Maharashtra farmers dig in to beat drought

PONDS OF JALYUKTA SHIVAR SCHEME

SANDWICHED BETWEEN Latur and Solapur districts on east and west, respectively, and Karnataka to its south, Osmanabad district, in Marathwada region of southcentral Maharashtra, was among the state’s worst drought-affected districts not long ago.

“Deployment of water tankers to tide over water scarcity used to begin from October, and the numbers would increase with each passing month until July (when the monsoons would arrive),” District Collector Prashant Narnawre said. “Today, there is not a single water tanker in my district.”

In Osmanabad, as in several drought-prone districts, the solutionlayinrudimentarypond-digging. Jayram Namdeo Shirsat, 35, a farmer in Padsali village in Mohol taluka of neighbouring Solapur district figured it a year ago, when he decided to beat the drought by digging a farm pond on 1-acre land. Today, the Rs 7lakh project — part-government finance, part-bank loan — can hold up to 1 crore litres of water, giving a fresh lease of life to Shirshat, who cultivates grapes on 5 acres.

The trend of community farm ponds is gaining ground in drought-prone districts across western Maharashtra. And they are supported by the government’s Jalyukta Shivar Yojna — or, water conservation scheme.

In the first phase, 6,200 “most critical” villages — most of them in Marathwada and Vidarbha — were shortlisted.

In Solapur’s Upala village, farmer Ganpatrao Zhendge said, “The trend was to get borewells until 2014. Now there is more stress on water-conservation works, including farm ponds.”

Jalyukta Shivar’s impact on grape cultivation in Padsali village