I t is the end of May. The heat in Maharashtra’s Aurangabad and Ahmednagar districts is intense, peaking at 43°C (the historical average for this time of year has been 37°). The classic signs of drought are everywhere. Parched, cracked earth. Burning heat. A stillness in the air and the sort of retina-burning glare that presages delayed rains. But even at times like this, there would be, in other years, signs of agricultural activity like ploughing and preparing the land for sowing. However, this year, the State Agriculture Department has warned farmers to be ready for a delayed monsoon and has asked them to delay sowing.
Gopal Jagtap, a small farmer in Jamkhed in Ahmednagar district, explained that the soil would be ready for sowing only after the first light showers. If sowing was done before this, germination would be poor and would result in stunted or scanty plants. “We expected this situation. The water situation is very bad and the rains are going to be late,” he said, pointing to the erratic blooming of certain plants. If visual signs are not enough to show this up for the crisis it is, then there are data from the government that firmly establish that the State is indeed at the deep end of a water crisis.
Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’ much vaunted Jalyukt Shivar Abhiyan, launched in 2016, promised to make Maharashtra drought-free by 2019. Fadnavis’ own government, however, has declared 2019 a drought year; 40 per cent of the State is under the grip of a drought. The scheme, clearly, did not succeed.
The drought did not exactly creep up on the State. It has been in the making for years. The loss of green cover to gigantic infrastructure projects, destructive cropping patterns, injudicious water use, and indiscriminate and unmonitored use of groundwater have all led up to the current situation. The Jalyukt scheme’s plan was to deepen and widen stream beds, build small dams, including earthworks, and dig ditches and farm ponds. While all these measures are effective for water management, more aggressive interventions were required to halt and reverse the extent of the man-made drought that has been inflicted on Maharashtra. The scheme was not an effectively designed weapon for what it was meant to tackle.
From 2017 to 2019, Rs.5,200 crore was allotted for it in the Budget. Activists who have personally experienced the water shortage in villages say that the scheme deteriorated into a contractor-driven one in much the same way that the employment guarantee scheme had. This meant that the budgetary outlays ended up going to contractors instead of targeted beneficiaries. The government defends itself saying contractors were used only for large projects. It blames the shortfall in the last monsoon for the current situation.
In further proof of how ineffective the scheme was, the State government declared a drought in February in 151 of 358 taluks comprising 28,524 villages. These villages were provided drinking water in tankers. Some 216 government tankers and close to 5,700 private ones are providing water in the affected taluks. Even so, water is not available daily. The tanker water is supposed to be free, but a “tanker mafia” is operational everywhere and as much as Rs.3,000 can be extracted from families for a week’s needs.
The urgency of the situation is further emphasised by the critically low water levels in the State’s reservoirs. As on June 10, the State Water Resources Department said that only in one district live storage capacity of the local reservoirs was between 30 and 75 per cent of the total storage capacity. In the 35 districts, all reservoirs were at less than 30 per cent of the total storage capacity.
The 3,267 dams in the State have a designed live capacity of 40,897.95 million cubic metres but as of June 10 the total live capacity was a mere 2,816.68 million cubic metres. The fall in water levels is even better illustrated when a percentage-wise comparison is made between last year’s live storage and this year’s on the same date. Last year, the live storage was 17.66 per cent and this year it is 6.89 per cent. The grim picture is illustrated by a look at the revenue region-wise reservoir storage (see graphic).
Maharashtra has 131 major dams, 258 medium dams and 2,868 minor dams. Their storage, along with local waterbodies such as lakes and rivers, is meant to provide for the entire State’s domestic, agricultural, power and industrial needs. Prior to the monsoon, reservoirs are traditionally at their lowest; this year they are at a three-year low.
While the delayed rains are definitely a matter of concern, the crux of the problem lies in something deeper and more pervasive: the pattern of water use that has been perpetuated over the decades in the State. Whether it is the obsession with large dams, the diverting of water for urban use or the politically linked distribution of water for agriculture, it all boils down to poor water distribution and usage.
Sugar cane factor
The cultivation of sugar cane has contributed greatly to the imbalance in water distribution and to the water crisis. It is a crop that yields high profit with minimal inputs, but its intensive water use has been wreaking havoc on agricultural water distribution patterns. A quick glance at a map of the placement of most of the dams in the State shows a thick cluster of them in a long line that extends down western Maharashtra. In comparison with the rash of dams in this region, in the rest of the State the dams are scattered.
