With just a 20% deficit in rainfall, the state is reeling under a severe drought despite having the largest irrigation sector in terms of dams and investments. Geeta Nair visits drought-hit areas of the state to find out what went wrong

If there is no water in the dam?should we urinate into it?? was Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar?s response to a fasting drought victim from Solapur. The state is reeling under one of its worst-ever droughts. While Pawar was forced to apologise for his ?piss in the dam? remark, the truth is that many large dam projects that Pawar and his government have been pushing aggressively are turning out to be the most expensive urinals ever built, with many of them yet to be completed. Worse, Pawar, who was also the irrigation minister of the state, is at the centre of a R70,000-crore irrigation scam, with state chief minister Prithviraj Chavan going on record to say that barely 0.1% of the land in the state has been irrigated between 2001 and 2011 despite thousands of crores having been spent.

The irrigation in the state so far covers only 20% of the area, of which most of the area is in western Maharashtra, while in Vidharba, barely 2% of the land is irrigated, leaving the rest solely dependent on rains. The region has huge untapped potential, but the government is not allocating money for irrigation projects.

The Marathwada region is facing one of the worst conditions and unless there is an effort to take water from western Maharashtra to Marathwada, there does not seem to be a future for the region.

The watershed programmes that were carried out from the 1970s to 1990s are not being revisited as the government is not putting money into these projects to maintain them. These projects have done well only where NGOs have gotten involved, but have failed elsewhere.

?A 20% reduction in rainfall should not have brought upon this kind of a severe drought and it is unimaginable that it is happening in Maharashtra, which has the largest irrigation sector in terms of dams and investments,? points out Dr A Narayanamoorthy, NABARD chair professor and director, department of economics and rural development, Alagappa University. ?You will never see this sort of a situation in other states,? he adds.

Wrong cropping,

irrigation methods

Narayanamoorthy says the cropping pattern in Maharashtra has shown a continuous increase in sugarcane cultivation and this cultivation is done by the flooding method. ?Close to 70% of the water goes to one crop,? he points out, suggesting that the government has to discourage cultivating sugarcane through flood irrigation and shift to drip irrigation. Even though Maharashtra was among the first states to start micro irrigation in 1986, the growth has been tardy. Many states, such as Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, have followed the Maharashtra model in micro irrigation and have moved way ahead, but Maharashtra sadly lags behind. Narayanamoorthy says Maharashtra consumes double the amount of water in growing sugarcane as compared to Uttar Pradesh. For regions where water is scarce, water-intensive crops such as sugarcane, banana and orange should be generally avoided. Instead, crops like soybean, cereals, pulses and horticulture products can be sown.

Rapid urbanisation

Another emerging concern for farmers in Maharashtra is going to be the diversion of water meant for irrigation to cities due to rapid urbanisation, warns Narayanamoorthy. ?In Maharashtra, we have big cities around dams and a large amount of water is being withdrawn from these dams for cities, affecting farmers in the command area. It is happening in Pune, Mumbai, Kolhapur, Solapur and Aurangabad. For instance, Pune city was supposed to get only 4 TMC water from the Khadakvasala dam, but now gets 20 TMC,? he says.

Water grabbing

A report by the NGO Prayas (Resources and Livelihood Group), which has been campaigning against the water policies being followed in Maharashtra, says case studies show that water was diverted from agricultural use to industrial use without the due process of following existing legal provisions and without compensating or consulting the affected farmers.

Titled Exploiting Policy Obscurity for Legalising Water Grabbing in the Era of Economic Reform: The Case of Maharashtra by Subodh Wagle, dean, School of Habitat Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Sachin Warghade of TISS and Mandar Sathe of Prayas, the report says: ?These cases are fitting examples of the phenomenon of water grabbing that has benefited powerful corporate houses. At the same time, this water grabbing deprived farmers who were beneficiaries of these projects as per the original plans. This shows that a new dimension has been added to the previous phenomenon of resource grabbing due to large projects like dams. The initial victims of resource grabbing were the rural communities whose land and other resources were acquired for dam building. Now the very beneficiaries of dams are falling victim to the phenomenon of water grabbing due to the power and reach of large private corporations, further strengthened by the national and international processes such as export-oriented growth and privatisation of utilities.?

Narayanamoorthy says while diversion of water happens the world over, it is done by taking permission of farmers and compensating them for the water, which should also be done in India so that villages can use the water for regenerating water bodies. But bulging cities are a problem and expect more conflicts in future is his message. There will also be massive migration from Marathwada and Vidarbha into the rest of Maharashtra, which will only burden the infrastructure even more, he warns.

Bad groundwater management

?Currently, there is no effective legislation for groundwater regulation in the state and this is a countrywide problem. Groundwater management is going to be a huge issue in Maharashtra and sustainable use of groundwater will determine the future of its agriculture,? says Crispino Lobo, co-founder of WOTR, a watershed organisation trust. ?There is no alternative to watershed. What the state needs is not big dams, but a series of micro projects. But nobody is interested in them,? he adds.

