In height of summer, borewell depth 1,900 ft

The summer has brought to light alarming stories of water scarcity, but the ones from this orange basket of Vidarbha would certainly rank am...

The summer has brought to light alarming stories of water scarcity, but the ones from this orange basket of Vidarbha would certainly rank among the extreme. Here’s a sample: Someone has just sunk a borewell to an unbelievable 1,900 feet, with not a drop of success to savour!

Desperation clouds the Warud tehsil of Amravati in north-east Maharashtra as a horticulture scheme, which promoted water-guzzling orange orchards in an area marked by scanty rainfall, takes its toll.

As orange cultivations flourished in the absence of water conservation for over a decade, most of Warud’s record 2,000-plus borewells and 15,000 dugwells are drying up earlier with the onset of summer every year.

As per a government estimate, more than 22 lakh orange trees have dried up. Warud’s block development officer G.L. Meshram admits: ‘‘Depletion in water table has been caused by growth in cultivation of orange.’’

The effects of water scarcity make for poignant scenes. A visit to the worst-affected Dhanodi village shows how villagefolk are drawing half a tumbler of water every time they walk to the only well in their vicinity which has not yet dried up, but is likely to in a few days.

‘‘We have to depend on an inadequate tanker service which serves just one village circuit (region) on a given weekday,’’ says Mohan Khadaskar.

Richer farmers like former sarpanch Dilip Bhoyar have been managing to purchase a little of this precious commodity by coughing up as much as Rs 2,000 a month, which is paid to labourers who fetch water from miles away —all borewells within 7 kms have dried up.

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Two years ago, when The Indian Express visited this village, Bhoyar was a content man. The village was seeing an end to its troubles, thanks to the new Pusali dam 10 kms away. Now, Bhoyar’s dream lies shattered as the dam has gone dry.

Some villagers spent lakhs to dig borewells beyond the no-water zone to meet their agricultural needs. ‘‘These, too, can go dry any time,’’ Bhoyar forecasts. The situation at other tanker-fed villages is as bad. Amner and Muktapur villagers talk of how Wardha river, which rises to a substantial level in other parts of Vidarbha, has been drying up earlier with every passing year.

Some have invented ingenious ways to survive. At Shahapur, they have been sucking out water from the valves of a Upper Wardha Scheme pipeline that passes by their village. That’s all they can do for even borewells are banned here due to huge water table depletion.

But desperate times call for desperate measures. There are new ones being dug below the 500-feet stipulated limit, like the unprecedented 1,900-feet deep borewell located between Isambri and Temburkheda villages. But no one’s willing to talk about it for fear of legal action.