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A large part of Maharashtra has been declared drought-hit. But distribution of water is quite incongruous. While the few who are politically and financially powerful take the lion's share for sugarcane crops, thermal plants and other industries, the rest are struggling to survive. The government has failed to deal with the crisis
Stark yellow hills surround a fodder camp at Salse village in Maharashtra's Solapur district. In the afternoon heat, cattle desultorily munch on hard chunks of sugarcane, while farmers doze in nooks of shade. The picture of drought is dismal. But the lush green banana plantation barely 500 feet away is puzzling.
"Maybe that farmer has a borewell," says farmer Motiram Gadge. "Many powerful people here are growing banana and sugarcane despite the drought." Gadge's animals walk 14 kilometres every day to a fast-drying dam to drink water.
On the face of it, the severe drought defies explanation. The drought-affected area received 60 to 70 per cent rainfall this year against the state average of 90 to 92 per cent. This is deficient but not deficient enough to cause drought of this magnitude. Fourteen districts in Marathwada, Khandesh and south Maharashtra have been declared drought-hit. More than 11,000 villages are facing water crisis and 3,905 villages have suffered more than 50 per cent crop loss.
Comparing this year's drought to that in 1972, the most severe in recent history, Bharat Patankar, a senior drought mitigation and dam displacement activist, says the rich and the poor alike were forced to migrate in 1972. This time the landscape shows alternate patches of acute scarcity and abundance. Water-intensive cane and banana crops stand cheek-by-jowl with withered jowar seedlings. The failure of the rainfed jowar crop has caused a severe fodder crisis, but unlike 1972, sugarcane has not just survived but is in excess, and being fed to animals.
Unlike in 1972, the current drought is characterised by a severe drinking water crisis, both for humans and cattle. Significantly, villages with highest acreage of sugarcane are also the worse hit by drinking water crisis.
Like many other farmers, Rahul Kargode of Pali village in Beed district pays Rs 200 for 500 litres of drinking water to private tanker owners every second or third day. He uses the water to save his standing sugarcane crop. But his new sugarcane crop has withered. The borewell he had installed a few years ago has gone dry. In Pathrud village of Osmanabad district, Taramati Wadke, who runs a small eatery, shells out Rs 300 daily for 800 litres of tanker water. "The price has doubled since November. If it increases further I don't know how I will pay," she says.
This apart, unethical water consumption continues unabated. While Aurangabad, Solapur and Beed districts reel from drinking water crisis, unscrupulous use of water in golf courses, water parks and swimming pools is rising every day. Parli thermal power plant in Beed was shut down in February due to water crisis, even as breweries and distilleries in Aurangabad flourish. The biggest paradox, however, is that the drought has hit a state that has the largest network of dams in the country.
War over water
Thirty-six per cent of the country's dams are in Maharashtra. But politically and financially powerful groups almost always grab the lion's share of water. Conflicts exist between water users upstream and downstream, industry and agriculture, urban and rural users and even village-level political groups.
According to the Maharashtra Water Resources Regulatory Authority (MWRRA) Act, 2005, there should be equal distribution of water to all projects in a river basin during water crisis. In November 2012, water in Jayakwadi dam, on the Godavari river in Aurangabad, dropped to two per cent of its storage capacity of 107 thousand million cubic feet (TMC).
But upstream dams in Pune and Nashik regions, which were 81 to 92 per cent full, did not release water. Jayakwadi dam supplies water to four cities, 200 villages, the 1,130-megawatt Parli power plant in Beed, and the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporations (MIDCs) in five districts. While Jayakwadi dam had less water for use, Ujni dam in southern Maharashtra, the third largest in Maharashtra, had not water that could be used. Again, upstream dams did not release water. Ujni provides water to Solapur town and about 40 villages.
Angry farmers and civil society groups launched a fierce agitation, asking for release of water even as they faced stiff resistance from political and farmers' groups upstream. On November 27, Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan asked for release of water to Jayakwadi. A total of 8.5 TMC was released from four dams, that too under heavy police protection. "The resistance is shocking. The water was not for industry or agriculture. It was for drinking," says Vijay Diwan of non-profit Nisarga Mitra Mandal in Aurangabad.
