Down the Drain

Ever since, the 64 pump sets — each with 1250 HP capacity and costing over Rs 42 lakh — have been left to the mercy of rust. N D Dhakne, a mukadam, guards the Rs 76.51-crore building and machinery with two lathi-wielding watchmen.

The Mhaisal project sums up the MKVDC saga, but it does not tell the whole story. Similar conditions prevail at MKVDC projects in eight western Maharashtra districts, districts that have repeatedly elected politicians who promise to make available water for the farmer.

‘‘It’s a mockery of a development model,’’ says a Sangli farmer. ‘‘For decades, we were promised water and prosperity through the canals. Now we have ceased to hope.’’

Formed in 1996 by the then BJP-Shiv Sena government to coordinate and speed up irrigation in the Krishna Valley — critics said it was a saffron endeavour to dent the Congress stronghold of western Maharashtra — the MKVDC was initially rated a big success. The Corporation targeted completing 495 minor and major irrigation projects within 48 months to harness 475 thousand million cubic feet of water. Though that proved to be too ambitious, more than two dozen big dams and lifts, 39 medium-sized reservoirs and 355 minor irrigation projects reached advanced stages of completion within five years. The Corporation has so far spent Rs 7,500 crore on infrastructure.

A faulty revenue model, however, proved to be the MKVDC’s undoing within a couple of years of its establishment, with each project now transformed into a battleground for contractors demanding their dues, employees demanding payments, and peasants demanding a fair deal.

If, in 1996, the projects budget was Rs 7,100 crore, rising to Rs 8,317 crore in 1999, it now stands at Rs 15,000 crore. The state was to contribute Rs 3,500 crore over five years from 1996, while the MKVDC was allowed to borrow an equal amount from the public. Most of the money came from institutions, banks or big enterprises; individual investors coughed up only around Rs 40 crore. Bonds floated in 1996-97 raised Rs 975.47 crore; in 1998-99, they raised another Rs 960.12 crore. Three subsequent issues raised Rs 1,322.27 crore, Rs 636.07 crore and Rs 793.27 crore respectively. The MKVDC now is awaiting a government nod to float more bonds to raise Rs 504.22 crore and Rs 281.03 crore soon.

Having guaranteed the bonds, the cash-strapped state government today reportedly spends a major chunk of its irrigation budget as interest to bond-holders and to maintain MKVDC’s bonds market rating.

The MKVDC now wants its investors to renew their bonds on maturity. ‘‘This will ease the situation,’’ says a Corporation officer. The carrot for the deal — 17.5 per cent interest instead of the original 12.5 per cent — however, has not enthused investors.

‘‘There are budgetary provisions, we will repay the amounts,’’ say MKVDC officials when asked about investors wanting their money back. ‘‘There may be delays, but there will be no defaults, despite the recent downgrading of state bonds by Crisil. The Corporation has always paid half-yearly interest on time.’’

The assurance on repayment, however, may be only partially true. There is a budgetary provision for the December 2002 repayment — an amount of Rs 223 crore — but subsequent repayments are under a cloud.

If financial problems are one side of the picture, PAP leader Bharat Patankar highlights the other: ‘‘Water has been impounded, structures have been raised, pumps are in place. But not a single drop of water has been available in the fields because there are no canals and the government has no money to operate the projects. It’s a criminal waste.’’

Former MKVDC director Girish Bapat holds the state government squarely responsible for the mess that is the Corporation. ‘‘It did not pay its share of the monies,’’ he alleges. A section of MKVDC officers, however, don’t buy this charge, pointing out that the state has been paying the interest since the beginning, which could be deemed as its contribution.

Former Irrigation Minister Eknath Khadse blames the Vilasrao government’s ‘‘advertisement of its own bankruptcy’’ for the crisis. ‘‘Even we were not economically sound. But who will invest in a government that claims to be bankrupt?’’ he asks.

While Irrigation Minister Ajit Pawar was unavailable for comment, corporation MD Nandkumar Vadnere would only say that he could not comment on the situation “off-hand”.

…Up Into the Fields

ASHWANI SHARMA

KUDARI-DALLI (DURG), CHHATTISGARH:HIS neighbours call him the Anna Hazare of Durg, the district collector refers to him as an engineer without an IIT degree. Neither does complete justice to Brij Lal Sahu, 60, whose ingenious mind and tireless labour have converted 150 acres of barren land into lush paddy fields.

Sahu’s story began almost 40 years ago when he, backed by two uncles, took up the task of diverting water from the semi-perennial Godarra river into his fields in Kudari-Dalli, a village 112 km from Durg and accessible only through a near-kachcha road. ‘‘It took us between five and 10 years to divert the river water,’’ says Sahu.

The investments paid off hand over fist as, for more than two decades, the river provided assured irrigation to 8.5 acres of the Sahu family land. Their income increased phenomenally. ‘‘For years, villagers watched us raking in. Last year, I motivated them to share the benefits with us,’’ says Sahu.

Following the innovative irrigator’s advice, the villagers got together for shramdaan and built a new water channel close to Sahu’s fields. ‘‘Had the drought not happened this year, the water scheme could have covered 350 acres of land — that’s almost 92 per cent of the total agricultural land in Kudari-Dalli,’’ says Sahu.

The technology followed by Sahu and his band of brothers required no engineering inputs. ‘‘It’s based on gravity,’’ says Durg Collector I C P Kesari. Even to cut down giant boulders and granite rocky surfaces, Sahu did not use blasting material or mechanised tools. Wherever essential, they used hammers and chisels, elsewhere, they exploited the rocks to channelise the water.

So long as the river water was being used only for the Sahus’ fields, there was no permanent structure to block the flow of the water, allowing it to flow free for others’ use. Recently, however, the villagers raised between Rs 2 and 3 lakh to construct a cement wall to divert the river water. The Sahu family, as a mark of respect, was exempted from shramdaan as well as the water fees, which the villagers’ committee collects from the beneficiaries.

Already, word of the common endeavour has spread. State Governor Dinesh Nandan Sahay is scheduled to visit the village next Saturday to see the success of the ‘water mission’ for himself. Irrigation department officials, too, have visited the village frequently to study the possibility of expanding it by spending Rs 62 lakh.

This last, though, has upset the villagers, who do not want to lose control of the scheme to the government. Village sarpanch Gangotri Deshmukh, however, supports the idea. ‘‘Once the irrigation facility gets expanded, every family will see their fortune changing,’’ she says optimistically. The rest of the villagers have their fingers crossed.