Tracking the Drought-II Ratnagiri: Water scarcity amidst plenty
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Even in the verdant coastal districts of India, such as Ratnagiri in Maharashtra which receives 3,000 mm of rainfall annually, the wells have run dry. What has gone wrong? Why are no solutions to conserve/harvest water visible? The second in our series which tracks the drought across India
At 6.45 am on May 20, 2003, water tanker MWT 5968 stood in front of the panchayat samiti office in Ratnagiri. The driver, Chavan, head clerk at the block development office, Suvare, and I got into the driver's cabin. We left at 7.10 am and drove to Hatkhamba village, where we filled 9,000 litres of water. Other tankers and vehicles carrying water gathered around, waiting for the precious liquid. The water was being filled from a borewell belonging to the gram panchayat of Hatkhamba.
We got the water free of charge. The private tankers would have to pay Rs 300 each. As the tankers were being filled up one by one, the women in this budhhawadi (hamlet housing neo-Buddhists who earlier belonged to the scheduled castes) trudged up and down carrying pots filled with water. They washed clothes in pools of water that accumulated in the dry bed of an adjoining river. Obviously, the borewell was not for them.
Our tanker full, we left for Khedshi, where water was distributed to each collective of houses in the village. The inhabitants, who knew about our impending arrival, had already collected all the vessels and containers they could muster along the roadside. Suvare explained to us that the wells on one side of the road had dried up, while those on the other side still yielded water. The district administration had tried to solve the problem by digging borewells (at a cost of Rs 25,000-30,000 per bore) on the 'dry' side, but they too had failed to yield water.
3,500 mm of rainfall, and still the wells are dry
With an annual rainfall of 125 mm, the drought and water scarcity in Kutch, Gujarat, is an open and shut case (see Kutch: The story of a tortoise in distress). But water scarcity in the verdant coastal Maharashtrian district of Ratnagiri, which has a whopping average rainfall of 3,500 mm, remains a complete mystery.
At the collector's office in Ratnagiri, deputy collector G Nigudkar explained that the low rainfall of 2,930 mm in 2002, and 2,612 mm in 2001, had prompted the district administration to make plans to supply water to the water-scarce villages by November 2002. According to the plan, from January to June 2003, 151 villages and 394 wadis (hamlets) were to be supplied drinking water. Since the money available with the district operation and maintenance fund was inadequate, the district administration requested Rs 53.4 million from the government of Maharashtra's water supply and sanitation department. In May 2003, the figures of tanker-fed villages were revised upwards to 202 villages and 446 wadis. The corresponding figures for the number of villages and wadis that were tanker-fed in the year 2002, were 158 villages and 310 wadis.
Clearly, the water scarcity is worsening every year. The supply of water by tankers appears to be the only solution to the water scarcity. The district spent Rs 28 lakh on the supply of water in 2002-2003.
Ratnagiri is only one of several parts of India which receive high rainfall but suffer acute water scarcities despite this. In Cherrapunji in the north-east, which receives the second highest rainfall (a whopping 450 inches or 1125 cm!) in the world, water is being sold @ Rs 20 per jerrycan! Data from the India Meteorological Department shows that there has been less than normal rainfall in other high rainfall districts along the west coast of India during the year 2002. Rainfall in a few of the coastal districts is given in the following table:
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It is evident that rainfall in the year 2002 has been significantly lower than the normal rainfall in these places. While in a few places this is the third poor monsoon in succession, in others, it is the second consecutive poor monsoon. So the tanks, reservoirs and dams which harvest and store rainwater were already depleted before the onset of the poor monsoon of 2002. This, to some extent, explains the reason for the intensity and extensive nature of the drought and water scarcity in various parts of the country.
However, noted water expert Vijay Paranjpye, head of the NGO Gomukh, Pune, believes the drought in the coastal Konkan region has less to do with below-average rainfall and more to do with the absence of efforts to harness and harvest water in this region. The innumerable springs in this region, which are linked to temple tanks, could have been developed, networked and the water used for irrigation through canals, he says. But this has not been done. Dr Mukund Ghare, geologist and head of AFARM, Pune, feels that the geology of the area is not responsible for the water scarcity. Solutions can be found to problems such as the lateritic soils, and impervious bedrock. Such solutions are in place in adjoining Goa, whose geography is very similar to that of the Konkan. The present problem, according to him, has been caused by a lack of governance (planning and implementation) and a lack of application of science and technology to tackle the situation. To that extent, the drought in Ratnagiri is man-made.
Rajapur: 10,000 people depend on one 125-year-old dam
To the south of Ratnagiri city is Rajapur town with a population of 10,499. The Rajapur Municipal Council (RMC) was set up in 1940. Rajapur has a severe water shortage. Here, finding adequate and assured sources of water is a problem; distributing the available water is a problem; and administering/managing the water supply is a problem. The town is settled at various levels (altitudes), so supplying water to the different wards/localities poses a technical problem in terms of managing water pressure. The RMC has an annual income of approximately Rs 10 lakh (one million rupees) and an annual expenditure of Rs 30 lakh (Rs 3 million)! This means that all the earlier-mentioned problems are compounded by a financial problem. Since the roads in this town are extremely narrow (some are not even broad enough to allow an auto rickshaw to pass!), it is impossible to use a tanker to distribute water.
Rajapur depends for its water supply on the Kodawali dam (it is actually a bandhara -- a very small dam), which was built by the British in the year 1878. For this reason, it is also called Sahebacha Dharan (Gentlemen's Dam). For decades, the Gentlemen's Dam sufficed to supply water to Rajapur town. Of late, however, the town's population has increased, the river bed has silted up and rainfall reduced.
