How much time exactly does Maharashtra have?

The timing was uncanny. Exactly a day before the IPCC climate change report sounded code red for humanity, an Indian research paper warned of extreme weather and water scarcity, decimating the state’s livelihoods and agrarian economy

Maharashtra's ‘just born’ district is in danger of going down under. And it’s up against the modern century’s most formidable challenger: climate change. 

Tribal-dominated Nandurbar in the north western part of the state, a district that was born in 1998 after it was carved out of Dhule, has been named the most vulnerable in a recent study. 

A boy in Karanji Khurd village, Navapur in the Nandurbar district of Maharashtra. The tribal dominated area’s SeVi index makes it the most vulnerable district among 36 in the state to climate change, due to its high dependency on rain-fed agriculture, kharif crops and economic backwardness. Pic/Getty Images

While last week, top scientists across the world who are part of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) warned that global warming is dangerously close to spiralling out of control, a day prior on August 8, Chaitanya Adhav of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and the National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI), cautioned about the effect of changing weather patterns in Maharashtra. In the study titled, Socio-economic vulnerability to climate change—Index development and mapping for districts in Maharashtra, he discussed how extreme conditions can severely affect the livelihoods and agrarian economy of the state, with 11 of the 36 districts identified as “highly vulnerable” to extreme weather events, drought and water security. “I started working on the study in August 2020 and concluded it in March 2021. I hail from Ahmednagar, and have witnessed frequent drought and lowering groundwater levels. I was keen to assess the climatic deterioration in Maharashtra. The aim of this study is to understand if there are going to be flood-like situations in the future, and if so, how do we prepare for them,” adds Adhav, a research scholar in agricultural economics, ICAR-NDRI, Karnal, Haryana.

Experts say we don’t need to look very far back. As recently as last month, a bout of heavy rainfall and flooding managed to destroy over 2.5 lakh hectares of crop area in Maharashtra. “I developed a climate change induced socio-economic vulnerability index (SeVI), which includes various socio-economic as well as crop and dairy indicators for all districts. SeVI is used to study the vulnerability of communities, in the context of social and environmental changes. The results are baffling,” explains Adhav, who wrote the study under the guidance of Dr Sendhil R, scientist at ICAR-NDRI.

Last year, the onset of monsoon in Nandurbar was very late; around June 25. This year too, the rainfall has been scanty, says Sachin Phad, scientist-agrometeorology, Krishi Vigyan Kendra. Phad says low pressure areas are needed in order to receive adequate rainfall. “But in Nandurbar and surrounding areas, there is no low pressure being created.” Pic courtesy/Mansingh Rajput

For the study, a total of 44 indicators were selected, including irrigation strength, percentage of people living in poverty, percentage of agricultural workers among total workers, and literacy rate. After assigning an index value to each district, a composite socio-economic index value was calculated to assess the district’s overall risk and preparedness to deal with climate-related distress. Later, all districts were categorised as high, moderate and less vulnerable to climate change.
“The SeVI was the highest in Nandurbar (0.91) and lowest in Pune (0.41). Results indicated that out of 36 districts, 11 were highly vulnerable (39.94 per cent cropped area), 14 were moderately vulnerable (36.85 per cent cropped area), and nine were less vulnerable to climate change (23.21 per cent cropped area).” A majority of the highly vulnerable districts are from the Central Maharashtra Plateau Zone. Moderately vulnerable districts are from Central and Eastern Vidarbha Zone. Less vulnerable districts are from North Konkan Coastal, Scarcity Zone and Western Maharashtra Zone, reveals the study, which is currently under peer-review.

Kishore Dhamale, member of Satyashodhak Shetkari Sabha, a farmers’ organisation, agrees that Nandurbar is in imminent danger. “Earlier, rainfall in Mumbai would be followed by rain in Dhule and Nandurbar in the next three to four days. But in the last three years, things have changed. While the rainfall received in Konkan has been adequate this year, it has barely rained in Nandurbar. Additionally, winters are very cold and summers are severe. It is amounting to unbearable weather,” Dhamale warns.

Map/ Uday Mohite

Other districts with high exposure to climate change include Beed, Gadchiroli, Nashik, Palghar, Satara, Ahmednagar, Kolhapur, Sindhudurg, Ratnagiri and Sangli. Of these, eight districts fall in the Central Maharashtra Plateau Zone, and only one district (Nandurbar) is under the Western Maharashtra Plain Zone. “This may be due to the high concentric temperature and rainfall changes,” Adhav adds.

