Three Mega Irrigation Projects That Can Alleviate Maharashtra's Persistent Water Woes

This summer, villages and towns in 23 of 36 districts in an Indian state have no other alternative other than relying on water supplied through nearly 3,500 tankers. Owned privately and paid for by the state government, the water carrying vehicles come to these settlements on alternate days in a week.

It is also the same state where 2,851 farmers committed suicide in 2023 alone owing to debt majorly resulting from acute water distress.

This is Maharashtra for you, a state which has the dubious distinction of reporting the highest gross domestic state product (GSDP) as well as the highest number of farmer suicides among all Indian states.

Water is a scarce commodity in western and southern India but more so in Maharashtra. While drinking water is supplied on a daily basis in cities which are part of the Mumbai and Pune metropolitan region, there are several other cities and towns in the state which see water flow through their taps only twice or thrice in a week.

Situation is particularly worse in the Marathwada and western Vidarbha regions where a large number of towns are supplied water only once or twice in 15 days.

“We are supplied water by the city council only once in a fortnight. If this isn’t enough of a headache, dates and timing of water supply too is not regular. Moreover, whenever water supply starts, it lasts only for an hour. If one manages to fill water within that duration, it's great, else the only option then is to ask for a private water tanker and pay the owner Rs 500 for 1000 litres of water,” said Satyabhama Karhad, a resident of Ambajogai town located in the Marathwada region’s Beed district.

While those like Karhad who receive piped water even in peak summer, albeit once in a week or in a fortnight, are among the fortunate ones, there are several villages across the state which go without water right from the month of January. The only alternative available before the state government then is to hire private water tankers and supply water to these villages through the same.

At present, with several major reservoirs across the state reporting water levels in the dead stock, reports of dairy farmers taking their cattle for sale in markets owing to their inability to provide water and fodder are on the rise.

Cultivators too are desperate in such times to protect their crops. As per a recent report in Loksatta, a grape farm owner near Tuljapur in Marathwada's Dharashiv district has dug nearly 120 borewells in his 70 acre farm to prevent grape vines from drying out.

This is an eerie reminder of a 2015 report which talked about a farmer from Ashti in Beed district who had dug nearly 48 borewells in his 18 acre farm to prevent pomegranate fruit yielding trees from drying out.

The number of borewells dug here is ironic considering that both districts mentioned above have consistently been on the watch of union as well as state government agencies for sharp decline in groundwater levels.

The consistent shortfall in water supply lies at the root of farmer suicides, besides sending the state government’s fiscal management going for a toss.

In fact, the occurrence of a drought-like situation every alternate year creates a vicious cycle, putting both the farmers as well as the state government under pressure.

When large amounts of rabi crops fail owing to a lack of water or when kharif crops fail owing to late arrival of monsoon rains, farmers in the state are forced to borrow money from either co-operatives or private creditors to sow new seeds, buy fertilisers and hire help for tilling fields. When the crop fails again or when it doesn’t fetch a price commensurate with the input cost, farmers are forced to seek loan again.

The state government is then compelled to waive off loans and pay the same on their behalf to the creditor. This puts an additional financial load on the exchequer. And yet, the farmer is compelled to borrow once again in the next year when rains fail.

Considering that the water scarcity has been aggravating the agricultural crisis and the former will become even worse with large numbers of youth migrating to poorly planned cities, it is morally binding for the present state government and the one that comes into power next to implement the following projects which have been stuck for years.

1) Marathwada Water Grid: Conceptualised in 2019 with the help of an Israeli firm, the Rs 4,000 crore project which was supposed to end the water woes of Marathwada region, continues to exist just as an idea on paper.

Considered to be a pet project of the then Devendra Fadnavis led BJP-Shiv Sena government, water grid was supposed to connect all major reservoirs across the seven districts of the drought prone Marathwada with an extensive network of pipelines, pumphouses and water purification plants.

After its completion, it was expected that water from large reservoirs along the Godavari river could be circulated to those located in water deficient areas.

However, the ambitious project was sidelined when the Western Maharashtra sugar baron lobby dominated Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) came to power in 2019.

At present, the state government under the BJP-led Mahayuti is awaiting monetary assistance from the Union government for the execution of the same.

2) Integrated Water Management Plan: Water policy practitioners have pointed out that Maharashtra's irrigation projects built on the partly- perennial Godavari and Krishna rivers are located in the upper river basins of the same where water flow is less compared to the parts downstream.

