After four successive years of good rains, the spectre of drought once again looms large over western India. Although it may not be as severe as that which gripped the region in 1987-88, it is nonetheless a severe threat which has not received the attention it deserves. As many as 21,500 villages in 23 districts in Maharashtra have been officially declared affected.

Unfortunately, despite experience in tackling the crises which date back to the Raj, state governments are still guilty of knee-jerk reactions when confronted by drought. As a matter of fact, they behave in precisely the same way when they have to tackle converse phenomenon-floods. They simply importune the Centre for additional funds.

Begging Again

This is not, as may be imagined, a recipe for disaster. On the contrary, it is New Delhi’s recognition of the fact that states will prove the proverbial Oliver Twists and demands need to be pruned to size, if not gently ignored. What is more, it should prompt the state governments to realise that they will have to learn to live with drought as a permanent feature of life. Instead of entering into a protracted correspondence with Delhi, it would do better to devise ways of combating the scourge of water scarcity.

Fortunately, a state like Maharashtra, for eg., already possess a blue print for doing so in its highly acclaimed employment guarantee scheme (EGS). This was launched in 1972, following one of the worst droughts in decades, fulfilling an election promise made by the state Congress party a year earlier. Quite simply, the EGS promises work to those who are prepared to do manual labour but cannot find it on their own. The only condition is that such work should be unskilled.

Maharashtra’s growth has been highly lopsided. Although it is one of the most industrialised states, and hence urbanised - with one in every three citizens living in towns - the countryside is terribly pauperised, with only 13 per cent of the land irrigated. This has made the EGS a godsend when the rains fail. One indication of its near-total implementation can be gleaned from the fact that out of the state’s 31 districts, which include Bombay and Pune, the EGS operates in no fewer than 29.

But it would be wrong to imaging that the EGS is the complete panacea to problems of rural scarcity. To begin with, it is riddled with bureaucratic procedures. An applicant has to register his or her name with the village talathi or gramsevak by filling in a form. Following this, he has to approach an authority like the tehsildar and seek employment on a second form. The tehsildar has to provide work within 15 days of such an application, stating that the person is prepared to work for atleast 30 continuous days, and has to issue a directive to the implementing agency in a third form. Worse still is the corruption, which often deprives a job-seeker of his dues, since work is paid by piece rate for different categories.

Faulty Concept

Apart from the implementation, it is also the very concept that is at fault. In the first two decades, the promoters of the EGS have been more concerned with creating employment for its own sake that in permanent assets which sustain livelihood in villages. It is only more recently that the emphasis has shifted to the conservation of that most precious resource, water. Thus the EGS includes the labour-intensive components of major and medium irrigation projects, building canals, percolation and storage tanks and underground bandharas or reservoirs. What is more, it has taken up soil conservation, land development like bunding and, last but not least, afforestation. If the EGS is able to restore the green cover in certain areas, it will help to keep the ravages of drought at bay.

Partial Answer

All the same, the EGS is only a partial answer to the multitudes of problems posed by drought. It is too narrow in its scope and encumbered by procedures and by the lack of commitment of many of the administrators and their henchmen down the line. The situation calls for a much more concerted effort by people themselves, rather than only activitating the official machinery. Indeed, unless the two most vital resources - land and water - are managed by communities, it is difficult to see how employment can be generated on a mass scale in the countryside.

Fortunately, Maharashtra itself has more than ample evidence of such people’s initiatives. Whether it is the watershed development of Ralegaon Sidhi, in the rain-shadow district of Ahmednagar; the pani-panchyat method of granting titles to use of canal water (even to the landless) outside Pune; or the self-help scheme launched in Baliraja, Sangli, where people constructed their own earthen dam (against the wishes of the administration!), the message is clear: allow people to look after common property resources, provided they organise themselves differently, and they can often eke out a livelihood in the most hostile of environments.

Lest this sound like a clarion call for a rustic Arcadianism, it is worth remembering that the present distribution of water resources is highly inequitable, with sugarcane, which grown on only 3 per cent of the cropped area of the state, accounting for as much as 60 per cent of the water for irrigation.  More equitable sharing will at least ensure that the poorest in a village in an arid region need not migrate to the nearest town in times of distress. 

Drought,
by Darryl D’MOnte,
courtesy TOI, Jan. 1992,

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