Farmers from Marathwada and Khandesh have to cope with the political clout of their brethren in Western Maharashtra.
As if battling uncertain monsoon and mismanagement of irrigation projects is not enough, farmers from Marathwada and Khandesh have to cope with the political clout of their brethren in Western Maharashtra.
The dominance of politicians from Western Maharashtra means most of the state’s irrigation projects and allied farming industries remain centred around the region. The result of this regional disparity and continued theft of water meant for irrigation projects in Marathwada and Khandesh is farmers ending their lives, Sharad Patil, Shiv Sena MLA from Dhule (rural), said.
Politicians only talk of this regional imbalance but do little to solve it. Congress leader BS Patil said Marathwada and Khandesh have remained underdeveloped as politicians from these regions failed to address irrigation problems. “It is a collective political failure,” he said. Patil himself has been an MLA thrice on a BJP ticket.
Sahebrao Patil, independent MLA from Amalner in the Khandesh region, said it is difficult to fight against the powerful political lobby of Western Maharashtra. “Since they dominate the cabinet, a major chunk of irrigation projects go to their areas,” he said.
Government statistics show the regional disparity. The state has been divided into six zones for better administration: Aurangabad (Marathwada), Nashik (North Maharashtra), Amravati, Pune (Western Maharashtra), Nagpur (Vidarbha) and Konkan.
Going by the records, 15.1 lakh hectares of land, the highest in the state, are under irrigation in Pune. In contrast, Aurangabad has 10.2 lakh hectares under irrigation.
The Jayakwadi dam — the biggest project in the region — was built at a cost of Rs243.44 crore in 1986 for Aurangabad, Jalna, Ahmednagar, Beed and Parbhani districts, where drought is a perennial problem. The government had then set aside 115.50 thousand million cubic feet (TMC) of water for upstream extraction from the Godavari for other projects.
A CAG report, however, said the state government had ignored this aspect while sanctioning new irrigation projects that would utilise 156.50 TMC of water from the catchment area, thereby bringing down the availability of water in the Jayakwadi dam to 41 TMC.
DNA tried to contact water resources minister Sunil Tatkare of the NCP for three days; but he chose not to respond to any question related to regional disparity and irrigation problems.
In November 2002, the government admitted to the water shortage in the Jayakwadi reservoir and promised to compensate by taking up new projects downstream. It took the CAG to point out that this was untenable: building projects downstream would not solve Jayakwadi’s problem as the irrigation projects sanctioned needed more water that what was available.
Though Marathwada has given the state several chief ministers, Jayakwadi’s fate had been sealed because politicians from Western Maharashtra have dominated the cabinet almost on all occasions.
“Shankarrao Chavan, Ashok Chavan, Vilasrao Deshmukh — they were all from this region [Marathwada] but they could do little,” Jaydeo Dole, reader in journalism at the Dr Ambedkar Marathwada University in Aurangabad, said. “Even stalwarts of opposition parties like Eknath Khadse and Gopinath Munde failed.”
The disparity does not end with irrigation or water. Sugarcane farmers in Western Maharashtra have sugar mills in the same area but cotton farmers in Marathwada and Khandesh do not have textile mills in the same region.
Professor Prabhakar Dharane of the Agriculture College in Dhule said farmers in Khandesh, Marathwada and Vidarbha were well-off during the British rule. “These regions had the maximum number of cotton-based textile mills at Chalisgaon, Amalner, Jalgaon, Malkapur, Dhule, Akola, Bhadnera, Wardha, and Nagpur,” he said. “All these mills have been converted into malls and/or housing complexes.”
SL Patil, chief engineer (dam construction) in the state irrigation department, admitted that several projects have been stuck for years. “The reasons vary from rehabilitating project affected people to funds crunch — be it from the state or the Centre,” he said.
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