Water issues are intricately intertwined with increased migration & fast drying reservoirs
The district of Nashik is home to some major rivers that provides water to Mumbai. The district receives good rainfall every year. However,the story of the mountainous tribal talukas of Trimbakeshwar, Surgana, Peth and Igatpuri is different. The districts fall in the rain shadow region and have 80-90% tribal population. Pramod Gaikwad's social networking forum, with a team of geologists are trying to find untapped water resources in the rocky and mountainous terrain.
Gaikwad explains that the villagers have to typically walk for 1.5- 2 km of mountainous terrain to get water after February when wells and all local sources of water dry up in the area. Tapping groundwater is a challenge here as the rocky land doesn't allow too much water to permeate in the area. Gaikwad's team tries to tap newer water sources for the tribal however, he too admits that the situation has gone from bad to worse. The grim situation has led to increased migration year after year.
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"The ground sources are depleting, The amount of rain is also decreasing. Just before monsoon 40-50% of people are moving to the cities and unemployment has raised it's head again," says Gaikwad.
"Some villages only have old people and children. In many cases the parents have migrated to urban areas and children are left alone with their elder siblings to fend for themselves, " adds Gaikwad.
It is not just the lack of rains that are giving rise to water scarcity in the area. Often it is a deadly cocktail of global warming, tree cutting and urbanisation that is responsible. Local experts inform that wherever the tree cover is 20% of the entire land area there is no water issue and point to deforestation as an important reason. They also opine that just supplying tankers to tribal areas is not sufficient. Just digging pits and expecting water to stay is also an unscientific solution. Gaikwad concludes that wherever there are wells conservation should be encouraged.
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Unlike the parched tribal hamlets of the tribal areas of Nashik, the tribal areas in Jawhar and Mokhada of Thane district, located only 130km away from Mumbai are a unique case in point. Mokhada is a district which is co-located with the catchment area of Tansa lake. However, the tribals don't get access to the water that fills a million mouths in Mumbai.
Water conservationists from the Raah foundation Sarika Kulkarni who works in the field of building check dams in Jawhar and Mokhada views the larger issue of water scarcity as a problem of complete mismanagement. Water was never considered as a problem in the country despite globally only 4% of water is potable and less than half of it is in India, opines Sarika.
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"The government continues to rely on just sending tankers and there is no strategic plan in place. Last 4-5 years the problem is getting more pronounced in Mokhada as both cattle and population is growing," explains Sarika.
The Jawhar- Mokhada region receives 2500-3000 mm of rainfall every year which is as good as rainfall Mumbai receives and yet one sees a large scale migration of the tribal population as the water issue so intricately connected to the livelihood of the populace. Despite good rains tribals migrate every year leaving behind old people and children in the month of February every year to urban areas. Typically women spend 3-4 hours fetching water every day which can go up to 5-6 hours on certain days. Men work for 15 days on construction sites and come back getting trapped in the never ending circle of poverty.
Sarika's Raah foundation have built 40 check dams so far and have also repaired the existing ones. One check dam conserves 50 lakh litres of water. The government has built wells with only 10 feet depth which with tribal participation have increased to 35 feet. Collectively 900 farmers have stopped migration due to collective effort of water conservation in the area.
WATER SCARCITY IN MAHARASHTRA
- 6.29 crore litres of water supplied every day through tankers across Maharashtra
- 5,127 villages and 10,867 hamlets solely dependent on tanker water supply for their daily needs
- 151 of 358 tehsils were declared drought prone in the state by Fadnavis government in October 2018
- 1,146 tankers supply water Aurangabad, where more than 761 villages are facing water shortage, and 939 tankers are deployed in 652 villages of Beed
- 822 tankers have been deployed in Ahmednagar and 358 in Nashik.
- 275 villages and 1,671 hamlets in Solapur are facing water crisis
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