Context
After the deficient monsoon last year, the Maharashtra government recently declared many parts of the state to be drought-hit earlier this year.
About
- Most of the Marathwada area acquired much less than 75% of its average rainfall.
- This scenario is in sharp comparison with the State’s coastal regions, wherein rainfall has frequently been in excess, leading to extreme flooding.
- This diversity is why climate version measures have been hard to formulate and put into effect.
Reasons for Drought in Many Parts of Maharashtra
- Rain-shadow Region: Marathwada lies in the rain-shadow region of the Western Ghats.
- When moist winds from the Arabian Sea encounter those mountains, they upward push and cool, causing heavy rainfall on the western aspect.
- But by the point these winds cross the Ghats and descend into Western Maharashtra and Marathwada, they lose maximum in their moisture, leaving Marathwada especially a whole lot drier.
- Climate Change: Due to Climate Change, the area has a skilled and growing trend in drought severity and frequency of overdue.
- As a result, Marathwada and North Karnataka have emerged as the second driest areas in India after the country’s northwest area.
- Type of Soil: The region has predominantly clayey black soil, regionally referred to as “regur”. This soil is fertile and retains moisture well.
- However, it has a low infiltration rate, which means that once it does rain, the water is both logged or runs off as an alternative, but doesn’t percolate right down to recharge groundwater.
- Topographic Variation: The region has parallel tributaries of the Godavari and the Krishna flowing southeast.
- Each tributary flows in the valley and is separated by a slightly sloping hill. The valleys have perennial groundwater even as the uplands have seasonal groundwater.
- The wells in upland regions regularly dry up some months after the monsoons — and that is wherein the water scarcity is most acute.
- Promotion of Water Intensive Crop: Long-standing government help for sugarcane pricing and income has increased water-intensive sugarcane irrigation, which has confined the irrigation of more nutritious plants.
- For every one acre of sugarcane, for example, four acres of conventional plants are deprived of water.
Concerns
- Sugarcane Cultivation: The agricultural practices of Marathwada aren’t properly acceptable to its low-rainfall regime.
- An essential contributor to the place’s water disaster is sugarcane cultivation.
- Sugarcane requires about 1,500-2,500 mm of water in its growing season — outstripping what herbal rainfall in the area can offer.
- While pulses and millets require 4 or 5 irrigations across the crop life, sugarcane needs to be irrigated nearly every day.
- Increase in Area under Sugarcane Cultivation: The place below sugarcane at the side of the quantity of sugarcane turbines extended step by step between the 1950s and the 2000s.
- The crop presently occupies 4% of the full cropped location in the region however consumes 61% of the irrigation water. As a result, the average river outflow in the upper Bhima basin has nearly halved.
- 82% of the sugar grown in Maharashtra comes from low-rainfall areas.
Suggestions
- To ensure supply sustainability of the drinking water resources inside the place, the State authorities need to consider pumping the water uphill and enhancing the floor water storage for drinking.
- Funds under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme could be used to address specific challenges, consisting of designing silt-trapping mechanisms and setting up training programmes for farmers on periodic desilting.
- The Maharashtra Water and Irrigation Commission in 1999 endorsed that sugarcane have to be banned in regions that acquire less than 1,000 mm of rainfall according to year, but manufacturing has best expanded.
- Sugarcane production — both for food and for ethanol — must flow to wetter states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and West Bengal, which get hold of extra rainfall.
- In a low-rainfall region, water demand may be managed through working towards water-efficient irrigation, cultivating drought-resistant plants, and diversifying livelihoods.
Conclusion
- Marathwada’s water crisis is a stark reminder of a delicate stability among agricultural practices and environmental sustainability.
- By adopting greater sustainable policies and agricultural practices, drought-prone regions in peninsular India can mitigate their water disaster and construct a more resilient destiny in the face of climate change.
Source: The HINDU
UPSC Mains Practice Question
Q. Climate change has turned India into a water-stressed economy. Discuss.
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