He calls dams nothing but evaporating pans benefitting only a few. ?Harvesting water on the soil benefits everybody and is a more equitable way of water distribution,? points out Lobo, who has been working on natural resource management, participatory watershed development and integrated water resources management for decades with WOTR co-founder Hermann Bacher. Their experience is that these projects work only if the entire community gets involved and participates voluntarily in implementing and taking care of the projects.

The idea behind watershed management is to harvest maximum water and store it. This starts from the top of the hill, right down to the valley across the catchment. ?Where the rain runs, we make it walk; where it walks, we make it crawl; where it crawls, we make it sink into the ground. This stops run-off and the water table for the whole area rises and wells do not go dry,? says Lobo. This also stops soil erosion. This kind of regeneration of water and protecting of the soil has had a direct impact on the farmers and the farmland wherever it has been implemented.

WOTR helps implement watershed development through a village development committee, which functions as a sub-committee of the gram panchayat. This helps keep politics out of the development work. They also make it mandatory for 70% of the people to approve it and also 70% of the village families have to physically work on projects voluntarily. While the project is being implemented, there is a ban on grazing, digging bore wells and growing crops such as sugarcane, banana, orange or any water-intensive crops. The rule is no draining of aquifers if you cannot recharge it, says Lobo.

The oases in a drought

If there are people in rain-fed, drought-prone areas of Maharashtra who are still getting drinking water in their villages and are going to survive the drought, they are the ones who opted for watershed development projects. Those who seriously pursued it after taking some tough calls on curbing bore well digging, giving up water-intensive crops, ending mindless grazing and tree felling have turned their villages into oases amidst a large number of water deprived villages. Here are the stories of two such villages, Bhojdari and Sarole Pathar in Sangamer taluka of drought-prone Ahmednagar district

The people of Bhojdari village are proud that while tankers are bringing in water to adjoining villages, they are self-sufficient in drinking water and have enough stock to take care of the entire season. Water is not here in abundance, but enough for their needs, says Baban Sakharam Ugle, the village development committee head. Ugle says he has seen a transformation take place in the village from a water-deficit, barren land to a self-sufficient, crop-growing village. Their wells and water bodies have been recharged enough to also grow some crops that are not water-intensive, explains Ganpat Hande, the police patil of the village. He wants to bring in sprinklers and drip irrigation to the farms. As a result, nobody in the village is migrating to cities looking for jobs.

The watershed development project implemented in 1995 by WOTR was their turning point. ?We grow jowar, bajra, groundnut, soybean, tomato and onions, and there has been a 60-80% rise in income,? says Ugle. They have a school till class X and for further education children go to nearby Botagaon, Ghargaon and Alephata. A government health centre has come up for this village of 12,560 people.

Bhojdari villagers write out their water balancesheet, where they match the water resources they have with the availability and how they are going to use it. They do this because they are increasingly noticing that the weather is no longer what it used to be and the frequency of extreme events has become a cause for concern. They understand that water is going to become scare and has to be conserved and used judiciously. They also understand it is not just water that needs conservation, but also soil, so they aim to turn their farms into 100% organic ones.

The village does not have any mobile coverage, but there are 127 mobiles in this village. Villagers carry their mobiles to places with better signal reception to obtain updated weather reports and crop advisories, thanks to a unique climate change project that has been launched in the state with NABARD, IMD and WOTR.

Around 41 agromet stations have been set up in the state. These enable farmers to get a more focused weather condition and forecast instead of a random general forecast in 68 villages. Every hour, data is collected, updated and collated by the Pune IMD department. WOTR then converts this information into advisory and sends it across to the villages.

Damming the earth in Sarole Pathar

The people of Sarole Pathar are reaping the rich harvest of water for what they did 15 years ago?they completely banned bore wells and have followed this till date. Says Hausiram Guruji, a village elder who was part of the watershed programme: ?People had suffered a lot and were willing to do anything to change things, so the entire community got involved.? The village has 3,000 people living on 14,500 hectares, of which now only 95 hectares is left uncovered under watershed development. The village plans to have bunds, nallas and trenches, as well as planting of trees.

When nearby villages that had dug bore wells went dry, Sarole Pathar residents did a ?bhumigat bandh?, or dam in the earth, says Tukaram Patangare, who is part of the village development committee. This was done by puncturing the ground and pouring cement into the bores to stop the flow of water. They now have 125 wells that provide drinking water and also act as a water source for crops. Women appreciate these the most as their drudgery of fetching water is over. They now spend that time in self-help groups, of which there are 15 in the village. Some women have bought bicycles to cycle to their farms.

?The cropping pattern changed from only bajra to tomato, onion and diversified into horticulture with many orchards coming up. The average income in the village is now in the R1 lakh category from around R20,000 before,? says Sudhir Pokharkar, who is the agriculture expert in the village. His orchard is growing pomegranates and he expects to make good money this year despite a drought.

The village is also home to one of the local units where weather information is collected and the villagers are able to get highly localised and relevant weather information.