Driver of the conflict
The fight is because of the legal mess in water governance, says Pradeep Purandare, former professor at the Water and Land Management Institute, Aurangabad. According to the Maharashtra Irrigation Act (MIA) of 1976, all irrigation projects and their command areas should be notified under it. Thirty-seven years later, the Act has not been implemented because rules have not been framed. "The irrigation department does not have the power to take action and prevent water diversions from agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes like industry," he says.
To complicate matters, in 2005 two water sector reform legislations - MWRRA Act and Management of Irrigation Systems by Farmers Act - were passed on the premise that MIA 1976 is brought into force. Besides, two water governance bodies were constituted - State Water Board and State Water Authority - to prepare Integrated State Water Plan. Neither has held a meeting in the past eight years.
Even basic governance is difficult in absence of infrastructure, prescribed procedures for measuring water use, irrigated area, evaporation, siltation, conveyance loss and theft. But Pramod Mandade, state deputy secretary, says, "Too precise mechanisms were not needed when there was ample water," he says.
With no clear reference point for governance, malpractices have become easy, says Purandare. "The process of sanctioning projects is in the hands of unscrupulous politicians," he alleges.
Engineer of scarcity
Ghoti, a village in the severely drought-hit Solapur district, is facing acute drinking water crisis. It also has the dubious distinction of having 6,000 borewells for its 3,000-odd residents and about 40 hectares (ha) of standing sugarcane crop. Till about 15 years ago the village had no water worries. Things changed after two sugar factories were set up in the neighbouring Karmala and Barshi tehsils. Farmers started growing sugarcane in large tracts of land. Water that came from Ujni dam was enough for irrigation. But when monsoons failed in 2011 and 2012, they started drilling borewells in desperate bids to save their crops.
Balasaheb Raut, who owns 2.4 ha in the village, has drilled six borewells. In Latur district, 150 borewells are drilled every day. Water, that was once available four metres below ground, has plummeted to about 200 metres.
Excessive digging of borewells is drying up acquifers. Villages that have standing sugarcane crops are likely the ones which are buying drinking water from private tanker owners, he says. "There is a growing feeling among people that they are being deprived of their rightful share of drinking water even as others' crop flourish," says Madhav Chitale, head of the Maharashtra Water and Irrigation Commission, 1999.
Sugarcane has also cut into the acreage of traditional millet crops, which are crucial for fodder, says Ramesh Bhise of Beed-based non-profit Jan Vikas, which works with marginal farmers. "This accounts for the acute fodder crisis. This year, millet straw for fodder is fetching three times the price of sugarcane in the market."
Sugar politics: not so sweet
The second Maharashtra Water and Irrigation Commission 1999 recommends a cap on new sugar factories in water-deficit river basins, and shifting of sugar factories out of drought-prone areas. The 1999 Godbole committee, constituted to investigate sick sugar cooperatives, had made a similar recommendation. D K Pal, former head of Division of Soil Studies, National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning, Nagpur, says his institution has repeatedly recommended a return to traditional rainfed crops of the region such as legume and oilseed. Canal irrigation, which is used to extend sugarcane acreage, is detrimental to arid soil, he says. "In some districts such as Dhule and Ahmednagar, salinity caused by cane cultivation has rendered huge patches of land unfit for cultivation."
But the government has ignored all such recommendations. Chitale admits that sugarcane has damaged the region's agro-economy, fuelled drought and caused water-strife but does not say why the recommendations were ignored. Umakant Dangat, state agriculture commissioner, blames sugarcane for the drought but says agriculture department is helpless because its jurisdiction is limited to recommending drips and sprinklers for water conservation.
The reason for this conspiracy of silence is the political clout sugar cooperatives wield. Almost all sugar factories in the state are controlled by powerful politicians. Thirteen of the 30 ministers in the state Cabinet are either sugar factory owners or heads of sugar cooperatives. Policy measures are, therefore, dictated by the sugar lobby.
The number of sugar factories in the state has increased from 119 in 1999 to 200. Proposals to set up more factories in water-deficit areas are being considered by the Central government. Since most of the sugar from Maharashtra is exported, Solapur collector K M Nagzode had proposed that crushing of sugarcane should be suspended this year. Crushing one tonne of sugarcane takes up 400 litres of water. The proposal was shot down by politicians.
