Let us have a national conversation on Maharashtra drought

What makes for a national conversation? A national obsession, a polarising personality, a horrific event, an outrageous statement — these are the usual ingredients. Throw in politics, looming elections, social media-savvy public intellectuals and 24/7 television into the mix, and a national conversation gets going.

Mr Rahul Gandhi, who turns 43 this June, declared last week that he is not a suitable boy for matrimony and was not interested in the prime minister’s job. A national conversation has erupted. This one comes on the heels of the national conversation we have just had about Wharton India Economic Forum’s flip-flop decision to invite and then dis-invite Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi.

Sometimes, an ordinary person sparks a national conversation, as it happened in the case of the young woman who was gang raped and brutalised in a moving bus in the heart of Delhi one evening last December, while she was out with a friend. The death of the young woman brought the rage which simmers within all of us out in the open, and triggered a much-needed national conversation about the violence that stalks women and young girls in this country.

There is another unfolding tragedy. One-third of Maharashtra is reeling from a drought, said to be the worst since 1972. And yet there is no national conversation on the issue. The water shortage is so severe that thousands of villagers are dependent on tankers to bring drinking water. By the end of March, things will get worse. Water trains from Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh may have to be organised. The winter crops of smallholder farmers who cannot afford to sink deep borewells have failed, because they had no means of watering their crops at crucial times. With no visible means of livelihood, thousands will migrate to cities and towns in search of jobs while they pray for a good monsoon this June.

Droughts always hit women hard. They have to walk much further to fetch water. In many parts of drought-hit Maharashtra, women are lining the roadside, begging for water. We also know that as families become more impoverished and vulnerable, women from affected areas fall prey to traffickers. Is not this also a gender issue?

In the middle of the drought-hit districts, there are large farmers and factory owners who still don’t  face a crippling water shortage, because they can afford to sink deep borewells, ignoring the many rules against this.

What’s new, cynics ask? There is indeed something new. The drought story is not just about scant rains. The constant overuse and abuse of groundwater has brought the entire country to a crisis point. It is showing up earlier in Maharashtra than in many other sections of the country, partly because there is more withdrawal of groundwater there by factories and large cash crop ventures, and partly because there is less groundwater there anyway.

But the entire country, including the once water-rich Indo-Gangetic plain, is reaching a crisis point. Satellite images by NASA show that there is more withdrawal of groundwater in the Indo-Gangetic plain than anywhere else in the world, a fact corroborated by India’s own Central Groundwater Board (CGWB), Central Water Commission.

Most of the drought-affected districts of Maharashtra, especially those in Marathwada and Vidharbha, fall under this belt. But who cares? Even today, you can go around the drought-hit areas, staying in hotels, meeting factory and vineyard managers and sugarcane plantation owners, and come away with no awareness of any water shortage. They have borewells deep enough to last them till the monsoon, and you would be hard put to find anyone among them who bothers about the laws restricting the sinking of such borewells.

There is a clear failure of governance here, and with both assembly and parliamentary elections due next year, politicians have been quick to blame one another. But has any borewell been shut down? Has the owner of any been forced to share the water with thirsty villagers who cannot afford to break the rules? Meanwhile, vegetable and milk prices are rising in the state, while more and more open spaces are being encroached upon by yet another wave of people forced out of their homes.

Do we have time to have a national conversation about this? Playing the ostrich is always an option in times of trouble. But it comes with a steep price tag.

Patralekha Chatterjee is a Delhi-based writer
@ patralekha2011
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