Maharashtra regime selective on irrigation scam
That the money allotted to improve Maharashtra's irrigation network was being siphoned away by unscrupulous politicians, bureaucrats and contractors, has been known for a while. The 2012 Economic Survey of Maharashtra noted that the State's irrigation potential had increased by an inconsequential 0.1 per cent, and a report by the Comptroller and Auditor-General that same year also criticised the Government for large-scale corruption. Nevertheless, the scale and scope of the loot, which has come to the fore after the findings of the Special Investigation Team led by water management expert Madhav Chitale have been made public, is shocking.What is most appalling is the brazen manner in which the Government of Maharashtra has sought to shield the allegedly corrupt. While accepting 42 out of the 44 recommendations the SIT made, relating to reforms in the irrigation sector, the Government has ignored the key suggestion that members of the Irrigation Development Corporation be held responsible for gross administrative and financial mismanagement. Manned by high-ranking bureaucrats, the IDC is chaired by the Minister for Water Resources — in this case Mr Ajit Pawar, currently Maharashtra's Deputy Chief Minister. But after the investigative report was placed before the State Assembly on Saturday, the regime gave Mr Pawar a clean chit. This is not surprising, for the Government has always treated him with kid gloves. When the scandal broke in 2012, Mr Pawar had excused himself from office — promising not to return until his name was cleared. Soon after, the Government published a white paper on irrigation projects, essentially to whitewash its own failures — for instance, the 475 per cent escalation in costs was attributed to delays in land acquisition and green permits. Within three months of that, the senior Nationalist Congress Party leader was back in the State Cabinet.
While it is for the courts to decide on Mr Pawar's culpability, the fact remains that the multi-crore scam happened on his watch. It was during his decade-long tenure as Maharashtra's Minister for Water Resources, from 1999 to 2009, that the Rs 42,000 crore allocated to ramp up the State's irrigation system was evidently misappropriated. Contracts were doled out in violation of the rules, there were huge cost overruns, and the final product, if ever completed, was below par, as the Madhav Chitale report makes clear. In the meantime, as netas, babus and contractors alike allegedly lined their pockets, the poor farmers of Maharashtra bore the brunt. The spate of farmer suicides in drought-hit Vidarbha during 2005-2006 can be directly linked to the absence of proper irrigation facilities. It was a senior engineer from the Vidarbha Irrigation Development Corporation, Mr Vijay Pandhare, who had brought national attention to the matter with his 15-page letter to then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan and other State officials.