Battling all these problems is the young and dynamic CEO of the RMC, Dandegaonkar, under the overall leadership of RMC president Husnabanoo Khalife. Khalife, who assumed office in 2001, has a one-point agenda: to provide safe, adequate and assured water to the citizens of Rajapur. She stressed the need for careful planning and conservation of available resources. Importantly, she also emphasised the need for a change in attitudes and behaviour of women (who invariably deal with drinking water) who have a habit of throwing away one-day-old unused water, which they consider 'stale'.
As part of her efforts to ensure water to Rajapur, Khalife went up to the state government in Mumbai to request financial support to a water supply scheme for her town. No support from the state government was forthcoming so she doggedly approached the central government in Delhi and managed to obtain approval for a drinking water supply project. Till the scheme is implemented Khalife and her team are tapping the remaining dohs or kondis (pools of water in the river basin) by linking them to bring water up to the jack-well, from where it is supplied to Rajapur town. An innovative and Herculean task!
What the Gazetteer prescribed
Ratnagiri district lies on the west coast of Maharashtra, approximately 350 km south of Mumbai. To its north lies Raigad district, to the east are the districts of Satara, Sangli and Kolhapur, to the south is Sindhudurg district. To the west is the blue expanse of the Arabian Sea. Its striking verdant green character and the steep hills of the Sahyadris are probably what gave Ratnagiri its name: 'Ratnagiri' means 'jewel in the hills'.
Geographically, the district is divided into three divisions, based on the land forms: the mountainous region of the Sahyadris, the foothills, and the lowland or coastal region. The eastern stretch of the district is mountainous and at a considerable height above sea level. This constitutes the first division. The foothills are stretches of more or less flat land at the foot of the Sahyadris. In some places, the soil is alluvial and fertile, in others it is lateritic (red in colour) and less fertile. Lateritic soils have poor water-holding capacity compared to the moderate capacity of alluvial soils and the high water-retention of black soils. In the coastal lowlands, which are flat, the soil is sandy.
There are three varieties of rocks found in the district -- laterite (jambha), kalithar and shirgola. Kalithar is an impervious rock and does not aid the recharge of groundwater aquifers through percolation.
In the district public library, the Gazetteer, published in 1962, describes Ratnagiri as a monsoonal land with great contrasts of nature -- heights and plains, wet and dry regions, forested and cultivated stretches, bare lateritic plateau surfaces and intensely-tilled valleys. The average annual rainfall is 122", with 88" in the coastal region and 153" in the hilly areas of the interior. The area under forests was 100,000 acres in 1885; this came down to 46,958 acres in 1955-56.
The peculiar geography of the district makes it imperative to stress minor irrigation such as bunds, bandharas, nallahs and so on, said the Gazetteer. Ratnagiri's topography makes it ill suited to major irrigation projects. So far only one government canal has been constructed in the Malvan area, irrigating 627 acres of land.
If only the warnings of the wise Gazetteer had been heeded 40 years ago, the destruction of forests halted, bunds, nullahs and other water-conservation structures built, today's water stress situation would not have existed…
At the zilla parishad (district government office) the geologist at the water supply division agreed that the prevalence of lateritic soil in many parts of the district posed a problem, since this soil has a poor water-holding capacity. Kalithar exacerbates the situation by not allowing groundwater aquifers to recharge. Nevertheless, he said, simple structures to conserve and harvest water would go a long way in dealing with the situation. These include the construction of check-dams, bunds, percolation tanks, recharge shafts, injection wells and so on.
According to the executive engineer in charge of rural water supply, the lateritic soil and impervious rocks made it impossible for his team to find appropriate sites to construct water-conservation and harvesting structures. Hence the water scarcity despite 3,000 mm of rainfall annually.
District collector Bandri claimed the administration was experimenting with one interesting intervention -- hilltop harvesting and conservation of rainwater. A reservoir (pond or small lake) is constructed on top of a hill. The water that collects in the structure percolates gradually, recharging aquifers and wells located on all sides along the gentler slopes. Difficult situations demand innovative initiatives, but whether this solution is actually implemented and works remains to be seen.
Back to traditional solutions
At the end of my tour of Ratnagiri, I was left wondering why towns like Rajapur are still dependent on a small dam built by the British. Why have no new dams been built since 1947 (Independence) or 1952 (the launch of the Community Development Programme) or 1960 (the formation of the state of Maharashtra)?
Are the complex issues involved in rehabilitation and resettlement (together with the formidable anti-dam movement) dissuading state and local governments (district level) from examining the option of constructing reservoirs ('dams' is not a politically correct term any more!)? Is the water scarcity in Ratnagiri a manifestation of the lack/deficiency of governance at the local and state level?
To quote the old ditty:
Tujhya gharaat naahi paani, ghaaghar uttaani re
Mhanoon tu hindatos van-van
Kareet paani-paani re!
Translated:
There is no water in your house, since the pot has been turned upside down.
Hence you are condemned to go hither and thither
in search of water.
If the drought that is besetting India year after year is to be tackled, that pot must be turned up to the skies and the rain, and water, conserved. It would seem that rainwater conservation and rainwater harvesting, together with a mature conjunctive utilisation of surface and groundwater, is the only way ahead.
(Meher Gadekar is a specialist in rural development and management. In this series of articles, he will be tracking the drought in the Western states of Gujarat and Maharashtra and the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.)
InfoChange News & Features, June 2003