Water scarcity in Maharashtra leading to disputes over use of water in dams

PUNE: As peninsular India faces frequent droughts and extreme rainfall events, Maharashtra, high on industrialisation and intensive agriculture, is facing growing regional disputes about sharing water.

More than party line, politicians are divided over fixing whose water is it — cities, industries, farmers or sugarcane growers.

In addition to inter-state disputes, changing climate and its impact on water availability have triggered district-level disputes over the use of scarce water in dams and reservoirs.

Politicians are busy with litigation to claim their region’s share of water from dams and heavyweights from the ruling BJP in the state acknowledge that the issue will become severe in the coming months.

Political sources said they agreed to bring the Maharashtra Water Resources Regulatory Authority Act, 2005, which laid the foundation for equitable water distribution, because it was linked to getting funds from the World Bank. However, since 2013, rainfall has been consistently low, which has made the stakeholders downstream invoke the act to get their share of water from dams.

According to water experts, what the extreme weather events mean for peninsular India is that the dry regions will become dryer, droughts will be frequent and rainfall events will be extreme, which highlight the importance of efficient use of water.

However they describe the reservoirs built over river Godavari in the state as “evaporation machines”, as they don't have efficient canal networks. Maharashtra, with 1,800 big dams, has more dams than any other state — second-ranked Madhya Pradesh has just half this number.

“Dams are being used as political pawns in the game of water crisis and decisions are driven by entrenched interests rather than miseries of common man,” said Pareenita Dandekar, associate coordinator at the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People.

Due to subsequent droughts, reservoirs in the Marathwada region had just 13% live storage as on Wednesday, compared with 30% at this time last year and 56% in 2013.

The Nashik region had 47% water as against 75% in 2014 and 77% in 2013, while Pune had 51%, compared with 80% in 2014 and 83% in 2013.

With everyone demanding for more, the BJP accepts that water could emerge as a cause of regional disputes. “We will have to first take short-term measures to solve the disputes, which will have to be followed by long term measures like rethinking the policies about sugarcane crop,” said Madhav Bhandari, the party’s spokesperson for Maharashtra.