit is well below the prescribed three per cent), Finance Minister P Chidambaram has encouraged Chavan to avail of a World Bank loan to tackle the drought. At current prices, Maharashtra's GSDP growth for 2012-13 was 14.4 per cent; it is expected to be 12 per cent in 2013-14. The state budget for 2013-14 envisages spending 4.4 per cent on drought alleviation. Of the Plan allocation, about Rs 2,100 crore would be spent to combat the drought.

Though the numbers sound big, much of the effort is small and local. Cement plugs are being used to prevent evaporation of water from canals. Small farm ponds are being lined with plastic sheets to prevent seepage. All work related to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme is geared towards drought mitigation. Chavan says the focus has been on small-scale efforts---farmers have formed groups to de-silt water tanks, carrying the silt to the fields to enrich the soil. This has resulted in new water storage capacities.

Farmers have also adopted drip irrigation in many parts, even for water-intensive crops such as sugarcane.

Chavan says he begins his day tracking the progress of the monsoon.

"We just cannot afford another monsoon slippage. It would be a disaster for the state" he says.

He doesn't comment on the observation that despite spending Rs 70,000 crore between 1999 and 2011 on irrigation projects, the irrigation potential added during this period was just 0.1 per cent. However, he concedes the biggest political challenge in the coming Lok Sabha elections, as well as the assembly polls (due in October-November 2014), would be the judgment people pass on the state's drought management efforts.