How the other half dries
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MAN-MADE DROUGHT: In Maharashtra, even tigers do not have "an attached forest reserve." A hoarding on the Mumbai-Pune Highway. Photo: P. Sainath -
MAN-MADE DROUGHT: In rural Maharashtra, you take water when you find it, wherever you find it. Photo: P. Sainath -
MAN-MADE DROUGHT: In rural Maharashtra, you take water when you find it, wherever you find it. Photo: P. Sainath
How we use water can be as important as how much water we have. Who owns or controls that water will prove crucial
“Every apartment is a dream come true — the coronet that tops the
king-sized lifestyle of true blue blood.” So run the ads. Yup. The blue
bloods do it big. Each apartment has its own private swimming pool.
These are, after all, “super-luxurious, supersized designer apartments.”
The kind that “match the royal lifestyles.” There are also the villas
the builders proudly announce as their “first gated community project.”
And yes, each of them ranging from 9,000 to 22,000 square feet also
offers its own private swimming pool. In yet other buildings coming up,
the duplex penthouses will each have, you guessed it: private swimming
pools.
These are just in Pune alone. All of them with other amenities needing
still more water. A small but proud trend — with the promise of more to
come. All of them in regions of a State lamenting their greatest drought
in 40 years. In Maharashtra, Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan’s view,
one of our worst droughts ever. In a State where thousands of villages
now depend on visits from water tankers. A daily visit if you’re lucky.
Once or twice a week if you’re not. Yet it’s as if there is no
connection between the swimming pools and the drying lakes. There’s very
little discussion about it, for sure. As little as there was during two
decades when the State rejoiced in the spread of dozens of “water
parks” and water-theme entertainment parks. At one point, a score of
them in the Greater Mumbai region alone.
Major diversions
Across the drought-hit regions of the State, despair grows. Over 7,000
villages are drought or scarcity-hit. Officially. Thousands of others
are also in a bad way but are not classified as drought-hit. Of those
declared as affected, some will get a bit of help. The government runs
water tanker visits for them. Thousands of others make direct deals with
private tankers. Close to half-a-million animals are dependent on
cattle camps. Distress sales of cattle go on briskly, too. Water in many
reservoirs is below 15 per cent. In some it is close to dead-storage
levels. But far more than the searing drought of 1972, this is a
man-made one.
There have been huge diversions of water in the last 15 years to
industrial projects. And to private companies also in the lifestyle
business. To cities from villages. Blood has been shed over such
transfers. As in Maval in 2011 when police fired on angry farmers,
killing three and wounding 19 others. They were protesting the
government acquiring their land for a water pipeline from the Pavana dam
to Pimpri Chinchwad. The scale of water loss this implied drew
thousands more into the protests as well. The State’s response at the
time was to book around 1,200 people for “attempted murder.” And for
rioting as well.
Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar also did his best to lock in the
control of industry over irrigation. He even tried to amend for the
worse, the already regressive Maharashtra Water Resources Regulatory
Authority Act. One new clause on his agenda would have barred any
challenge to water-distribution policies.
The trends in diversion for lifestyle-entertainment though, are not new.
In 2005, a huge “Fun & Food Village Water & Amusement Park”
popped up in Nagpur (Rural) district. That, in a period of real water
stress. The Fun “Village” had 18 kinds of water slides. It also had
“India’s first snowdrome” along with an ice rink. It is not easy to
maintain snow and ice in 47° heat. That took huge amounts of electricity
in a region seeing 15-hour power cuts. It also guzzled massive amounts
of water.
Lavasa and agriculture
This is also a State that added quite a few golf courses in the past
decade or so. It now has 22, with more in the pipeline. Golf courses use
huge amounts of water. This has often sparked conflicts with farmers in
the past. Golf courses worldwide also use vast amounts of pesticide
that can seep into and affect the water of others as well.
Besides, this is a State where we’ve seen angry protests over the water
soaked up by private projects like Lavasa, “Independent India’s first
hill city.” Sharad Pawar has drawn applause for ticking off his own
party’s minister, Bhaskar Jadhav, for wasteful spending on a family
wedding in a time of drought. But the Union Agriculture Minister has
always been gung-ho about Lavasa. The project’s website noted quite a
while ago that it has “permission to store” 0.87 TMC. That is — 24.6
billion litres of water.
No State has spent more money to create less irrigation. The Economic Survey 2011-12
found that land under irrigation had gone up by just 0.1 per cent of
land in a whole decade. Which still means that less than 18 per cent of
cropped area in the State is irrigated. That’s after spending tens of
billions of rupees to produce many millionaires and very little
irrigation. The major transfers of water to industry also come in a time
of agricultural decline. (A 23 per cent fall in foodgrain in 2011-12
according to the Economic Survey.)
Even as foodcrop declines, fully two-thirds of Maharashtra’s sugarcane
is grown in drought-prone or water scarce areas. At least one Collector
had called for sugarcane crushing in his district to be suspended during
this crisis. The sugar factories there together use up to 90 lakh
litres a day. Given the power the sugar barons wield, the Collector is
more likely to be suspended than the crushing.
The water needed for one acre of sugarcane can irrigate 10-12 acres of foodcrops like jowar.
More than half of Maharashtra’s irrigation water goes to this crop
which takes just six per cent of the cultivated area. Sugarcane requires
“180 acre inches of water.” That is, 18 million litres per acre.
Eighteen million litres can meet the domestic water needs of 3,000
rural households for a month (That’s based on a modest 40 litres a day
per person). This in regions where the water table falls every year.
That has not deterred Maharashtra from encouraging Rose cultivation — a
very tiny trend but growing swiftly with the promise of more to come.
Roses need even more water. They need “212 acre inches.” Which is — 21.2 million litres of water per
acre. Indeed, rose cultivation, small as it is, has been a cause for
some celebration in the State. Exports this year went up by some 15-25
per cent. The rupee’s slide, an extended winter — and “Valentine’s Day” —
gifted rose growers this happy situation.
In the last 15 years, the only regulatory frameworks the State has put
in place lead to greater privatisation of water. To quicker loss of
community control over this natural resource. One that is rapidly
depleting. At the same time, the unchecked exploitation of groundwater
has made things a lot worse. Maharashtra worked hard to get to the
crisis it now faces. Private swimming pools amidst oceans of dry
despair. For the rich, there is never a scarcity. For so many of the
rest, their hopes evaporate by the day.
sainath.p@thehindu.co.in
