Ashok Dhawale
Secretary, CPIM Maharashtra State Committee
Responding
to the call of the CPI (M) Maharashtra state committee, over 33,000
rural poor comprising mainly peasants and agricultural workers held
demonstrations on district collectorates and tehsil offices in 19
districts of the state on May 14, 2012. The vital issue taken up was
that of the severe drought currently stalking Maharashtra and the utter
insensitivity of the Congress-NCP-led state government in dealing with
this issue affecting crores of people and also lakhs of cattle.
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| In Chandwad |
GENESIS OF CHRONIC DROUGHT
After
dithering for weeks, in the beginning of May the state government
finally admitted that 7753 villages in 15 districts were
drought-affected. As always, this was also a gross underestimate, based
on the ridiculously false ‘paisewari’ estimates of crop produce that are
still based on the crop production criteria set up during the British
colonial era!
Today,
the situation in thousands of villages is grave. There is great
scarcity and even complete absence of drinking water. Wells have run
dry. Dams and reservoirs are depleted. There is lack of adequate fodder
for cattle. Maharashtra is one of the worst states in the country so far
as the implementation of MNREGA is concerned. Last year in 17 districts
not even a single man day of work was provided. The wage paid is a
pittance. The public distribution system is in shambles and is riddled
with corruption and black-marketeering. To add to the woes of the
drought-hit, load-shedding of power has increased to the tune of 12 to
16 hours a day in the rural areas.
 |
| In Jawhar |
Drought
is by no means a new phenomenon in Maharashtra. It recurs every three
to four years. The number of tehsils that were earlier declared to be
chronically drought-prone was 87. This figure has now crossed the 100
mark. Beyond setting up several Irrigation Commissions one after the
other, successive state governments – be they of the Congress,
Shiv-Sena-BJP or Congress-NCP - have done nothing. None of the
recommendations of these Irrigation Commissions have been implemented.
For
instance, some of these Commissions had said that with optimum
utilization of both groundwater and surface water resources, 45 per cent
of the land under cultivation could have been brought under irrigation.
But what is the actual situation? As per the Economic Survey of Maharashtra 2011-12, when
the state of Maharashtra was formed in 1960, 6.5 per cent of the
cultivated area was under irrigation. It rose very gradually to 8.4 per
cent in 1970-71, 12.3 per cent in 1980-81, 15.2 per cent in 1990-91,
17.8 per cent in 2000-01, and just 17.9 per cent in 2010-11. Dry land
agriculture over 82 per cent of the area in the state has been suffering
immensely as a result. It must be noted that the cultivated land under
irrigation in India as a whole is 45.3 per cent.
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| In Parbhani |
The
nadir was reached in the last ten years. As part of the running battle
between the Congress and the NCP (the NCP has long held the Irrigation
portfolio in the state), chief minister Prithviraj Chavan declared
recently that after spending Rs 70,000 crore on irrigation in the last
ten years, the proportion of irrigated land increased by only 0.1 per
cent. He announced that a White Paper on the issue would be published.
This led to a war of words between both the parties in the ruling
alliance.
Another
significant issue concerns the massive escalation of irrigation
expenses. The Irrigation Commissions in the early 1960s had opined that
with an expense of 1,300 crore rupees, 30 per cent of the land could
have been brought under irrigation by 1980. Today the chief minister
says that a sum of 77,000 crore rupees would be required for the
completion of incomplete projects! Needless to say, a significant part
of this cost escalation is directly related to rising corruption at all
levels. Now the rulers say that since such massive outlays are not
possible, priority would be given to water conservation schemes. Nothing
stopped them from doing so for the last several decades.
The
third issue is the completely skewed nature of the distribution of
irrigated water. It is well known that sugarcane is a water-guzzling
crop. It is equally well known that Maharashtra is ruled by an alliance
of the big bourgeoisie and the sugar lobby, predominantly from Western
Maharashtra. As Kumar Shiralkar wrote recently in the CPI(M) state
committee weekly ‘Jeevanmarg’: “In 1950, 45 per cent of
irrigation water went to sugarcane. This rose to 60 per cent in 1987. In
the last ten years, although Rs 70,000 crore spent on irrigation has
come to naught, in 2011 the proportion of irrigation water going to
sugarcane has reached 70 per cent. Today the average amount of water in
the dams in the state is 23 per cent. In Vidarbha it is only 12 per
cent. In 12 dams it is zero. In the medium and small irrigation projects
it is between 11 to 15 per cent. It is in such a grim situation that 70
per cent of irrigation water is being given to cane, which occupies
only 4.5 per cent of the cropped area.”
