Politicians united in neglecting Vidarbha

Vidarbha has remained "backward of beyond" for most in the country. Successive state government have been criticised for neglecting it and have also had to accept the reproach on the floor of the state legislature for their disregard.

Situated in the plains of central India, it is home to over 2 crore people and is blessed with considerable wealth in terms of forest cover and minerals. It is also among the least industrially developed regions and in fact, comes pretty low on all parameters of development.

A demand for a separate state of Vidarbha has been raised time and again and every political party, with the exception of the Shiv Sena, has at some time or the other endorsed the demand.

The Bharatiya Janata Party committed itself to formation of Vidarbha state through a resolution adopted in 1995 in its National Executive meeting held in Bhubaneswar.

Three time Member of Parliament Banwarilal Purohit spearheaded the movement for a separate Vidarbha in the last elections and even formed the Vidarbha Rajya Party (VRP) to take the demand to the people.

Vidarbha, the VRP had contended, had an old and genuine claim to statehood. The Fazal Ali Commission had recommended formation of Vidarbha state with Nagpur as capital and as such, at least in case of Vidarbha, no new States Reorganization Commission recommendation was needed.

That Vidarbha has suffered in more ways can be gauged from the spate of farmers' suicides in the region. In the last two decades, hardly any new land has been brought under irrigation in Vidarbha even as the Maharashtra government lavished attention and money on development of Krishna Valley projects.

In 1982, Vidarbha's irrigation backlog as computed by the Dandekar Committee was of Rs 527 crore or 38.05 per cent. By 1994, according to Backlog and Indicator Committee report, this had grown to Rs 4,083 crore or 55.04 per cent. And by 2002, it stood at Rs 3,422 crore or 62.20 per cent. In the same period, for the rest of Maharashtra except Marathwada, the backlog declined from 39 per cent to mere 4.70 per cent.

This fact was duly noted by the Planning Commission panel that was constituted by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to study the Vidarbha situation.

The Gosikhurd project, the foundation for which was laid by then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi some 20 years ago, is yet to receive proper funding. It has been allocated some Rs 500 crore till now, even as the costs have escalated to Rs 4,000 crore.

In the absence of irrigation facilities, agricultural productivity has suffered and farmers have remained poor.