8/10/2019 Mansoon Shortfall Maharashtra
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OSMANABAD OCT. 25. The monsoon has just ended. But there are
hundreds of
villages and small towns without any water in the Marathwada
region of Maharashtra.
Where it rained, people will survive the coming summer. In the
many areas where the
monsoon failed, for the second or third year, the prospect of
summer is already raising
the temperature even as the first whiff of winter fills the
morning air.
People this correspondent spoke to in three scattered villages
in Osmanabad district in
the drought-prone Marathwada area said "water" was their biggest
problem. "No
matter how many borewells we have, we still have no water," said
Narmadadevi, an
ex-sarpanch from Darfal village in Osmanabad taluk. Her village
of 500 households,
sports two overhead tanks built by the Maharashtra Jeevan
Pradhikaran, an agency
contracted by the State Government to supply piped water to the
village. But the tanks
are dry. There is no water in the borewells from which the water
is supposed to be
pumped up to the tanks. Everyone has taps but for the last one
year, no water has
flowed through them.
One of the two borewells that still functions (there are five
that have no water) yields
a thin trickle. A typical row of pots extends from the pump. An
old woman waits
patiently for her steel bucket to fill up. She will have to wait
for at least half-an-hour.
"I put my pot in the line at five this morning," one woman says,
"I will be lucky if I
can get one pot of water by 1.30 this afternoon."
The situation in Darfal village is but one illustration of the
looming water crisis that
significant parts of Maharashtra face. According to senior
officials, five districts in
Maharashtra are severely affected by water shortage already
Osmanabad, Beed,
Solapur, Satara and Sangli
and parts of Pune district. Water is likely to be one of
the important political issues in the State.
The chief executive officer of the zilla parishad of Osmanabad
district, Yashwant
Kerure, admits that his district is in trouble. "For three years
we have had less than
average rainfall," he says. "The water levels have declined by
as much as 4.5 metres
in the worst-affected talukaParanda." The average rainfall this
year in the district,
which consists of 737 villages and 128 habitats distributed over
8 talukas, was just
57.25 per cent.
As a result, the Government has had to supply water by tankers
to 232 villages and 54habitats since May. These are villages
without any source of water within a radius of
1.5 km. The water is being sourced from private borewells. The
Government has
requisitioned 521 private borewells or open wells and pays the
owners Rs. 100 per
day. But even these sources are beginning to dry up. All over
the State, 5,000 villages
are being supplied with water from tankers.