Taking cognisance of the same, the state government under the premiership of Devendra Fadnavis in 2019 had devised an integrated water management plan where in excess water that flows into the sea from westward flowing rivers in monsoons would be diverted eastwards and pumped above the Western Ghats into the reservoirs of the Godavari river basin.

Further, this water then will be released downstream where in it will be pumped into the Marathwada water-grid for supply to water deficient areas.

The same has been planned in case of the irrigation projects located along the ghats mid-way between Godavari and Krishna river basins and also for connecting reservoirs located in western Vidarbha to that in the water-rich eastern Vidarbha.

The present day Mahayuti-ruled government in which Fadnavis is a Deputy Chief Minister has planned to implement the same once it comes back to power.

However, if the Mahayuti fails to form a government post October 2024 state assembly elections, people from Marathwada and western Vidarbha fear that the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar)-Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray)-led coalition government will focus on implementing plans for dams located in the mid-section which only benefit the sugarcane belt of western Maharashtra.

3) Krishna Bhima River Stabilisation Project: First proposed in 2004, the project envisaged diverting nearly 1.25 lakh million cubic feet of flood waters from the Krishna river to the Bhima river. This was supposed to be done by pumping water from Krishna river bank near Kolhapur into pipes and releasing the same into the Ujani Reservoir situated along the Bhima river.

Further, water from the same was supposed to be pumped into pipelines over the hills to be released into the Sina Kolegaon Reservoir built on the Sina river located in the drought prone Dharashiv district.

Completion of this river linking project can potentially alleviate water woes of water deficient talukas of Pune and Solapur districts in western Maharashtra and parts of Dharashiv and Latur districts in Marathwada.

The Krishna Bhima project was also a part of the several irrigation projects Fadnavis had planned to implement after coming back to power post 2019. However, in the subsequent tenure of the Uddhav Thackeray-led MVA government, the projects failed to move ahead.

Work towards implementation of the project is said to have started only after the BJP-led Mahayuti government came back to power in 2022. At present, the state government is awaiting the submission of a detailed project report for the same.

Other Projects Which Maharashtra Should Implement

A large chunk of water from the reservoirs located on the leeward side of the Western Ghats apart from irrigation is also used for supplying drinking to the cities and industrial clusters around them.

In case of poor monsoon rains and even otherwise when it rains adequately, city administrations end up getting caught in a row with farmers over who gets the larger share of water.

In case of the Pune Metropolitan Region which hosts a population of 72.76 lakh as per 2011 census figures, potable drinking water is supplied through five large reservoirs located along the slopes of western ghats.

At present, the largest civic body in the region- the Pune Municipal Corporation, lifts nearly 18 thousand million cubic (TMC) feet of water, which is over and above the quota of 14.5 TMC alloted by the state's irrigation department. Despite this, the civic body fails to supply water regularly throughout the entire city in summers when the irrigation department is compelled to discharge water promised to the farmers.

Further, the three major rivers that flow through the twin cities of Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad — Mula, Mutha and Indrayani — are heavily polluted, making the water unusable even for industrial usage.

In other cities like Mumbai and Navi Mumbai which are able to meet their water needs even in peak summers, water treated through well-equipped sewage treatment plants is released into the sea. Experts say that this amounts to wastage of resources as well as water considering that the treated water can be used for flushing and gardening.

Moreover, considering that more than half of the state goes without regular water supply while potable water is used for flushing in the the two major urban clusters of PMR and MMR, the state government with assistance from the Union government needs to set up more sewage treatment plants in all major cities and augment the capacity of the existing ones.

Further, funds ought to be provided through the Smart Cities Mission for laying pipelines that can supply treated water to residential areas where the same can be used for flushing and other non-drinking purposes.

A recent study by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) points out that between 1990 and 2022, floods featured among the top two natural disasters apart from storms in India. In case of western India, this can be discerned through the fact that flooding in westward flowing rivers like Tapi and Narmada is an annual phenomenon.

Yet, none of the previous dispensations in power in Maharashtra have realised that those flood waters, at least the one from Tapi which flows through three districts of Maharashtra before entering Gujarat, could be diverted southwards into the water deficient Marathwada.

Considering this, it will be factually incorrect to say that Maharashtra lacks water. In fact, it is the poor management of the available water resources and criminal lack of foresight which is coming at the cost of thousands of farmers in the state committing suicide each year and individuals falling to death in their desire to fetch water.