Central Hall – Irrigating Backlog

Mumbai: For the past 35 to 40 years the Central and the State Government have been pumping in crores of rupees into removing the development backlog. What began as an central assistance of Rs 492 crore in the Fourth Plan of 1975-85 is now a whopping Rs 1,09,390.17 crore in 2020-21 which is needed to complete 313 irrigation projects in the three Statutory Development Boards (SDBs) of Vidarbha, Marathwada and Rest of Maharashtra.

Irrigation potential of the region appears to be taken as the yardstick for measuring or quantifying backwardness or development of the region. If so much amounts of money has been allocated over the years for one particular development indicator, then it begs an answer as to why even after nearly four decades, the backlog simply refuses to go away. It has however irrigated an Rs 70,000 crore irrigation scam which too is yet to see any real time investigation as yet.

More weightage has been given to development of irrigation potential with the noble belief that it will remove the backlog of the region. Whereas, the non-irrigation development backlog has been given less importance and even less allocation.

It is the skewed concept of development or removal of backlog that has seen regions like Marathwada and districts like Amravati still languishing at the bottom of the development index. Although irrigation is must for development of agriculture, so also other indicators of development like Human Development Index (HDI), Electricity, Infrastructure development, transport connectivity, skill development and other social and civic infrastructure are equally important to ensure all round development of the entire region.

Also Read: Central Hall – Sarkaria Revisited

Why the SDBs were revived in 1994 as leaders from the Vidarbha region found out much to their anger that instead of funds being equitably distributed they were being diverted to Western Maharashtra and elsewhere. The common grouse until then was that those who were rich, powerful and most importantly in power ensured development of their own region. That means that even the provisions of Article 371 (2) have failed to ensure that at least the irrigation backlog is removed.

The reasons for this apathetic and skewed development in parts of Vidarbha, Marathwada and Konkan region coming under Rest of Maharashtra are many and mostly centered around lack of political will, corruption and indifference from the people themselves.

Classic example is that of Marathwada region, despite the region giving some political stalwarts like Shankarrao Chavan, Shivraj Patil-Chakurkar, Vilasrao Deshmukh, Gopinath Munde or Pramod Mahajan to the state and national politics, the region is still perceived as backward. Although it is stated that the irrigation backlog of Marathwada is less compared to the rest of the state, it is both an irony and a mystery.

The region is still plagued by acute water scarcity, deforestation, lack of growth in industries, poor agricultural infrastructure and even worse is the railway infrastructure. Water scarcity is the biggest issue despite the fact that the state’s largest river, the Godavari passes through the region. The region also lacks in development of Railway infrastructure.

A classic example is that of a near ghost railway station of Ghatnandur equidistant to nearby major towns of Ambejogai and Parli-Vaijanath. There is not even a major or small structure outside the station. Another example is the initial skepticism towards the Konkan railway line, it was a non-native George Fernandes and Metro-man E Sreedharan who ensured that the project saw the light of the day.

Another favourite pass time that our politicians love to play is to play politics with development and infrastructure. Besides the usual allegations of diversion of development funds by those in power to their own regions of influence, another bane is playing politics with infrastructure projects.

A regime change invariably results in the new incumbent halting infrastructure projects started by the previous regime, especially if it is of that party which is now in the opposition. Even if it means delays and cost escalations in the infrastructure projects. We are yet to develop that bipartisan mindset and approach towards infrastructure development.

It seems as the time has come to formulate a law that insulates all infrastructure and other development projects for politicking, corruption and delays, to ensure that they are implemented following due procedures and in a time bound manner. Most importantly there has to be some accountability put in place rather than creating toothless paper tigers like the three SDBs.