Small and corrupt: Who is profiting from Maharashtra's water conservation programme?

Devtala is a small village in Latur, the district in central Maharashtra which supplied the most arresting image of India’s water crisis this summer, when a train with wagons filled with water lugged into its parched landscape in April.

The train continues to transport water to the district, which has seen a disappointing monsoon so far.

But in the last week of June, after the first spells of rain, farmers looked elated as they went about ploughing their farms and planting seeds in moist soil. In Mumbai, 400 kms away, officials were quick to circulate images of water-filled rivulets and ponds constructed under Jalyukt Shivar, the state government’s water conservation programme.

Literally meaning Water-filled Land, Jalyukt Shivar is the flagship programme of the Bharatiya Janata Party government. Launched in December 2014, soon after the BJP was voted to power, it brings together existing central and state water conservation schemes under one umbrella, and even ropes in villagers and corporations in what the Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has called the "save water campaign".

“We want to make Maharashtra drought-free by 2019,” he said in March, “which means a target of 5,000 villages every year to overcome the water crisis.”

The focus on decentralised, village-level water conservation marks a shift from large irrigation projects that have delivered greater benefits to the state's politicians and officials than to its farmers. A committee report tabled in the state assembly in June 2014 documented irregularities in contracts worth Rs 70,000 crore that had been awarded to irrigation schemes over the last ten years.

By contrast, the allocation to Jalyukt Shivar is small. So far, the Fadnavis government claims to have spent Rs 700 crore on 60,000 water conservation works in 6,202 villages across 36 districts.

Devtala is one of these 6,202 villages – and the starting point for Scroll’s investigation into Jalyukt Shivar.

The government claims the programme is a corruption-free, ecologically sensitive and participatory way of drought-proofing.

What is the evidence on the ground?

A story of three streams

A website of Maharashtra government maintains a record of Jalyukt Shivar projects. It lists 32 entries against Devtala, a village in Ausa taluka. A closer looks shows many of the entries have common work codes. Combining all entries with the same work code brings down the number of projects to just eight.

Of these projects, six are mapped, which means they have photographs uploaded for them. The photographs show the stages of completion and come with metadata of the latitude, longitude and compass orientation of where the photograph was taken.

Of the mapped works, three projects are of nala kholikarans, or the deepening of nalas or natural streams by scooping up earth.

On the ground, however, the geographic coordinates of all three projects align with a single nala that passes through the fields of Annasaheb Chavan. A teacher by profession, he said his family owned 100 acres of farmland in the village. On one side of his farm, where soyabean had been planted, lay heaps of excavated soil. On the other side was a deep trench – the nala that had been deepened.

According to Chavan, Rs 9 lakh had been spent on deepening the nala. But none of the projects listed on the government’s website amounted to an expenditure of Rs 9 lakh.

Chavan had an explanation: the nala work had been divided into three parts, and Rs 3 lakh had been spent on each part, he said.

Why had a project involving the digging of a continuous stretch of nala been carved up into smaller parts?

The 3 lakh mystery

The answer lay in a government resolution issued on November 26, 2014. The resolution said all soil and water conservation works amounting to more than Rs 3 lakh can be allocated only through online auctions, or e-tendering.

The resolution had been passed in response to a case being heard by the Bombay High Court. Vithal Hajgude, a Latur resident who ran a business operating earthmoving machines, had filed a petition in the court challenging the method adopted by the department of agriculture to allocate soil and water conservation works. Hajgude alleged the department was allocating work to its hand-picked contractors at a rate that was rigged in their favour.

In response, the government modified its method of allocation and passed a resolution, making it mandatory to hold auctions for projects involving expenditure of more than Rs 3 lakh. The Bombay High Court gave its stamp of approval to the resolution in an order passed on February 20, 2015. The department of agriculture initially ignored the resolution, claiming the new rules did not apply to its projects, until the court asked it to follow them in November 2015.

But the department found a way to circumvent the new rules, Hajgude claims. It began to break up one project into smaller parts to make sure that the expenditure on each does not exceed Rs 3 lakh, and hence, does not require auctions.

Devtala isn’t the only village in Latur where the expenditure on water conservation projects under Jalyukt Shivar adds up to Rs 3 lakh each. Scroll examined the expenditure made in all 29 villages selected for Jalyukt Shivar in Ausa, the block where Devtala lies. Of the 206 mapped works on the website, 109 were under Rs 3 lakh. Forty-nine amounted to between Rs 2.9 to Rs 3 lakh.

Of the 109 projects under Rs 3 lakh, 101 projects had been executed by the department of agriculture.

