Calamities leave a trail of destruction in state

MUMBAI: Maharashtra’s tryst with tragedy continues. The devastating deluge, farmers’ suicides, power crisis, bird flu, train blasts and now, the floods. In the last one year a string of crises has stripped the state of its valuable resources.

The recent heavy flooding in several parts of the state has made Maharashtra poorer by a Rs 1,000 crore, initial estimates suggest. The situation forced the Vilasrao Deshmukh government to send an SOS to Centre seeking Rs 500 crore as an immediate assistance.

In response, the Centre has promised Rs 171 crore. With parts of Marathwada and western Maharashtra lying submerged, the kharif crop could be severely affected.

Last July’s floods had exposed the weak underbelly of the financial capital. Against its demand of Rs 12,477 crore to spruce up the city infrastructure the Centre has cleared Rs 1,200 crore in the form of cash and foodgrains immediately after the floods.

This time heavy rains hit the state even before it could recover fully from the Mumbai serial blasts that killed more than 200 on July 11. The blasts have put enormous pressure on the state’s security machinery, forcing the government to pump in more money.

The blasts were preceded by a spate of suicides in Vidarbha’s cotton growing areas. The failing crop accompanied by falling prices of cotton has so far forced around 550 farmers to end their lives.

The gravity of the crisis compelled Prime minister Manmohan Singh to tour Vidarbha to announce over Rs 1,100 crore package for farmers, the fear of seen to be doing not enough had forced chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh to come out with another Rs 1,075 crore aid for the region. This was a big blow to the state’s creaky financials.

Earlier, the state had to announce a financial package for the poultry farm owners following the outbreak of bird flu. The state also had to release funds to contain the damage and the spread of the disease along with expenditure on deploying additional health department machinery on a large scale.

Before that the state government had to spent a few hundred crore for buying expensive power to meet the severe power crunch. The last summer saw the gap between demand and supply shooting up to 4,500 MW leaving no option for the state but to buy electricity from every possible source at exorbitant rates.

The state had to fork out a price as high as Rs 7 per unit to meet the gap. “With this kind of expenditure it will be difficult to stick to the budget. We will have to reorganise the expenditure estimates,” a government official said.