5 men from Latur to raise funds to end the water crisis in the region:
When the government fails to meet the needs of the people, then it is the people who have to stand up for themselves. And this is what five people from Latur are doing right now. Looking at the already prevailing drought conditions and water crisis in the region an unlikely group of men - an advocate, a social activist, a Congress politician, a rising sugar industry baron and a former RSS pracharak are doing what needs to be done.
Makrand Jadhav, Trimbakdas Zawar, BB Thombre, Ashokrao Kukude and Manoharrao Gomare are the men who have donated and collected money to desilt and widen two barrages which will allow more water to be stored in them. As of now the water in these barrages are nil. But this construction and deepening of the barrages will makes sure the coming monsoon season will hold enough water to last the region for a year at least.
"We don't want a favour from western Maharashtra, nor can we wait endlessly for the government to do something. We carried out a survey on our own and realized that even with the little rainfall that Latur gets, we can save enough water if the two barrages are deepened and widened as they can store more water," said Makrand Jadhav.
They estimated the construction cost to be around Rs.7.5cr. Till now they have even collected Rs.2 cr. About 1000 WhatsApp groups on the chat messaging service have been created to aware people about the crisis. The doctors of Latur have donated Rs.51 lakh rupees.
Minister of Railways Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu has directed the Railway administration to take the necessary step to ensure water is supplied to the drought affected reagon. About 50 tankers like wagons per train are being deployed just to provide water to the region. First train has already been sent on April 8 and another train is scheduled to deliver water on April 15. The carrying capacity of water is around 55,000 liters/wagon which mean around 2750000 liters/train.
Image Credit: Indiaclimatedialogue.net
Crisis in Maharashtra: Sec 144 imposed in Latur to avoid water riots:
Latur, a small city located in the Marathwada district of Maharashtra recently witnessed something terrible and saddening. Section 144 has been issued by the Maharashtra government in order to prevent any violence regarding the water shortage. The imposition aims to prevent violence over water as the order forbids assembly of more than 5 people near any water reservoir.
The area is already a drought hit region and to curb the violence activity regarding water, this ruling has been imposed. School, colleges and administrative offices have been closed for a month.
The situation is bad as dams are drying up very quickly and Municipal Corporation is disconnecting water supply forcing the residents to stand in queue for at least 3 hours in the middle of the night just to fulfill their water needs.
Also Read: Why Marathwada faces a drought
Just to give you the perspective why the region has been drought hit for the last two years and this year it is also following the same suite, we have a chart below.
Latur is located in the southern part of Marathwada and Marathwada is already a known drought-prone region. From the last two consecutive years the region has been experiencing some severe deficiency in rainfall.
In 2014 and 2015, the deficiency has been a record low of 42% and 40% respectively. These back to back droughts have crippled the water supply in the region. Even the winter rainfall didn’t do much justice.
And to top it all, Latur comes under the southern hot pocket which is highly prone to high temperatures in the region. Even this year, before the pre-monsoon, the temperatures are already touching 40°C.
There will be some pre-monsoon rainfall activity over the region but that won’t suffice anything major to help the drought-hit area. But we all have to wait and see how this year’s monsoon pans out.
