No water to fall back on for farmers in Ujani's backwater area

Narayan Lawand, a 45-year-old farmer in Pune district, died of electrocution while using a submersible water pump to irrigate his fields last month.

His death has brought into focus the plight of people living in the area around Ujani dam in western Maharashtra because of the terrible drought this year.

Rui, Lawand's village in Pune's Indapur tehsil, falls in the backwater region of Ujani dam across the Bhima river.

As the backwater spreads through hundreds of small inlets and streams in the area, it is common for farmers to draw water from them using submersible pumps.

But the water level in the reservoir has depleted to such a precariously low level this year that small rivers and streams which flow off the main waterbody have gone dry.

Submersible pumps and pipes which draw water from them, thus, lie exposed.

In many places, farmers, who mainly grow sugarcane, have pooled money to dig trenches or shallow wells alongside the parched streams. The water that percolates into these trenches is then pumped out.

"Rivers and streams have dried up. Our crops are withering," said Lawand's brother Tukaram.

It forced his brother to lift water from a trench dug near a river. "He suffered electric shock while using a submersible pump and died," he said.

"The water level in the dam has gone down to an unprecedented level. But last monsoon the dam was full," said Sharad Kale, a farmer from nearby Palasdeo village.

"Mismanagement" of the reservoir is responsible for the situation, he claimed.

Water for drinking purposes was released to Solapur and parts of Marathwada through rivers instead of pipelines, and a lot of water was wasted in the process, he said.

The wall of Ujani dam is in Solapur district. The backwater is spread across Daund and Indapur tehsils of Pune district, Karmala and Madha of Solapur and Karjat in Ahmednagar district.

"Water level is going down day by day. Electric pumps of farmers are out of action for last three months," Kale said.

An irrigation department official denied that flawed distribution of water of mismanagement was the reason.

The total capacity of the dam is 123.28 TMCft (thousand million cubic feet) and last year the dam received 119 TMCft water, he said.

"There are many reasons why the water level went down so much. Water was released for drinking purpose to Solapur and parts of Marathwada. Water was also released for crops. Evaporation is another factor. But an important reason is uncontrolled water lifting in the backwater region," he said.

The dam was built to provide irrigation only for eight months, but unauthorized lifting, mainly for sugarcane fields, goes on all-year-round, he said.