3 min readPuneApr 7, 2025 07:41 AM IST
First published on: Apr 7, 2025 at 04:20 AM IST
On the face of it, Dharashiv is like any other district in Maharashtra’s Marathwada region. There is little industrial development, agriculture is the main source of livelihood, soil health is deteriorating and productivity is falling.
Dharashiv, previously called Osmanabad, is also in the rain shadow part of Maharashtra, with a drought recorded every three years. This has resulted in the entire farming community being dependent on groundwater.
Then, there are some unique problems. “There are very poor canal systems in the district. Most importantly, rivers start here and flow elsewhere. There is no river that comes in from outside carrying water. In comparison, Solapur, which receives the least rainfall in the region, gets water from the Ujani dam of Pune through canal systems. Dharashiv does not get any outside water. So, we have to find ways to use the water that we get right here,” says Ravindra Mane, District Agriculture Officer, Dharashiv.
How Dharashiv survives its water crisis could hold a lesson for the rest of India. In a first such initiative, the 734 villages in Dharashiv are being called upon to participate in a competition to showcase their water management skills and, potentially, create a knowledge base of best practices that can be adopted by other villages of the state and even the country.
The competition, in which the villages will be graded out of 100, is being conducted by the District Administration of Dharashiv, the Water Supply and Sanitation Department of the Maharashtra government and the Watershed Organisation Trust (WOTR), a Pune-based organisation that works in the sector of rural poverty and the ecosystems. The top three winning villages will get cash prizes of `5 lakh, `3 lakh and `1 lakh. Gram panchayat sarpanches and gram sevaks from more than 140 villages have already registered.
“After the exercise, if we come up with some good, innovative, indigenous solutions that can be developed to improve the underground water level, sanitation level and water supply quality, we will publicise it so that these can be implemented throughout the country,” says Mainak Ghosh, the CEO of the Dharashiv Zilla Parishad.
The competition was announced on February 4, with April 15 being the last date for villages to self-nominate.
“In 2018, the NITI Aayog had developed the Composite Water Management Index to understand how Indian states are performing on water management. annually do this exercise annually. We thought that we should take this opportunity and go at the village level to assess the level of water governance and water management of the villagers. Of course, we required a different approach, different indicators and different data sets. We developed the Water Governance Standard and Certification System,” says Dr Eshwer Kale, who specialises in water governance at WOTR Centre for Resilience Studies, a research centre of WOTR.
Poor water management after monsoon affects Rabi crops. (Image source: WOTR) 
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