Why dams, irrigation projects have done little for Marathwada’s parched farmers

Balasaheb Solanki, a 52-year-old farmer from Parbhani district in Maharashtra’s Marathwada region, is keen to cultivate sugarcane, oilseeds and pulses for the rabi season (winter harvest), which begins around November and lasts till late March. But his five acres of land does not have sufficient water to cultivate crops across two cycles. This year, he cultivated soybean during the kharif season (typically June to October), but did not get a good price for his harvest.

Solanki’s village, Rumna Jawla in Parbhani’s Gangakhed taluka, falls in the tail area of the Jayakwadi Dam – Asia’s largest earthen dam – which is 190 km away. Solanki however does not get dam water, and has no option but to cultivate fodder for his cattle in the rabi season with the limited water supply from his borewell. He says groundwater is available only at a depth of 650 feet unlike say 10 years earlier, when it was available at 200 feet -300 feet.

Solanki’s is not an isolated instance. Farmers from hundreds of villages that fall in the command area (beneficiary area) of the Jayakwadi Dam have not had water for agricultural purposes for decades.

Maharashtra accounts for nearly 12% of India’s net sown area and contributes around 8% of India’s agricultural gross value added. About 74% of Marathwada’s population depends on agriculture and allied activities, due to poor industrialisation.

Technically, the dam’s command area spreads across five districts in Marathwada – Parbani, Aurangabad, Ahmednagar, Nanded and Beed. Built on the Godavari river starting 1965, the dam has an irrigation potential of 1,83,322 hectares. Though the government has built canals from the dams to many villages in the command area, these canals are now silted over and filled with vegetation since there is no regular flow of water, and no proper maintenance.

Officials at the Godavari Marathwada Irrigation Development Corporation, under which the Jayakwadi Dam falls, did not answer calls from IndiaSpend requesting details on how much land currently gets irrigated through this dam. Area farmers say that despite many requests, letters, and memoranda, the Godavari Marathwada Irrigation Development Corporation has not heeded their pleas.

As the state goes to polls on November 20, we report from drought-prone Marathawada on how farmers struggle to cultivate despite many irrigation projects and dams being constructed in a region that has seen a high number of farmer suicides and farm distress over the years.

Many dams, but no water

Jayakwadi is not the only dam that has failed to irrigate the planned command area. By August 2023, Maharashtra had 2,117 dams, followed by Madhya Pradesh with 899 dams and Gujarat with 620.

Atul Deulgaonkar, a social activist, says the situation has not improved till date. “Maharashtra has the highest number of large dams across the nation, but irrigated land is comparatively lower," says social activist Atul Deulgaonkar. “Huge amounts of funding were spent on dam constructions but not enough land got irrigated.

“The government projects that a large amount of land would get irrigated when it proposes dams. But when the dams are constructed, not even 50% of the projected land gets water.”

The Madhav Chitale Committee, a special inquiry team appointed through a December 2012 government resolution to probe an alleged irrigation scam in Maharashtra, in its report published in March 2014 said that irrigated land by dams developed in nine years, from 2001-’02 to 2010-’11, is 60% less than the projected irrigation area.

The report said that the main reasons for this failure are siltation in rivers and dams resulting in a 4% loss of water, and vaporisation leading to 18% loss.

The report also points to the cultivation of sugarcane as a factor, since the crop requires five- to six-fold the amount of water as compared to seasonal crops like pulses and oilseeds. This causes a 7% loss of irrigated land, it said.

In September 2020, IndiaSpend reported that government data showed the total drinking water requirement for Marathwada was 590 mm3 annually, and the average water consumption of sugarcane was 6,159 mm3 – more than 10 times the drinking water requirement. If 50% of sugarcane area were brought under drip irrigation, the presentation said, it would save 3,080 mm3 of water, which is more than the storage of Jayakwadi Dam.

Sugarcane is the only crop in Maharashtra which is wholly irrigated. Irrigation water is available for no more than 9% of pulses and 4% of oilseeds. But villages in Ahmednagar district are introducing water budgeting, changing cropping patterns and enhancing rain harvesting strategies to control their water needs.

Water stress has been a chronic issue in India’s agriculture. Research has suggested that other water-guzzling crops like rice should be replaced with more nutritious and less thirsty cereals. “It is important that farmers’ organisations demand water supply for crops,” says Pradeep Purandare, a retired associate professor from Water and Land Management Institute, Aurangabad and an expert in water management. “Otherwise, the government illegally supplies more water to cash crops like sugarcane while farmers who are in need don’t get their just share of water. It is important to notify that a specified amount of water from rivers or dams is reserved for farmers in a particular area.”

IndiaSpend has written to the state’s water resources department and soil and water resources ministry for comment on the quantity of water supplied to sugarcane cultivation, information on the command area of Ujani and Jayakwadi dams, and the extent of water supplied in the command area. We will update the story if we receive a response.

Though farmers have the right to seek compensation for irregular and insufficient water supply through the Maharashtra Irrigation Act, 1976 and The Maharashtra Management of Irrigation Systems by Farmers Act, 2005, they are not aware of the provisions, said experts.

Irrigated land in Maharashtra

As per the Maharashtra government’s Irrigation Status Report 2022-’23, the state has 86 large dams (irrigation over 10,000 hectares), 298 medium (irrigation over 2000-10,000 ha), and 3,313 small irrigation projects (250 to 2,000 ha).

Thus there are a total of 3,697 irrigation projects across the state, creating a rated irrigation capacity of 5.6 million hectares – three times the area of the state’s largest district, Ahmednagar. Local projects (100-250 hectares, run by local bodies like zilla parishads) have created an additional irrigation capacity of 1.9 million hectares. Thus the total irrigation potential across the state is 7.6 million hectares. “But the state government does not share information of how much land got irrigated through these dams and rivers,” says Purandare.

