Nationalist Congress Party leader Sharad Pawar on Thursday rejected water conservationist Rajendra Singh’s assertion that sugarcane factories were the cause of the drought in Marathwada, a rain-shadow region.
Marathwada, with less than four per cent of drip irrigation, has no fewer than 52 sugar factories, including 25 private ones, most of them owned by politicians.
“I am not a scientist to reach such a definite conclusion as Mr. Singh,” Mr. Pawar said, rebuking the water activist’s link between sugarcane factories and politicians owning them.
Speaking in Mumbai, Mr. Singh recommended a change in cropping patterns in Marathwada, pointing to the perennially drought-hit Rajasthan, where farmers produced three yields a year. He blamed the water crisis in Marathwada on politicians, especially the late Congress leaders Vilasrao Deshmukh and Shivraj Chakurkar for their deliberate emphasis on sugarcane farming in a region unfit for it.
Deshmukh had built dams only for his sugarcane fields, he said.
Mr. Singh said the BJP government’s Jal Yukta Shivar Abhiyan, a drought-mitigation programme, had degenerated into a contractor-politician nexus.