Marathwada, Vidarbha and North Maharashtra are the drought prone areas of Maharashtra. Every year, these regions battle acute shortage of water. In fact, the situation is deadlier for Marathwada region, as it is on the verge of desertification. To bring this situation under control, the Government of Maharashtra has approved a plan to carry out cloud seeding in August. Considering the acute water shortage, the government has approved a 30 crore project to implement cloud seeding in August.
In the words of Chandrakant Patil, Minister for Relief and Rehabilitation, “Government will first consider the progress of Monsoon in June and July. If the amount of rainfall is insufficient to meet the needs, we will carry out a cloud-seeding project in the month of August. In this project, state authorities will try and induce rains in catchment areas of dams”.
However, this is not the first cloud-seeding project that the state has undertaken. In 2015, Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) led government between August and November had dispatched 47 flights, worth Rs 27 crore, resulting in 1,300 mm of rainfall. The project was a huge success. The idea was even adopted by Karnataka and the results were too good.
The three meteorological divisions of Maharashtra such as Marathwada, Madhya Maharashtra and Vidarbha have struggled drought in the past years. We are afraid of similar situation this year as well. In 2015, Marathwada and Madhya Maharashtra recorded 40% and 33% less than normal rainfall, respectively. In 2017 also, Vidarbha observed 23% less rainfall. The deficiency continued last year too, as Marathwada faced 22% rain deficiency, while Vidarbha and Madhya Maharashtra were rain deficient by 8% and 9%, respectively.
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The data form the government reveals that the storage levels in 3267 dams in Maharashtra are less than 13% as on May 29. On the other hand, Konkan has the highest amount of water. Sadly, Nagpur and Aurangabad have only 8.69% and 2.84% of water. In fact, 30 dams hold absolutely no water. The situation is worse for Marathwada as the dams in the region hold only 3% water against 23.41% of water, last year.
What is Cloud Seeding?
It is a process by which aeroplanes release particles to help moisture-bearing clouds to burst, resulting in artificial rains. In 1983, cloud seeding was first tested by the Tamil Nadu government. However, the process involves some sort of risk due to toxicity of the seeding agent, but some modifications have been made recently so as to adhere to certain environmental standards.
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