Failure of big dam model? 36% of big dams in Maharashtra of "little help" to Marathwada drought

Senior environmental activist and water expert Himanshu Thakkar has said that the current drought in India should clear the misconception that drams are a panacea for water scarcity. In an interview with a top business daily, Thakkar has insisted, “Big dams have proved to be a failed water resources development model.”
“The first thing that strikes you about Maharashtra is that it has, by far, the highest number of big dams in India. According to the National Register of Large Dams of the Central Water Commission, of the total number of 5,100 big dams 1,845 are in Maharashtra”, Thakkar, who with the South Asian Network on Rivers, Dams and People (SANDRP), said.
“So about 35 to 36 per cent of all big dams in India are in the state. Yet Maharashtra is in the headlines for drought and water scarcity today. While nationally, 46 per cent of cropped area is irrigated, in Maharashtra the figure is hardly 18 per cent”, he added.
Even Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, in his Assembly speech on July 21, 2015, admitted that farmers need irrigation, not dams, and dams are not the only means to achieve irrigation, Thakkar said.
Suggesting that the Maharashtra government has failed to understand this reality, Thakkar said, “Parts of Maharashtra are facing multiple agrarian and hydrological crises this year. Rainfall deficits have been as high as 40 and 42 per cent in the last two years in Marathwada.”
“In some districts and blocks the figure is even higher. So rain-fed kharif crops in many parts have failed for the last two years. The rabi crops were also hit by unprecedented hailstorms in 2014 and 2015. The 2016 rabi season has been hit by unusually dry conditions”, he added.
Pointing out that during the 2015 monsoon, he and his Pune-based colleague Parineeta Dandekar realised in mid-July that this year was going to be a crisis for most of Maharashtra, in addition to some other adjoining areas, Thakkar said, “We wrote to the chief minister in August that the state needed to take certain measures urgently.”
The measures included “stopping the diversion of about three billion cubic metres of water from the Bhima and Krishna basins to the high-rainfall Konkan area, stopping non-essential water-use activities, taking stock of available water and deploying it for priority needs, and so on”, he said.
Yet, Thakkar noted, “The Maharashtra government did not wake up to this situation then or at the end of the monsoon or even now”, adding, the state government's Jalyukt Shivar Abhiyaan doing “deepening, widening and straightening of rivers”, cannot be a “fig leaf to hide its incompetence in handling this crisis.”
“In Marathwada and western Maharashtra (similarly, also northern Karnataka) sugar cane cultivation on about four to five per cent of cropped land takes up about 70 per cent of available irrigation water”, Thakkar said, adding, “We have been saying that considering the rainfall, weather situation and water availability, sugarcane is not a sustainable crop in these regions.”
Yet, he added, “Even when 2014 and 2015 monsoon had major deficits in Maharashtra, the area under sugarcane remained at record levels. This was after the 2012 drought in Maharashtra, when the same issues had cropped up and the government, including the then Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar promised intervention. We saw no implementation of those promises then. The situation is the same now.”

Comments

Breaking news? Top Hindu builder ties up with Muslim investor for a huge minority housing society in Ahmedabad

There is a flutter in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur area, derogatorily referred to as the "border" because, on its eastern side, there is a sprawling minority area called Juhapura, where around five lakh Muslims live. The segregation is so stark that virtually no Muslim lives in Vejalpur, populated by around four lakh Hindus, and no Hindu lives in Juhapura.

60 crore in Mahakumbh? It's all hype with an eye on UP polls, asserts keen BJP supporter in Amit Shah's constituency

As the Mahakumbh drew to a close, during my daily walk, I met a veteran BJP supporter—a neighbor with whom we would often share dinner in a group. An amicable person, the first thing he asked me, as he was about to take the lift to his flat, was, "How many people do you think must have participated in the holy dip?" He then stopped by to talk—which we did for a full half-hour, cutting into my walk time.

Caste, class, and Patidar agitation: Veteran academic 'unearths' Gujarat’s social history

Recently, I was talking with a veteran Gujarat-based academic who is the author of several books, including "Social Movements in India: A Review of Literature", "Untouchability in Rural India", "Public Health and Urban Development: The Study of Surat Plague", and "Dalit Identity and Politics", apart from many erudite articles and papers in research and popular journals.

An untold story? Still elusive: Gujarati language studies on social history of Gujarat's caste and class evolution

This is a follow-up to my earlier blog , where I mentioned that veteran scholar Prof. Ghanshyam Shah has just completed a book for publication on a topic no academic seems to have dealt with—caste and class relations in Gujarat’s social history. He forwarded me a chapter of the book, published as an "Economic & Political Weekly" article last year, which deals with the 2015 Patidar agitation in the context of how this now-powerful caste originated in the Middle Ages and how it has evolved in the post-independence era.

A conman, a demolition man: How 'prominent' scribes are defending Pritish Nandy

How to defend Pritish Nandy? That’s the big question some of his so-called fans seem to ponder, especially amidst sharp criticism of his alleged insensitivity during his journalistic career. One such incident involved the theft and publication of the birth certificate of Masaba Gupta, daughter of actor Neena Gupta, in the Illustrated Weekly of India, which Nandy was editing at the time. He reportedly did this to uncover the identity of Masaba’s father.

New York-based digital company traces Modi's meteoric rise to global Hindutva ecosystem over several decades

A recent document, released by the Polis Project Inc.—a New York-based digital magazine and hybrid research and journalism organization—even as seeking to highlight the alleged rise of authoritarianism in India, has sought to trace Prime Minister Narendra Modi's meteoric rise since 2014 to the ever-expanding global Hindutva ecosystem over the last several decades.

Behind the scene? Ex-IAS, now Modi man in Yogi Cabinet, who lined up Mahakumbh VVIP comforts for Gujarat colleagues

The other day, I was talking to a senior IAS official about whether he or his colleagues had traveled to the recently concluded Mahakumbh in Allahabad, which was renamed Prayagraj by UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath as part of his intense Hindutva drive. He refused to reveal any names but said he had not gone there "despite arrangements for Gujarat cadre IAS officials" at the Mahakumbh VVIP site. "The water is too dirty—why take the risk?" he asked.

Socialist utopia challenging feudal and Brahminical systems: Kanwal Bharti on Sant Raidas’ vision of Begumpura

In a controversial claim, well-known Dalit writer and columnist Kanwal Bharti has asserted that a clever Brahminical move appears to be behind the Guru Granth Sahib changing the name of the 15th-16th century mystic poet-saint of the Bhakti movement, Sant Raidas, to Sant Ravidas.

What's wrong with those seeking to promote Sanskrit? An ex-Hindi professor has the answer

Ajay Tiwari I have always wondered why certain elite sections are so fascinated by Sanskrit, to the extent of even practicing speaking a language that, for all practical purposes, isn’t alive. During my Times of India stint in Gandhinagar, the Gujarat state capital, I personally witnessed an IAS bureaucrat, Bhagyesh Jha, trying to converse with a friend in Sanskrit.

Search This Blog