The usual dusty small-town India greets us as a small group of people associated with the NGO Caring Friends travel over two-and-a-half days through Aurangabad and Jalna to understand the problems in the region and what help could be given. On the face of it, people seem to be going about their normal life. Where are the signs of distress that we had read in the media? Don’t girls and women in many parts of rural India carry water over long distances? Aren’t water tankers a common sight in many towns and cities, including Mumbai?
The feeling that all is normal is broken the moment we see the dried up, shrivelled fields of sweet lime (mausambi) and cotton planted on thousands of acres along the way. When we stop to speak to people, the consensus is that this year’s drought is worse than the one in 1972. But there is one major difference: There is no shortage of food this time around. Although we hear stories of cattle perishing and migration out of villages in search of work, fodder prices have remained remarkably stable.
However, the price of one commodity has moved up: Water, usually considered to be available freely like air. One tanker of water (8,000 litres) now costs Rs 1,200-1,500, up from Rs 300-500 last year. Increasingly the tankers have to fetch water from places further away. We hear numerous stories about how ground water is depleting fast: In Sangli, some 20,000 bore wells were dug over two months, all up to a depth of 600-1,000 feet and water was found in less than 50 bore wells; we hear about “Bore Bahadur”, a person who dug 41 bore wells in an acre of land in Amravati district.
One of the most heart rending stories for me is to know that girls in a local college hostel were eating just one meal a day to save on costs because otherwise their families would have pulled them out of college. Girls are the first to be pulled out when resources are stretched and extra hands are needed to fetch water. The Chamber of Marathwada Industries & Agriculture has started giving scholarship of Rs 1,000 per month to the girls so they can eat two meals a day and continue their education.
Our first stop is village Vadkha, in Aurangabad district, where Dr Avinash Pol of Satara has been helping people to build check dams. Dr Pol is a dental surgeon, but for the people in Satara district he may well be a superhero. He has rejuvenated lakes and ponds, got government schemes sanctioned and implemented, something which we all know is near impossible.
Vadkha is just another dot on the map, less than an hour from Aurangabad. Right next to the village primary school is the only well in the village where women and young girls are drawing water. Vadkha is a well-to-do village by all accounts; every day two tankers come and pour water into the well. The tankers cannot wait since they are in great demand and more trips mean more profits.
A special mid-day meal is being prepared in the primary school, as a farewell to the Class VII students who will now head out to the nearest secondary school. The men and teenage boys languidly mill around the village square. I am left wondering why the young girls are not in the school, and are drawing water instead. Is this India’s demographic dividend?
The drought has been a boon for village stores where Nestle’s Dairy Milk Whitener is doing brisk business, as milk supplies in the village dry up.
Consumption is booming if you go by the motorcycles and the products being sold in the shops.
The blackened trees with shrivelled fruits, some still a dark shade of orange, is the first sight that tells us all is not well. Lakshman, a young farmer from Akoladev village, has formed a co-operative of farmers with 2,500 acres of fruit and cotton cultivation. Almost 90 percent, he reckons, has been lost. We are standing in one of his farms and all the sweet lime trees are brown and dead. The earth is parched and cracked. He’s paid back the Rs 8 lakh loan he took when the limes were planted; the trees have a normal fruit bearing life of 15 years, but they’re all dead in five. As I stand there taking pictures on my camera, a villager accompanying us is also taking some on his camera. Both of us are Nikon users—a D80 for me and a Coolpix for him.
About 30 km from Lakshman’s village is a huge man-made lake—rather, it used to be a lake, we were told. Up from the embankment, about 30-40 feet high, what we see is not a lake but a huge field of melons. The melon plants are withering away and most of the tiny melons have started rotting for want of water. Villagers have dug two wells and are laying a pipeline to the nearest well where there is a pumping station to pump water to their village. All this is being done at their own cost (about Rs 2.5 lakh plus the labour they are putting in), whereas it costs Rs 3 lakh per month to get tankers to supply water to the village (assuming per capita per day consumption of 3 litres, in the village of over 4,200 people). The government prefers to supply tankers water rather than build pipelines.
By the time we walk down to the newly dug wells, the pipeline is ready. Dr Pol presses the switch to inaugurate the pipeline and by the time we drive down to Akoladev, there is water in the village taps. The water from the well is muddy brown. Nimesh Sumati, co-founder of Caring Friends, is carrying samples of ‘Life Straw’ water filters, which do not need power and are easy to use.
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(This story appears in the 03 May, 2013 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)
If there was justice in India, the likes of Ajit Pawar would be under trial for the massacre of all these poor people.
on May 6, 2013Hmm :( Something tells me that if they stop breeding like cockroaches their lot will improve. The root cause of poverty is mans mindless desire to breed uncontrollably.
on May 6, 2013Nice Article Mr. Dutta. I would however like to add here that, although the disaster seems to be man made, it is more than what meets the eye. The largest dam in Maharashtra, \"jayakwadi\" with capacity of 127 TMC was filled only to 35%, at end of monsoon in september. While monsoon being dismal is one reason, Several smaller dams on godavari and its tributaries have popped up with support of Grapes and sugarcane cultivators and politicians in Nashik,
on May 3, 2013Thanks, Yogiraj, for your insight. You are right - poor monsoons is one reason and a bountiful monsoon would have masked the plunder and poor governance for longer.
on May 5, 2013The situation in which the farmers and rural population finds themselves in, is completely due to government apathy and massive corruption. Farmers too need to decide whether they need to go for water guzzler crops like sugarcane.Need of the hour is to co-ordinate with good Samaritans like Dr. Pol and make available resources to change the current situation. would also like to mention Mr. Suresh khanapurkar, a geologist who has touched the lives of thousands of farmers in Shirpur taluka of Dhule district by building small check dams at very low cost. Need to move beyond donating day\'s salary to CM drought relief fund (i decided against doing so) and identify people n institutions who would genuinely make a difference to the lives of rural population in maharashtra or any other state for that matter.
on Apr 30, 2013You are absolutely correct, Sameer.
on May 1, 2013It\'s a beautiful article.
on Apr 30, 2013Thank you, Saumil
on May 1, 2013