In Election Year, Maharashtra Has a Water Shortage and a Solutions Shortage

On September 21, the election commission announced the dates for polls in Maharashtra: October 21, with counting on October 24.

In late July, the Shiv Sena had commenced its Jan Ashirwad Yatra with Aditya Thackeray at the helm. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), launched his Maha Janadesh rally on August 1 with promises to free the state of drought should he be reelected. The Nationalist Congress Party’s Shiv Swarajya Yatra kicked off on a similar footing on August 6.

All campaigns included water issues because one of Maharashtra’s major problems at the moment is the quantity and quality of water in urban areas and long spells of drought in rural areas, especially in the Marathwada and Vidarbha regions. Indeed, the incumbent coalition of the BJP and the Shiv Sena had promised various solutions, many of which remain unfulfilled.

The BJP also had a section entitled ‘Water for All’ in its 2014 Lok Sabha polls manifesto, under which the party promised it would ensure a substantial portion of urban wastewater is treated and reused. Wastewater reuse has been gaining traction worldwide for its potential to address a part of the rising demand for water, but only together with effective water treatment systems.

Also read: After Four-Year Drought, Ten Days of Rain in Marathwada Causes Deluge

The manifesto also included promises to restore old village ponds, streams, public wells and other water bodies; to subsidise the implementation of drip-irrigation systems to up to 95%; and to mandate rainwater-harvesting in both urban and rural areas.

In April 2018, a resident of Pune named Nitin Shankar Deshpande moved the National Green Tribunal (NGT) against the Union environment ministry. In 2015, the ministry had issued a draft notification specifying discharge limits of 10 mg/l of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and 20 mg/l of total solid suspended (TSS)[footnote]Both important measures of water quality[/footnote], but relaxed them in 2017 with another notification that specified limits of 20 mg/l for BOD and 50 mg/l for TSS. Deshpande alleged that this dilution of norms had left water bodies at the mercy of polluters.

In its April 2019 verdict, the NGT noted that the relaxed standards could damage the water, degrade the environment and human lives and livelihoods. The tribunal accepted 10 mg/1 of BOD as the standard, and an expert committee it had set up released a list of sewage treatment plants around India that were doing a good job of treating wastewater around the country. None of Mumbai’s seven plants were on the list, but two in Navi Mumbai, three in Pune and one in Nagpur were.

At the state level, the Maharashtra government launched a scheme called Jalyukt Shivar Abhiyan (JSA) in December 2014 to make the state drought-free by 2019. Through its many programmes, including deepening and widening streams, building cement and earthen stop dams, work on nullah and digging farm ponds, the JSA aimed to free 5,000 villages of water-shortage issues every year.

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In December 2019, Fadnavis claimed that the JSA has supported the construction of over 250,000 soil and water-conservation structures in 16,500+ villages for Rs 7,692 crore. This in turn has helped to create a water-storage capacity of 24 TMC and to bring 3.4 million hectares of land under irrigation. In parts of the state where JSA activities had been started and completed, Fadnavis also claimed that the new infrastructure had improved crop yields by 45%.

However, experts and activists have denounced the JSA. In September 2015, the economist H.M. Desarda filed a public interest litigation in the Bombay high court in which he claimed the JSA “is not based on sound hydrological principles and scientific concept of ridge-to valley, though on paper [it has been] shown to be so.” The high court ordered the state to constitute a committee to pursue Desarda’s complaints, which the state did under the guidance of Johny Joseph, an IAS officer and commissioner of Mumbai’s municipal corporation from 2004 to 2007. This committee concluded in the government’s favour.

But a stronger test of Fadnavis’s claims emerged earlier this year, when 20,000 villages in 26 districts in Maharashtra reeled under a severe drought. Of these, eight districts in the Marathwada region, encompassing around 8,000 villages, were the worst affected. As a stopgap measure, the government engaged over 6,400 water tankers till June 3, 2019, to supply water to 5,127 villages and hamlets.

A commentary published in the Economic & Political Weekly in the same month argued that the drought had showed the JSA up as a stopgap measure as well, albeit a more elaborate one, and that it lacked long-term planning and water-use regulations.

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Additionally, breweries and distilleries controlled by prominent individuals continued to operate at full tilt. There are 129 units manufacturing beer, Indian-made foreign liquor and country liquor in Marathwada. These units purchased water from private water distributors who in turn had obtained their supply from various dams in the region. For example, the liquor industry consumed 60% of the water from Jaikwadi dam in Aurangabad, the largest city in Marathwada, despite the widespread shortage.

As the state goes to polls on October 21, political parties will not shy away from making the sort of promises they did in 2014 again. The questions voters need to ask is if the promises can be fulfilled, if they will be, and whether what is being promised is a meaningful solution at all.