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| In Solapur |
The
last issue concerns the neo-liberal prescription - privatization of
water resources and diversion of water to the rich in the cities and to
SEZs, at the expense of the countryside. As a major step towards
privatization, the Maharashtra Water Resources Bill was hurriedly passed
and in 2005, the Maharashtra Water Resources Regulatory Authority was
set up. Since the state government claims that it has no money to set up
or complete irrigation projects, the policy of allowing private players
in this sector began in right earnest, with all the attendant
ill-effects on water-users.
Simultaneously,
a drive began to divert scarce water resources from the rural areas to
the uncontrolled expansion of the cities to cater to the interests of
the builder lobby, and to SEZs. It was this same drive that led last
year to the peasant resistance and police firing at Maval in Pune
district, which killed three farmers, including a woman. It is now
proposed to build as many as ten dams by displacing thousands of
Adivasis and others from several villages in the Thane and Raigad
districts adjoining Mumbai. Thane district, which has some of the
largest dams and water reservoirs in the state, has only 2 per cent of
irrigated land and there is great scarcity even of drinking water in
several tribal-dominated tehsils.
On
the other hand, it has been reported that Mukesh Ambani’s new 27-storey
residence ‘Antilia’ in Mumbai, built at a cost of Rs 9,000 crore, is
provided 60 lakh litres of water per month! While most of the state is
in darkness due to power load-shedding (which is itself a direct result
of the power privatization policy of the ruling classes that led to the
Enron fiasco, and is now being compounded by the Jaitapur nuclear power
project drive), the monthly electricity bill of this modern-day Ambani
palace is to the tune of Rs 70 lakh! This is only one instance amongst
many in Mumbai.
STRUGGLE AGAINST DROUGHT
The
CPI(M) Maharashtra state committee, which met on April 29, decided to
launch an independent struggle on the issue of drought with two
objectives in mind. The first was, of course, to ensure that immediate
relief in the form of drinking water, employment, ration grain and
fodder reached the people and their cattle. Towards this end, a charter
of demands was prepared by the state committee. The second was to
highlight the bankrupt ruling class policies briefly outlined above that
had led to plunging the state in a chronic drought situation over the
last several decades.
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| In Talasari |
The
two districts where the biggest mass actions were held were Thane and
Nashik districts. Over 12,000 people stormed 7 tehsil offices in Thane
district and over 11,000 people stormed 9 tehsil offices in Nashik
district. In Thane district, the people gheraoed government offices in
four tehsil centres and did not move until the authorities gave written
assurances on their demands. At Igatpuri in Nashik district, over 500
people blocked the Mumbai-Agra National Highway.
In
the Akole tehsil of Ahmednagar district, which hosted the Party state
conference in March, over 3,000 people were mobilized in several village
level actions. In the South Solapur tehsil of Solapur district, over
2000 people led a road blockade. In Parbhani district, a 1500-strong
demonstration marched to the district collectorate. In Hatkanangale in
Kolhapur district, a 1000-strong demonstration was held. In Nandurbar
district, road blockades were organized in four tehsils, and nearly 400
people were arrested.
Similar
actions took place in districts like Nanded, Beed, Jalna, Aurangabad,
Hingoli, Amravati, Buldana, Jalgaon, Satara, Sangli and Raigad
districts. Special mention must be made of demonstrations held by the
Party in the urban centres like Mumbai, Nashik, Jalna and Aurangabad,
where the working class raised the demand of the peasantry for drought
relief. The actions in Solapur, Kolhapur and Parbhani districts also
mobilized the working class along with the peasantry. In Pune, a
Convention on Water was organized by left and secular parties.
All
these mass actions succeeded in wresting concessions and immediate
action from the government authorities for drought relief. Most of these
actions were well covered by both print and electronic media, some of
whom reported that it was only the CPI(M) among all other political
parties in the state that took up concerted cudgels against the severe
drought situation in the state.