"Politics here is controlled entirely by the sugar lobby, right from the village level," says Bhise. "Politicians determine who will be the sarpanch, who will get big contracts and who will get irrigation water. This year, they have grabbed contracts for running fodder camps, which should logically go to milk cooperatives."
Meaningless measures
The state government proposes to remedy the situation by converting all sugarcane cultivation from flood to drip irrigation within three years. Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar has announced Rs 1,000 crore for the purpose. According to D M More, former director general of the state government's water resource department, drip irrigation is significant to prevent drought. However, he warns, the change will work only if the number of sugar factories are reduced and sugarcane acreage is redistributed rationally in the state. A major share should go to high rainfall Konkan and eastern Vidarbha regions where jaggery-making was traditionally practised, he says.
Farmers say that in a situation as severe as the current drought, drips do not work. In 2012, Savita and Malhari Deshmukh of Pisore village in Ahmadnagar invested Rs 1.25 lakh to convert their 2.5-ha lemon and sweetlime orchards to drip irrigation. But their crops still do not get enough water. "We were banking on water from Kukkadi canal. Without it, the drip is wasted investment," says Malhari.
A watershed failure
Maharashtra is a pioneering state in watershed development. It has conserved, regenerated and judiciously managed its water resources in 12.6 million hectares of the state's 24.1 million ha that have 43,000 micro-watersheds. Development work has been done in 42 per cent of Marathwada region, the worst affected by drought. Umakant Dangat, state agriculture commissioner, says Rs 60,000 crore has been spent on watershed development in the past 10 years. But these are all government data. Ground reality is quite different. Water-starved, poverty-stricken and migration-prone Gourwadi village in Beed district shows how the state has failed in watershed development work despite making huge expenditures.
Gourwadi has two tanks to meet its water requirements. The first is a five-minute walk from where people live, and the second is 200 metres down a steep, dangerous slope. People take the difficult 2.5-km track to fetch drinking water from the second tank because the first one is damaged and has been empty for years. "We have been asking government officials to repair the damaged tank so that drinking water is closeby, and for a mechanism to irrigate farms from the second tank," says former panchayat member Aba Dadarao Gadge.
But in January this year, the agriculture department began work to set up a drinking water pipeline at the second tank instead of repairing the damaged tank. Longer pipeline also means more expenditure. "There is enough water in the second tank for two crops, but now we are not able to get even one decent crop," he says. The ambitious drinking water pipeline project has now been abandoned.
If watershed development work is properly carried out and groundwater recharge is effective, water storage for irrigation is the byproduct, says M N Khadse of non-profit Dharamitra, which has played a key role in implementation of watershed programmes in Vidarbha. But government's watershed programmes concentrate mostly on construction of water-harvesting structures. It is seen as an irrigation tool.
No participation, no result
"We are constantly exhorted to make the watershed programme a success, but we do not know how to do it," says Uttam Gaikwad, resident of Vida in Beed district. "Office-bearers of the village watershed committee ignore our demand for training," he says. Without community consultation the bulk of watershed work carried out in the state is inferior, technically flawed, riddled with corruption and the number of incomplete work is high. Of the 1,609 projects undertaken since 1999 under Drought Prone Area Programme in Maharashtra, not one is complete despite 81 per cent of funds being released, data with the Department of Land Resources reveal. Under Integrated Watershed Management Programme, only two out of 84 projects have been completed since 1999 after 83 per cent release of funds. Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh have fared much better on this front.
Diversion of the fund to purchase equipment that have nothing to do with watershed development worsens the situation. Residents of Vida got solar lamps, gym and library equipment from this fund. "Half of the solar lamps are now out of order. Other equipment are locked inside the deputy sarpanch's house," says Gaikwad. At Ambhi in Osmanabad, 200 cycle-mounted hoes are rusting with the panchayat. "Nobody needs them," says Padmasinha Gatkal, head of village watershed committee.
What lies ahead
\This year's drought is, no doubt, man-made, caused by deliberate neglect and failure of the way we manage water and land. Within a few years, the Krishna and Godavari basins will have substantially less water owing to climate change. Most irrigation projects are incomplete. With rapid urbanisation, water demand will go up. Groundwater recharge is a must even as cities and industries need to become water prudent. But we are going all wrong in our strategies. We have made drought perpetual - rain or no rain, money or no money.
Reprinted with permission from Down To Earth magazine