Western Maharashtra is the heart of sugar cane cultivation; 75.61 per cent of the State’s sugar comes from there. But it is not an ideal crop for the region. The agro-ecological subregion, according to the Indian Council for Agricultural Research, is classified as semi-arid. Western Maharashtra is also in the rain shadow area. The Western Ghats separate it from the coast, and when the south-west monsoon clouds come up against the almost 2,700-metre high Ghats, their rain falls on the westerly side, leaving the Deccan plateau and beyond in a semi-parched condition. Traditional agriculture here has consisted of hardy, drought-resistant crops such as jowar and bajra, groundnut, oilseeds, pomegranate and lime.
Jagtap, who comes from a farming family in Akole in Ahmednagar district, continues the tradition. Like most in the region, he was initially drawn to the money and the safety that cane cultivation offered. “We planted the crop, harvested it after 18 months and sent it to the sugar factory and got our money,” he said. The convenience was undeniable, but after five or six seasons he found it unmanageable. Cane is a labour-intensive crop. The harvest and the preparing of the field for the next crop are non-mechanised activities. It is also the time when migrant labourers earn their maximum wages. This demand-and-supply chain takes its toll on small cane farmers. Jagtap, his wife, their three sons and two daughters-in-law used to work on their three acres along with three dailywage workers. A road accident in which he lost two sons and their wives while they were returning from a pilgrimage forced him to rethink many things in his life. Among them was sugar cane cultivation, which he no longer found viable. He returned to growing jowar, bajra and vegetables for domestic consumption. For irrigation he used water from a well he shares with two neighbouring farmers.
As a child, when the farm was in his grandfather’s care, he remembers the well as always holding water. “In summer the water would be far below, but it was never empty like it happens now,” he said. His neighbours continue to grow cane, using water from borewells and local minor irrigation projects. He attributes the low water level in the well to the borewells but concedes that the percolation tanks built by the government are helping to replenish groundwater levels.
Apprehensions that 2019 might be a water-scarce year were voiced last year. The 2018 monsoon was satisfactory from an agricultural point of view, but metereologically speaking, it had been inadequate. Yet, last year saw a spike in the kharif planting of sugar cane. Department of Agriculture records show that the 2018 sugar cane planting was the highest in 18 years. In 2018, 11.63 lakh hectares (1 hectare is 0.4 acre) were under cane cultivation, while in 2017 it was 9.02 lakh ha. What was astounding was that the cane planting could not be regulated despite the prediction that this year would be a water-scarce year.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Department of Agriculture official said the department was not empowered to prevent farmers from planting cane. Instead, attempts are made to educate them about water risks, especially in low rainfall areas, but “the response from them was not positive”. The official said sugar yields far higher profits than traditional crops such as jowar and bajra and “the organised nature of the sugar industry is a huge comfort factor for farmers who know that the crop will be taken off them”.
But there is a sting in the tail of this prosperity. The uncontrolled planting of cane leads to a glut in the sugar market, and the next season’s crop is not so profitable. The crop planted in 2018 is feeling the pinch of the drought. The Vasantdada Sugar Institute, a single focus R&D organisation in Pune, predicts that the area under cane will decline in the next season by about six lakh hectares. The reason is that this year’s crop is wilting because of the drought, and farmers are keen to sell it fast before the sugar content in the cane drops.
Though sugar cane is planted on about 5 per cent of the State’s farm lands, it consumes more than 70 per cent of its water resources. It is this topsy turvy approach to agriculture that prompts people like Professor H.M. Desarda to reiterate that crops should be planted according to the region’s rainfall pattern. Desarda, who used to be on the state Planning Commission and is now a committed activist for poor farmers and sustainable agriculture, believes that imposing a water-intensive crop on an arid area is criminal. He blames sugar cane cultivation in the arid zone of Marathwada for the region’s water woes.
Marathwada is a drought-prone region and received scanty rainfall from 2012 to 2016. The monsoon was better in 2017 and 2018, and farmers tried to cash in on this by planting sugar cane. This year the rainfall is delayed, so they have tried to recover the crop by diverting all available water to it and have even dug borewells in riverbeds. Desarda said about two lakh hectares in Marathwada are under sugar cane and 50 of the State’s 200 factories are in this region. The region also accounts for 17.91 per cent of the State’s sugar production.
In conclusion, one fact places everything in perspective. According to statistics from the Department of Agriculture and the Indian Sugar Mills Association, the average requirement of water to produce 100 tonnes of millable cane is 150 to 200 lakh litres a hectare in a year for the full season. Compare this to jowar. In the five to six months from sowing to harvest, jowar needs irrigating only between one and seven times depending on whether it is sown as a rabi or a kharif crop.
The choice should be clear.
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