DNA Edit: Dry states – Maha, Guj show why big dam policy has not worked

Two of India’s most prosperous industrial states, Maharashtra and Gujarat, are in the throes of a severe water crisis. Statistics by the state’s water conservation department says, 26 reservoirs in Maharashtra reached ‘zero storage’ as on May 18. In neighbouring Gujarat, things are equally precarious. Officials say that 65 per cent of the dams and reservoirs in the state are either empty or about to go empty. Media reports quoted the Narmada‚ water resources‚ water supply and Kalpsar department, as saying that the state has 202 dams, of which 40 per cent are empty, while 102 have water levels of below 30 per cent. Storage in Aurangabad Division, which comprises Aurangabad, Beed, Hingoli, Parbhani and Osmanabad districts, was 0.43 per cent as against 23.44 per cent at the same time last year, a drastic drop. The dams in these divisions are dismally placed at zero storage at the moment. Other dams to hit the zero storage level include those in the Nagpur, Jalgaon, Nashik, Pune and Solapur divisions. 

In Gujarat, the drought situation in Kutch is so dire that officials have described it as “possibly the worst since the drought of 1985 in Gujarat.” There are 17 major dams in the state with gross storage capacity of 12,942 million cubic metres (mcm), whereas the existing water level is 3,577 mcm or 27.64 per cent of the total capacity. According to Gujarat government data, the gross storage capacity of these dams coupled with Narmada water stands at 742,660.32 mcm. Of this, the available water stock is only 39.32 per cent. Efforts are being made to tackle the drought and water crisis by the state government, but they remain too ad hoc. The other big problem is water distribution. Water activists in Gujarat rightly say that the state government must answer why the Narmada project, conceived primarily to provide irrigation, is serving factories and cities. In worst-hit Kutch, with other districts being similarly placed, scanty rainfall and rising temperatures have exacerbated competition for scarce water between farms on the one hand and cities and industries on the other. 

Questions are justifiably also being raised over the Narmada Valley Project’s very reason for existence - to irrigate farms in Kutch, Saurashtra and North Gujarat, which remains unfulfilled. As can be expected, the state governments are supplying drinking water through tankers, a normal routine at this time of the year. Clearly, something needs to be said about the policy of promoting large dams, as is evident in the case of both Gujarat and Maharashtra, which has not yielded commensurate benefits. Instead, a shift towards micro-irrigation projects must be prioritised. States such as Telangana have shown the way, having implemented a large scheme to rejuvenate its tanks, something that has been found wanting in Maharashtra and Gujarat. Sadly, in a period of election-related theatrics, real issues like the water crisis and acute shortage of stored water, have been swept under the carpet.