dc.description | The Neera Devghar dam project in Pune district was completed in 2008. But the benefits of the project are yet to reach the farmers as the government has failed to build the canal system to take the water to the farmers. The result is that the water in the dam flows off into the river without benefitting the drought-hit farmers in the four nearby talukas.
“The dam was built and the power rights were sold off. But when it came to making canals to distribute the water to needy farmers, the government was cash strapped. The annual remuneration that the government could afford was Rs 40 crore whereas as per our calculation, at least Rs 360 crore was needed calculating the escalation per year. The state government then asked us how to revive the project,” said Rajas Parchure, director, Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, who along with associate professor Anurag Asawa worked on the project.
“On either side of the dam, there needs to be a 208-km and a 225-km long canal system to provide water to the 42,000 hectare area and the nearly 164 villages around. The canal system will help people in Bhor, Khandala, Phaltan and Malshiras areas in Pune district. These districts are facing severe water shortage. They have so much water stored near them, yet they are unable to use it and all the water flows off back to the river,” said Asawa.
“The government as usual wanted to go for a public-private-partnership but the researchers found through their study that a PPP model will be detrimental both for the government and the farmers as the terms and conditions will be anti-farmer. Hence, we thought of replacing the private with the community. Once the benefits of the canals were explained to the farmers, they were ready to contribute,” said Parchure.
“This includes formation of water user associations which will contribute and look over the entire distribution system. Also, there will be no increase in water rates for the farmers and the government needs to give no sops to the private players,” added Parchure.
“We submitted our report in May 2014, but till date no action has been taken to implement any measure. The dam was almost flooded twice after that, but there has been no use of water for the farmers as they continue to face drought like situation in summers,” said Asawa.
“This is not the only dam that is useless to the farmers. The Chithale Committee report says that out of the 601 ongoing irrigation projects, 225 have been under execution for 15 years and 77 for 30 years. If action is not taken as early as possible by government departments, the condition of farmers in Maharashtra is only going to worsen,” added Asawa. | en_US |