A drought of relief

Don't harass farmers, expecting a bribe from them," a furious Devendra Fadnavis is telling officials of the agriculture department at a meeting he called on March 28 to review the progress of the farm ponds scheme. "This scheme has to succeed." Maharashtra's young chief minister is beleaguered by the worsening drought situation in his state, and the feedback from his team in the war room on the Mantralaya's seventh floor is discouraging. Around 20 IT grads are collating information from rural areas and relaying it to the BJP chief minister.
It has been a year since he launched the ambitious Jalyukta Shivar Abhiyan (JSA), which aimed to free 5,000 villages of water scarcity a year and make Maharashtra drought-free by 2019. The works included developing water sheds, raising groundwater levels, desilting and decentralising water sources, increasing area under irrigation, deepening and widening streams, constructing cement and earthen stop dams and digging farm ponds.
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