Maharashtra’s wet drought | A state drenched in denial

Maharashtra’s relief package masks deeper failures in flood response and urban planning

As Maharashtra emerges from a particularly destructive monsoon, the state government has announced a relief package which Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis described as unprecedented.

Fadnavis would do well to consider two factors before making any more claims of magnanimity. The first is a video that’s gone viral, which must surely have been brought to his notice: a group of farmers from Hingoli district throwing currency notes on the road as a symbolic protest against the compensation they received for rain-inflicted damage to their crops. Rubbing salt into their wounds was their exclusion from the new relief package.

The second, which should make Fadnavis uneasy, is the increase in flooding points seen during this year’s Monsoon in the state’s two main metros: Mumbai and Pune.

This alarming development is unlikely to trouble Fadnavis much, for barely has the Monsoon receded than Mumbai’s planners have announced the cutting of 700 trees for yet another elevated road for motorists to zip through. Taken along with the growing allotment of salt pan lands for housing, and the concretisation of the city, one understands why, in the 20 years that have elapsed since Mumbai lost 1,000 lives in a day’s flooding, every monsoon has brought more destruction. This year’s toll was 337.

It would be easy to blame climate change for the worsening situation, were it not for expert reports that had warned of this if the State undertook certain projects. Those warnings were not heeded: two of these projects have been completed; the third is going full steam ahead. The coastal road, the Aarey metro shed, and the bullet train were the three projects red-flagged by experts.

It’s worth recalling that even as construction of the coastal road was on, Mumbai’s then municipal commissioner acknowledged that the city would go under in another 25 years, which means the next generation would have to live in a severely shrunken metro. One wonders whether the commissioner, who was appointed as additional secretary in the CMO last year, repeated his prediction to the three chief ministers he has reported to.

The Aarey Metro shed was seen as dangerous by a government-appointed panel, which pointed out that the shed was being built on the flood plain of the Mithi River. That warning was ignored because after the Maha Vikas Aghadi government disallowed construction at Aarey, building the shed right at that spot became a prestige issue for Fadnavis.

The Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project, shelved by the MVA government, and now back on track, had been opposed by none other than Milind Deora, now a Rajya Sabha MP from the Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde). The destruction of 54,000 mangroves it entailed, which had worried Deora as a Congressman then, must worry Mumbaikars today.

In Pune, the story is much the same. Environmentalists had warned that the Riverfront Development Project would lead to flooding — it did. But there are no plans to halt it.

If Mumbai and Pune can be abandoned in the pursuit of ‘development’, what can Maharashtra’s smaller metros and villages expect? Fadnavis does not miss an opportunity to remind us that Gadchiroli’s villagers have been liberated from Naxals, but they remain in the grip of floods, as reports from 2019 onwards show.

This year, grape producers in Solapur, for the first time, saw lakhs of rupees worth of produce washed away. Marathwada, notorious for drought, was flooded this year both by extremely high rainfall and the simultaneous release of water from overflowing dams.

That none of this may bother the Fadnavis government is evident from the refusal to declare a wet drought in the state (which would bring with it enhanced relief from the Centre), or at least announce a loan waiver for flood-affected farmers. Indeed, ministers and MLAs have displayed a shocking insensitivity on the issue of loan waivers.

However, what might bother the government is the question of whether such recurrent floods will affect investment plans in India’s financial capital and the IT hub of Pune. Even more crucial would be the impact of these partially man-made disasters on votes.

It’s unlikely that such concerns are likely to change the State’s urban planning trajectory. Instead, other `solutions’ have been found. Sensing that the Opposition is, as those in power like to say, ‘playing politics’ over the issue, ‘jan akrosh morchas’ have begun all over again on the same old communal themes of love jihad, cow slaughter, etc. Interestingly, participating in them this time is Sangram Jagtap, MLA belonging to Ajit Pawar’s NCP. The poster for the morcha describes him as ‘Hindutvawadi MLA’; he shares the stage with Bhima Koregaon accused and BJP ex-corporator Milind Ekbote.

Will this whipped-up anger make voters forget the floods? 

Jyoti Punwani is a senior journalist. X: @jyotipunwani.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)