Maharashtra lift-irrigation: nothing to do with water

by Abhay Vaidya

Such is the dry humour in Maharashtra that when you say “lift irrigation” everyone smiles and knows that the last thing being lifted is water.

Among the first things that come to mind is not just the misery of the drought-hit farmers in western Maharashtra but also the helicopters parked in the palatial Pune bungalow of irrigation contractor-turned-real estate  developer Avinash Bhosale.

Few irrigation contractors in Maharashtra have been as controversial as Bhosale who was in the news in April 2011 during the Bombay High Court’s probe into the Adarsh Housing Society scam. The court wanted the CBI to establish the ownership of another posh bungalow in a Pune housing society which had the same address as that of Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar’s wife.

Ajit Pawar, who has long-held the irrigation portfolio in the Maharashtra cabinet then clarified to the press that the bungalow was in the name of Bhosale’s father Nivrutti and sister-in-law Jayashree and that the Pawars had rented it since 2009. Pawar clarified that Nivrutti and Jayashree had applied for flats in the Adarsh society and that he had nothing to do with senior Bhosale who had got membership to the Adarsh society.

Bhosale was in the news in May 2007 when he was picked up by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence at Mumbai international airport for walking past the green channel without declaring dutiable items including five watches, each estimated at Rs 10 lakh. In 2007, former inspector general of police SM Mushrif told newspapers that while posted as the Suprintendent of Police, Anti-Corruption Bureau in 1998, he had sought permission to probe into a bid by Bhosale for a Rs 100 crore irrigation project in Satara but was denied permission by the government.

A simple Google search under the key words ‘Avinash Bhosale and MKVDC’ will throw up the following articles with telling headlines: ‘ How Bhosale milked MKVDC’ from The Times of India dated 29 May, 2007; ‘Big-time power-broker arrested’ also from the same newspaper dated 28 May 2007 and ‘Irrigation scheme opens floodgates of money for few’ - a June 2007 article from DNA.

Like Indira Gandhi’s electrifiying ‘Garibi Hatao’ election slogan 1971, ‘Tanker Mukt Maharashtra’ was coined by the Shiv Sena –BJP government during its 1995 election campaign to deal with the problem of water scarcity in rural areas. Heady with its electoral victory, the Sena finally wanted to make deep, permanent inroads into western Maharashtra which had always been a bastion of the Congress. Just as it ambitiously launched the 50 flyovers project for Mumbai and the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, it also created the Maharashtra Krishna Valley Development Corporation (MKVDC) to finance irrigation projects in western Maharashtra.

The MKVDC was established in 1996 to undertake various irrigation and drinking water projects in the Krishna river basin to utilise the 560 TMC (thousand million cubic feet) of water allocated to Maharashtra by the Krishna Water Disputes Tribunal. This project with a May 2000 deadline was marred by serious cost escalation, incomplete works and failure to construct distribution canals to take the water to the fields.

At a time when nearly 15 districts in the state are the grips of a drought, Satara being among the worst-hit, Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan caused a sensation when he revealed that irrigation capacity had increased by just 0.1 percent in the last decade although the state had spent nearly Rs 70,000 crore on irrigation projects. Chavan has estimated that it will require another Rs 80,000 crore to complete the incomplete irrigation projects in the state which have suffered heavy cost escalation.

Although the CM suggested that the 0.1 percent could be a “statistical error”, he nevertheless called for a white paper on irrigation in the state and said that the state’s irrigation capacity could be increased from 17 percent, to 30 percent with good planning. He dismissed the suggestion that he was targetting the NCP - especially Ajit Pawar, who had held the irrigation portfolio over the last decade.

Experts such as former Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics professor A Narayanamoorthy, say that apart from 70 percent of water going to the water-guzzling sugarcane crop, Maharashtra has been increasingly diverting water for non-irrigation purposes such as urban usage. Added to this is the failure of the MKVDC which was initiated with lots of hope, failure to adhere to a cropping pattern and serious distribution problems, says Narayanamoorthy, now a NABARD chair professor at the Alagappa University, Karaikudi, TN. At the same time, he credits Maharashtra with achieving 100 percent financial recovery of water charges and water auditing.

Environmentalist Sunita Narain’s observations are no different when she says that the drought in Maharashtra is man-made and points to the poor utilisation of irrigation projects, inefficient water usage and diversion of irrigation water to industries and urban centres.

Thus, a multiplicity of factors, including bad planning and execution has been adding to the water stress even when there is no drought. The problem only gets magnified during a drought. The big question is whether Maharashtra will draw lessons from the past and rectify its mistakes on as serious as issue as water management.