How the gravy train flows

As many as seven government departments undertake work under Jalyukt Shivar. In most soil and water conservation schemes, both funds and approvals are controlled by the relevant government departments in the state capital or regional headquarters. But under Jalyukt Shivar, the District Collector is the central decision-making figure.

The Collector heads a district planning committee that approves the projects. He has been given greater power, ostensibly to introduce flexibility in the projects, to make sure they are well adapted to local needs and conditions.

Even the local member of the legislative assembly is involved in Jalyukt Shivar.

Take the case of Devtala. Annasaheb Chavan explained how it works. A group from the village went to meet the local MLA Basavaraj Patil, who wrote a letter to the District Collector asking him to sanction the works from his area development fund. Patil issued three separate letters for three stretches of half-a-kilometre each on the nala that passes through Chavan’s field. He made sure the amount for each was exactly Rs 3 lakh.

The district planning committee approved the work, assigning it to the water conservation office of the department of agriculture. The office in turn wrote to the district registrar of societies asking for a contractor to be assigned to the work.

Under Jalyukt Shivar, 66% of projects under Rs 3 lakh have to be given to societies and unemployed civil engineers. The district registrar maintains a record of such societies and selects them based on discretion, according to Gajendra Deshmukh, assistant registrar of societies in Latur. Part of this discretion includes proximity to a village, he claimed.

But it seems what matters more is proximity to the MLA.

Decentralised corruption

Among those waiting at the Registrar’s office for work to be assigned was a middle-aged man, Ramakant Murudkar. He introduced himself as a BJP worker and the secretary of the Vikas Cooperative Labour Society based in Shirur Anantpal in Latur. He candidly admitted that the works under Jalyukt Shivar were assigned to those recommended by the MLAs.

“The MLAs or MPs tell officers to give work to their people,” he said.

The system had worked well for people like Murudkar – until the introduction of the Rs 3 lakh rule. “Ab hum ro rahe hai,” he said. “Now we are crying.”

As he explained, the Rs 3 lakh rule had limited the profits that the societies could make. “No concrete work can be done [in projects less than Rs 3 lakh] and so there is no profit in them,” he said. “What is the point of earning just Rs 2 from this work?”

Even though the profit margins may have dropped, by keeping a large number of projects sanctioned under Jalyukt Shivar within the Rs 3 lakh limit, politicians and officials in Latur have ensured that the allocation of work remained discretionary, allowing space for both bribe-taking and the distribution of political largesse. In that sense, Jalyukt Shivar may have simply decentralised corruption in the state’s irrigation economy.

Some, however, offer a benign explanation for the division of a project into smaller parts not exceeding Rs 3 lakh. “E-tendering takes at least one month,” said Hanumant Mali, sarpanch of Jawalga, a village near Devtala. In comparison, the registrar will select a contractor within three-four days, he said.

But a senior government official in another district was emphatic in dismissing this approach as “not right”. Not wanting to be quoted, he said, “It is not about malpractice as about how people will react.”

Basavaraj Patil, the MLA, did not respond to repeated phone calls.

District Collector of Latur, Pandurang Pole, initially denied that projects under Jalyukt Shivar had been split into smaller parts to fall under Rs 3 lakh. When asked about the splitting of MLA-funded projects like Devtala, he shifted the onus to the elected representatives.

“If the MP or MLA does not want to give a long road, that is their discretion," he said. "We can hardly select that work.”

Pole claimed the projects for which government departments had allocated less than Rs 3 lakh were actually local community projects. Villagers had employed machines to dig nalas, he claimed, and the government had simply footed their diesel bill. The rules under the Mahatma Phule Jal Bhumi Abhiyan allowed this, he added.

But the government website showed that only five of the 206 projects were done under the Mahatma Phule Jal Bhumi Abhiyan. Another 18 showed no funding source at all.

More waivers

Now, even the Rs 3 lakh hurdle has been removed for MLA-funded projects. On July 12, the state raised the limit for e-tendering for works done through MLA funds from Rs 3 lakh to Rs 10 lakh. The government resolution, released by the state's planning division, lists Jalyukt Shivar among the schemes for which this waiver will be applicable.

Murudkar's lament about cement has been heard. According to the new rules, MLA funds may now be used to maintain and strengthen concrete structures such as weirs, dykes and embankments.

In the view of Hajgude, who has challenged the latest government resolution in the High Court, this is nothing but a continuing “fraud” perpetrated on the farmers of Maharashtra by a nexus of politicians and government officials.

The possibility of corruption in Jalyukt Shivar, however, isn’t the only concern. There is also a debate over the programme’s social and ecological impact.

As streams and rivers are dug up across Maharashtra, often without the supervision of engineers and ecologists, could Jalyukt Shivar end up worsening the state’s water crisis?

The next story in the series examines this debate.