Besides state-level irrigation schemes, there are local schemes like percolation ponds, individual farm ponds, and lift irrigation from rivers and dams.

“Maharashtra has over 30%-40% of all dams across India. But that water is supplied to industries and cities, and farming receives insufficient water,” said HM Desarada, economist and former member of the Maharashtra State Planning Board. “Centralisation of water by constructing dams is the wrong method of irrigation.”

There should be protective irrigation for farmers, as agriculture should not depend only on rain. Sugarcane cultivation is done on more than 15 lakh hectares, and that is in areas where it does not rain more than 1000 mm. However sugarcane requires 2500 mm or more water in a year. “Thus wrong methods of cultivating crops like sugarcane and wrong irrigation methods cause problems,” said Desarada.

The state government on February 9, 2016, came up with a scheme called the Magel Tyala Shet tale (which translates to “ask and you will get a farm pond”), under which farmers are given subsidies up to Rs 75,000, or 70%-75% of the cost, to build a pond in their farms. The agriculture department that implements the scheme however did not share information on how many ponds were created under the scheme, and how much land got irrigated.

Experts believe the scheme does more harm than good. “Farmers pump groundwater that was safe under their lands to fill farm ponds,” Purandare points out. “Large amounts of water in these ponds get vaporised.”

India is the largest extractor of groundwater in the world, and most of it is used for irrigation. By 2050, per capita water availability is estimated to fall to 1,140 cubic metres, bringing India closer to becoming water-scarce.

Purandare feels that instead of giving water rights to farmers in the notified command areas, the government comes up with half-baked schemes that do not solve the problem.

The basic concept of farm ponds is to capture and conserve rain water, which can then be used during the rabi season, he said. “However under the scheme, the government offers subsidies to create ponds that are filled with rainwater, or by pumping groundwater or getting water through dams or rivers,” Purandare said. “A plastic sheet is used to cover the base of the pond to stop water from getting percolated. They use this water throughout the year, and that should be illegal. If there are 300-400 farm ponds in one village, how would nearby villages get water? This scheme should be curtailed.”

“Rainwater,” Purandare explains, “accumulates in farm ponds during monsoon. Once this water is used up, or evaporates, farmers pump out groundwater or draw water from dams or rivers to fill their ponds. The result is that groundwater, which is safe from evaporation, is brought to the surface and evaporates, reducing the overall groundwater table and causing scarcity in nearby villages.”

Maharashtra is not the only state implementing a farm pond scheme. In Karnataka, the Krishi Bhagya was providing financial assistance through subsidies of up to 90% (based on social category) for construction of farm ponds to collect runoff water, IndiaSpend reported in May, 2018.

Prahlad Gurulinge, a farmer from Shendri village in Barshi Taluka, Solapur district says, “I received a subsidy to develop an individual pond. I can use pond water till January-February. But I cannot cultivate crops in summer [because there is no water in the dam or borewell]. I struggle to get water for livestock.”

While developing the Ujani Dam, farmers in Barshi taluka of Solapur district were told that they would get two TMC of water every year (57 billion litres). “But since then, we have never got the assured water,” Tanaji Nimbalkar, of Shendri village in Barshi taluka, said. “The government has put canals/pipelines through our farms, but they are dry, and do not bring any water. Thankfully it rained well this year.”

Water availability has been a persistent issue in the region. When IndiaSpend reported from Solapur in March 2016, farmers said that the then grant of Rs 50,000 was not enough for the ponds they need, because summer increased the rate at which water evaporates or seeps into the ground.

Another state-sponsored scheme is the Jalyukta Shivar Abhiyan, launched in 2016 to make the state drought-free by 2019. The project involves the deepening and widening of streams, construction of cement and earthen stop dams, work on nullahs, and the digging of farm ponds.

But a Comptroller and Auditor General report from 2020 showed that despite spending Rs 9,633.75 crore, the scheme had “little impact in achieving water neutrality and increasing groundwater level”.

“Jalyukta Shivar was a wrong concept,” says Kishor Tiwari, a social activist from Vidarbha. “You cannot deal with drought by increasing the width and depth of the river using a JCB machine.”

Large dams are not a solution

A less-noticed issue is that large dams can, during monsoons, aggravate flooding, which in turn causes soil erosion. “During the British era, there was a department called nullah bunding to stop water and soil in agricultural land from flowing away,” Deulgoankar points out.

The problem of erosion is aggravated by the cutting down of forests around dams, which not only ruins the biodiversity of the area but also impacts water supply. Forests bind soil and prevent it from leaching into dams, rivers and canals. When they are cut down, the upshot is that during monsoons, soil from the areas around the dams are pushed into the dams and the river; one consequence of this is that river levels rise and cause flooding in nearby areas.

Further, India’s ageing dams also pose a safety risk, with more than 1,000 of the 4,407 dams becoming 50 years or older by 2025, IndiaSpend reported in February 2021.

“The government needs to take a holistic/integrated approach to deal with irrigation across the state," Deulgoankar said. “In general, a drop of rainwater is two-five millilitres and the speed of rainfall is 40 km/hour.”

That refers to the speed at which the weather system brings the rain. (The falling speed of individual raindrops is much slower, and is usually measured in metres per second).

“However,” says Deulgoankar, “due to climate change, water drops are 5-10 millilitres and the speed of rainfall is 50-60 km/hr.” The result is that more rain falls over an area at a faster rate than before, leading to flash floods and soil erosion.

This article first appeared on IndiaSpend, a data-driven and public-interest journalism non-profit.