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Maharashtra's irrigation system tied in knots -Aman Sethi
-The Business Standard


Agrarian crisis in the state appears as much a failure of planning as the result of a shortage of rain

On a dry and cloudless day this month, Balbir Krishna Ingde sat by the Ujjani Dam in the Krishna basin, one of Maharashtra's largest irrigation projects, and confronted the problem of scarcity amid presumed abundance.

"The water is filling up the reservoir. If only they could release it into the canals," said the 65-year-old farmer, ruing the fact that his 2.5-acre sugarcane farm was just downstream. "Everyone behind the dam is pulling water but the canals are dry."

Ingde reckons he has a week to save his crop and plant afresh. "But why won't they release the water?"

The answer, bureaucrats admit, is Maharashtra's irrigation system has been tweaked so often, its strained reservoirs loaded with fresh schemes each year, that it now resembles the plumbing of an old house, with all pretence of planning abandoned. (Click here for pdf)

Now, with the eastern regions of Marathwada and Vidarbha facing 90 and 23 per cent rainfall deficits, respectively, and farmers in central and western Maharashtra growing water-intensive sugarcane, the agrarian crisis appears as much a failure of planning as the result of a shortage of rainfall.

This year, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) found 77 projects in Maharashtra had been underway for about 30 years and 195 for about 15 years. In all, the CAG found cost overruns of Rs 60,235 crore across 601 surveyed projects.

Maharashtra's 1,845 large dams, of which 152 are still under construction, account for the largest concentration of irrigation projects in India and a third of the all such projects in the country. Anti-corruption activists have assailed the irrigation department for allegedly spending billions on projects that, activists say, have little to show.

The 258,948 sq km Krishna basin spans the peninsular states of Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, and encompasses millions of farmers such as Balbir Indge, from its source in the Western Ghats to its delta at Hamsaladeevi near Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh.

In 2005, the Maharashtra Water Regulatory Authority Act was implemented to monitor and allocate the use of water on the basis of an integrated plan. About 10 years later, the integrated plan remains on paper, with the state government taking over the power to allocate water by amending the Act.

"If you make a plan, you announce what you can and can't do with a finite amount of water," says a Pune-based bureaucrat. "Without a plan, you can sanction projects in the hope the water will ultimately be made available."

Projects galore, but where is the water?

The basin's first major project is at the source of the Krishna -the Koyna hydropower project at Mahabaleshwar, where 67 thousand million cubic ft (tmc) of water, or 11.5 per cent of Maharashtra's 585 tmc of annual allowance from the basin under the 1973 Bachawat Tribunal Award, is diverted westwards, away from the water-scare eastern regions and into the Arabian sea, generating 1,920 Mw of electricity.

"The Koyna project is integral to maintaining the stability of the electrical grid during peaking hours," said V M Kulkarni, superintending engineer at Koyna.

The project, sanctioned in the 1950s, already released some water eastwards for drinking water projects, he said, adding releasing more water would reduce the efficiency of the power station and could lead to grid collapse.

A share of the headwaters of the Bhima, the river's other significant tributary, is diverted westwards through the Tata Power hydro projects set up in the 1920s. The Bhima and its tributaries wind their way down to the Ujjani, the largest dam in the valley.

"The topography of the region means the Ujjani reservoir has unusually large dead storage," said a water engineer, referring to the water that couldn't be released through canals by gravity, but must, instead, be lifted using electrical pumps. At Ujjani, water for irrigation is released in the canals only after water levels in the reservoir exceed 30 per cent of live storage. This happened only this week, too late for the crop of Indge, the farmer.

The state government has sanctioned nine such schemes, at a cost of Rs 982.44 crore. Only one of these has been granted environmental clearance, though two have been completed and five are under construction, without any prior water-budgeting.

"The live storage of the Ujjani dam is 1,517 million cubic metres (mcm)," said Parineeta Dandekar, a Pune-based hydrologist with the South Asian Network of Dams, Rivers and People. "The project irrigates 92,000 hectares of sugarcane, according to government data. This alone requires 1,840 mcm of water. Also, there is industrial demand, drinking water schemes and NTPC's 1,320-Mw thermal power plant. It seems the Ujjani has a limitless supply of water."

This month, an expert appraisal committee will consider the 10th such project-the Krishna-Marathwada LIS (lift irrigation scheme), a Rs 4,845.05-crore scheme where, by the irrigation department's own admission before the committee, work began without environment clearance or a clear indication of the quantum of water available for the proposed project.

"The Rs 20,000-30,000 crore spent on LIS in Maharashtra so far is an absolute waste," Vijay Pandhare, a former chief engineer at the department of water resources, wrote in a letter to his department in 2012. "Of the thousands of LIS in Maharashtra, 99 per cent are now closed and unused."

Now, the banks of the Ujjani reservoir are littered with "individual schemes" through which farmers have fitted high-powered pumps to lift water straight from the reservoir into their fields. The administration claims to keep a strict eye on individual users through licensed electricity connections but at the reservoir, farmers openly speak of how each user has connected multiple pumps to the same electricity connection for lifting water.

On paper, only seven per cent of farmers in the Ujjani command area claim to grow water-intensive perennial crops (sugarcane). But the fact is about 40 per cent farmers grow sugarcane, according to the Chitale committee's report on the Ujjani project. As such, farmers upstream consume water at a frightening pace, while those downstream wait for water, in vain.

Gawdewadi is nestled between the watershed of Bhima and Ghod tributaries of the Krishna but doesn't rely on either river for its water supply. "Over 30 years, we have built 23 large and small check dams to harvest rainwater. This is allowed to seep into the ground and replenish our wells," says Devram Balaso Gawde, the village sarpanch." We have not called a tanker to this village for 30 years, neither for drinking nor irrigation."

The village appears a hydrologist's fantasy - clean, clear wells brimming with water; shallow pools formed by raised earthen embankments collect surface run-off; and shallow ditches pockmark the hills around the village, each depression a site for collecting surface run-off. The village also has two main wells used to pump water into overhead tanks that supply piped water to each home.

"Once we got water, we gained control over our planting cycle," said Jayant Gawde, who grows tomatoes on his five acres. "Now, we don't wait for the irrigation department to release water for our sowing."

The irony is Gawdewadi is as much a product of government schemes as Ujjani, suggesting the state is capable of innovative, low-cost, sustainable solutions. "The government has a scheme for everything," Gawde says. "It is just a question of knowing which one to apply in your village."