Maharashtra likely to seek WB loan to fight drought

The state has spent Rs 2,000 crore to support 1 million heads of cattle at Rs 75 per day and provide water tankers

Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan avoids fraternising with Bollywood, quite unlike his predecessor, Vilasrao Deshmukh. But when actor Salman Khan’s NGO ‘Being Human’ offered 2,500 plastic water tanks to be used in Osmanabad, Beed, Jalna, Aurangabad and Nanded, Chavan met the actor and thanked him personally for an intervention badly needed in a state that is grappling with its worst drought in 40 years.

Every financial nerve and sinew of the state is straining to fight the drought, Chavan told Business Standard. Rs 2,000 crore has been spent by the state to support 1 million heads of cattle at Rs 75 per day and provide water tankers.
 

Reimbursement for crop failure for 2013-14 is likely to be Rs 2,000 to 3,000 crore. The National Relief Fund (NRF) has been allocated nearly Rs 1,050 crore to provide assistance for drought-affected Rabi crops.  

15 districts comprising 11,801 villages have been declared as drought-affected. There is acute water scarcity in 1,779 villages and 4,709 smaller habitations. Some of the villages are facing drought for the second consecutive year.  6200 villages are affected by drought in Vidarbha alone.

Around 331 villages in Amravati, 800 in Yavatmal, 300 in Gadchiroli and 120 in Wardha district of the region in Eastern Maharashtra are severely affected. Vidarbha gets drinking water once in 12 to 14 days.  Solapur, Satara, Sangli, Pune and Nashik face an acute crisis of drinking water – Solapur gets drinking water once every two days.

The proportions of the drought challenge have sent Maharashtra’s finances off kilter. Money is tight. In expenditure control mode himself, Finance Minister P Chidambaram has encouraged Chavan, in the light of well-managed state finances – at 1.4% of the state GDP, the state’s fiscal deficit is well below the prescribed 3% - to take a World Bank loan to mitigate the effects of the drought.

Maharashtra’s GSDP growth at current prices for  2012-13 was 14.4% and is expected to be 12% in 2013-14. The state budget for 2013-14 envisages spending 4.4% of the budget on drought alleviation. Out of Plan allocation, nearly Rs 2100 crore will be spent to combat the drought.

The numbers sound big but much of the effort is small and local. Cement plugs are being put in to prevent evaporation of water from canals. Small farm ponds are being lined with plastic sheets to prevent seepage. All NREGA work is geared towards drought mitigation. He says the focus has been on small scale efforts: farmers have formed groups to desilt water tanks, carrying the silt to the fields to enrich the soil.

This has caused new storage capacities for water. Farmers have converted to drip irrigation in many parts of Maharashtra even for water-intensive crops such as sugarcane. Chavan confesses that the first thing he scans anxiously on waking up every day is the progress of the monsoon.

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

Chavan does not comment on the observation that despite spending Rs 70,000 crore between 1999 and 2011 on irrigation projects, the irrigation potential that was added during this period was just 0.1%. But he concedes that the biggest political challenge in the forthcoming elections to Lok Sabha and the assembly (due in October-November 2014) will be the judgment people will pass on the state’s drought management effort.