Summer Bloom in a Semi-Arid Land: Field Notes from Aurangabad
The fallow fields that dominate Aurangabad’s summer landscape were replaced by widespread cultivation this year.
Mukta Deodhar and Ganesh Shinde
We were in Gangapur taluk in Maharashtra’s Aurangabad district, when we had to stop our vehicle to behold an unusual sight. The sun blazed down; it was April — the peak of summer — and yet all around us were flourishing fields of bajra (pearl millet), wheat, cotton, onion, tomato, sugarcane and mosambi (sweet lime). It was particularly remarkable for one of us who is very familiar with the region, having spent 15 years here, and yet was encountering such a view for the first time in the month of April.
Summer here is characterised by swathes of cultivable land left fallow and vacant as most farmers time their sowing with the onset of monsoon. Like other semi-arid regions across the country that practice agriculture, Gangapur block too depends largely on rain for cultivation. There are only a few areas that have access to open wells for irrigation but even these cannot be relied on as water levels plummet in the summer.
What explained this change? Is it a one-off that resulted from the extreme rainfall events in the region in 2021? Or is this the result of watershed development work?
We proceeded to our destination — the field offices of Jankidevi Bajaj Gram Vikas Sanstha (JBGVS), the CSR arm of Bajaj Group, in Waluj, 20 minutes from Aurangabad city, where we got some answers.
JBGVS’s flagship project is the Bajaj Water Conservation Project (BWCP), which, in its second phase, aims to make 110 villages in Gangapur and Aurangabad talukas ‘drought-proof, water tanker free and self-reliant for water, increase in area under irrigation, increase in agricultural production and ultimately increase the income of farmers from the project area’.
The project began in 2017 and they are estimated to have benefitted around 60,000 hectares of land (nearly 1.5 lakh acres) through a wide range of activities from infrastructural fixes such as construction of cement nala (stream) bunds, check dams, farm ponds, desilting of percolation tanks, and deepening and widening of nalas to institutional support and capacity building measures. They have also encouraged more water-efficient techniques such as sprinkler and drip irrigation to the farmers.
Read | What is ‘Agri-Rain’? Field Notes From Anantapur
Considering their extensive work in watershed management, we wanted to meet and introduce them to Jaltol, the water accounting tool we developed. We demonstrated how the tool works and noted a list of suggestions and feature requests.
Watershed structures are important for agriculture to survive in dry conditions
We visited Khojewadi, Toki, Turkabad, and Ambelohol villages to see for ourselves the kind of work being done in the region to improve access to water for irrigation. The structures and activities are planned meticulously and in a technically sound manner along the cascade series on a nala or river (outlet of a watershed). More about the water conservation project is available here.
Extreme weather events pose another significant risk to farmers
One of the CNBs we saw during our field visit near Ambelohol village indicated another important reason why water tables in the typically dry region have risen to a point that facilitates farming of even water-intensive crops like sugarcane. It was broken, ‘all thanks to the flood last year’, said Sandip Mali who works for JBGVS here.
Marathwada in Maharashtra is infamous for its severely dry and hot conditions but the region received exceptionally high rainfall in the 2021 monsoon season. As early as July-end, Marathwada recorded ‘large excess’ rainfall, which was compounded by a 357% higher than normal rainfall within the first week of September. It made headlines for cloud-burst-like situations, flooding and ‘wet drought’ as effects of cyclone Gulab that hit in September end.
Agriculture was adversely affected and significant losses were faced for kharif harvest. JBGVS staff told us several water harvesting structures were damaged and some were still in the process of being rebuilt when we visited in April. The rural idyll we witnessed belied the devastation wreaked here only a few months prior, causing tremendous damage. And this is predicted to recur as our climate warms.
A TERI report of 2014 ‘Assessing Climate Change Vulnerability and Adaptation Strategies for Maharashtra’ predicts not just an increase in monsoon rainfall. They predict 6–7 more dry days compared to the baseline but a 22–26% increase in extreme rainfall in 2030s — the kind of event that causes widespread damage to the agricultural sector and to water harvesting infrastructure.
Key takeaways from this fieldwork
Although we spent only a brief period of time in the region with JBGVS staff, it gave us some insight into the vulnerabilities this region faces and what areas need attention. It revealed a lot more about the picture-perfect scene of ripe fields we saw when we began fieldwork:
- The watershed management work being carried out by organisations such as JBGVS is pivotal to the sustainable improvement of agriculture in the region. It plays a role in increasing the water table in the region, enabling farmers to earn an income through the summer months.
While set up to combat drought, these water harvesting structures and other infrastructure need to be built keeping in mind the possibility of cloudbursts and extreme rainfall events that are likely to become more frequent and intense due to climate change.
- Mitigation strategies that address the risks faced by farmers in terms of heavy rain need to be studied, planned and implemented urgently.
The TERI report we quoted above suggests ‘diversified cropping patterns, soil conservation, and value addition’ to increase resilience of farming systems. It also recommends ‘improved access to climate services, risk management strategies, and safety nets against climate extremes’.
- It is also important to distinguish between rainfed and irrigated farmers. This is a fundamental equity question that applies to agriculture across India, as the latter is more prosperous and less vulnerable than rainfed farmers. In this case, we realised that farmers who bore the losses of untimely rains were both rainfed and irrigated farmers, while the farmers who would benefit from the higher water table are irrigated farmers. Therefore, the set of people who lost their kharif crop compared to those who would benefit from the prolific rabi harvest that’s possible this year courtesy the same weather event only partially overlaps.
Yet again, it is rainfed farmers who are left in a more precarious situation calling for interventions that focus on their needs, concerns and aspirations.
JBGVS is implementing Bajaj Water Conservation Project with four other partner organisations apart from itself — Agricultural Renewal in Maharashtra (AFARM), Action for Food Production (AFPRO), BAIF Institute for Sustainable Livelihood Development (BISLD) and Development Support Centre (DSC), who connected us.
Edited by Kaavya Kumar
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