Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said last month: “We are bracing for severe drought, which could be worse than in 1972.” Revenue Minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule warned workers in Nagpur last month that “as the drought progresses, a bigger crisis will come upon Maharashtra. In fact, it will be bigger than the pandemic. There will be a shortage of water and fodder. You will see kharif and rabi wrecked. All crops will take a hit”. National Congress Party (SP) chief Sharad Pawar repeated the apprehension: “This year’s drought could be worse than in 1972.”
What happens to politics in a drought? Typically, it works out best for the ruling party. Take Mr Pawar. In terms of career progression, 1972 was not at all bad for him. He became a member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for the first time from Baramati, and at 32, a state minister in charge of home and general administration in the Vasantrao Naik government. He was sent to other states to secure foodgrain for Maharashtra (he got a cold reception, he writes in his autobiography, from Uttar Pradesh because he refused to touch then chief minister Kamalapati Tripathi’s feet) but many other governments helped Maharashtra out. This eventually led to his star rising.
That 1972 drought was key to teaching India how to manage drought and food shortages. Maharashtra launched the Employment Guarantees Scheme (EGS) in 1969, the first state in India to do so. Research by economist Jean Dreze suggests that the poorest of the poor — agricultural landless labour — who were always the worst-hit in famines, found themselves relatively secure as a result of state intervention. The EGS provided this group a steady source of income and when, combined with the state’s robust public distribution system in the state, Maharashtra prevented the devastation that states like Bihar faced. True, the quality of the work and low payment, the quality of consumption, and the sudden injection of cash-fuelled consumption in a struggling rural economy had its own impact. But as economist Elizabeth Oughton observed in her research, some landless agricultural labour families “enjoyed” the drought because of the guarantee of work it represented.
More policy reform followed. Though only a junior minister, Mr Pawar scrapped the ban on the inter-district movement of fodder. Much later, came the construction of check dams (tiny dams built on nallahs) in the Prithviraj Chavan government (2009), cattle camps run by non-government organisations, and eventually the Drought Management Code (DMC) of 2026.
Although the DMC is rigorous in defining drought, its rollout apparently is not so much. Mahabaleshwar is one of the wettest towns in India. Yet it is on the list of talukas hit by drought and, therefore, eligible for drought relief. How could that happen? Although Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde represents an Assembly constituency in Thane, he belongs to the Mahabaleshwar taluka. And if every farmer — for instance — gets drought relief of ₹1 lakh per hectare and other benefits, so will farmers in Mahabaleshwar! By contrast, Kagal (represented by Hasan Mushrif in Kolhapur district), Shirdi (represented by Radhakant Vikhe Patil in Ahmadnagar district) and Dindori (represented by Narhari Zirwal in Nashik), among others, do not figure on the list, although all three are battling a severe shortage of water and crop failure. All three individuals belong to parties that are in the ruling alliance and are furious that their regions will not be eligible for drought relief.
So power, patronage and money fuel politics in drought: And the ruling party controls all of those. Climate-change activists can scream El Nino till they’re blue in the face. But the fact is, no one in Maharashtra is talking about “differences” between Mr Fadnavis and Mr Shinde for the moment. Instead, there is a wild scramble to get your constituency put on the drought-relief list. Crisis forces unity. In 1972, a young Sharad Pawar saw thousands of women led by Mrinal Gore, Ahilya Rangnekar and others take out the Laatni (rolling pin) morchas (processions) on Bombay streets, protesting against skyrocketing prices, beating empty tins with kitchen ladles. All that is passe now.
In some ways, the drought is providential because it postpones the hour of reckoning in Maharashtra politics. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has no objection in principle to Mr Shinde, a Maratha, becoming chief minister. In fact, it badly needs a Maratha. But it would like him to merge his party, the Shiv Sena, into the BJP. Sena MLAs are against that move. Having won the Assembly elections and the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation polls pretty much on his own, Mr Fadnavis knows he is secure. But his followers and supporters are nudging him towards higher ambitions. A good drought is all things to all people!
 "Drought")