Bhagwan Kesbhat, founder and CEO of Waatavaran, an organisation that works to tackle air pollution, worked in Nandurbar between 2003 and 2004. “The district’s socio-economic vulnerability index is the highest because its population is predominantly tribal. In the case of Sangli and other vulnerable districts mentioned in the ICAR report, the agrarian community there has the ability to adopt new agricultural practices and sustain themselves. In Nandurbar, this isn’t the case. Its residents’ dependency on kharif crops is high and they follow traditional farming practices. Multi-cropping is not followed there. And a majority of the population migrates to Surat or Nashik for temporary employment,” Kesbhat explains.

Kishore Dhamale

A Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture study (CRIDA, 2019) reported that a large number of districts in the state suffer from major agricultural vulnerability. The present report also found a high prevalence of rain-fed agriculture as one of the major drivers of vulnerability. In addition, while on the one hand, this state is drought-prone (it was one of nine Indian states to have been officially declared drought-prone in 2015), on the other, only 18 per cent of its net cultivation area is under irrigation.

A Government of India’s Department of Science and Technology report titled, Climate Vulnerability Assessment for Adaptation Planning in India Using a Common Framework (2019-2020), confirms the ICAR study, saying, “The highest vulnerability index is found in Nandurbar and the lowest in Gadchiroli. The major drivers contributing to vulnerability are low road density, lack of forest area per 100 rural population, lack of crop insurance schemes, and a high percentage of marginal and small operational landholders.”

A woman being rescued by members of the National Disaster Force after flashfloods damaged large parts of Maharashtra on July 23. Kirankumar Johare, physicist and meteorologist, cloudburst expert and former scientist of IIT-M, says, “More than 101 cloudbursts and flashflood events have occurred in Maharashtra on July 22 and July 23 this year, which is alarming. Pic/National Disaster Response Force; Handout, Getty Images

Maharashtra has been divided into nine agro-climatic zones based on rainfall, soil type and the vegetation. These are  Central Maharashtra Plateau Zone, Central Vidarbha, Eastern Vidarbha Zone, North Konkan Coastal Zone, South Konkan Coastal Zone, Scarcity Zone, Sub Montane Zone, Western Ghat Zone and Western Maharashtra Plain Zone. “Nandurbar, which has six talukas in the district, falls under three agro-climatic zones. Navapur taluka receives 1,200 mm rainfall, and the Satpuda hilly range also records rainfall in abundance. However, other talukas including Nandurbar, Shahada and Taloda receive lesser rainfall. Last year, the onset of monsoon in Nandurbar was very late; around June 25. This year, the rainfall has been scanty,” informs Sachin Phad, scientist-agrometeorology, Krishi Vigyan Kendra.

Why is this happening? Phad says low pressure areas are needed in order to receive adequate rainfall. “But in Nandurbar and surrounding areas, there is no low pressure being created. In the last two months, there was low pressure in the Arabian Sea, which led to rainfall in Kolhapur and Sangli. In Marathwada last month, the region received rain due to low pressure in the Bay of Bengal. We are in touch with the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) and according to their figures, the overall temperature is also increasing. August 19 onwards, however, there is some rain activity expected in the region,” Phad adds.

Chaitanya Adhav, Sachin Phad, Bhagwan Kesbhat and Kirankumar Johare

His team has created a WhatsApp group with farmers in Nandurbar to update them on IMD’s weather predictions. “We inform our farmers about blockwise forecast so their crops are not destroyed. Our aim is to ensure reduced loss to crops. We send them forecast information every Tuesday and Friday.”

On July 14, Maharashtra’s agriculture minister Dada Bhuse had said that 74 per cent of kharif sowing for the season has been completed across the state, with soybean seeds sown across 38 lakh hectares and cotton across 39 lakh hectares. However, he also added that Nashik, Dhule and Nandurbar had shown below average sowing figures.

The alarming frequency of natural calamities around the world caused in large part by global warming indicates the inevitability of climate change-induced disasters. Visions of wildfires in Greece and flooding in Italy have pushed people to reassess their once-safe homes and how they could one day be affected by the consequences of climate change. Kirankumar Johare, physicist and meteorologist, cloudburst expert and former scientist of IIT-M, says, “More than 101 cloudbursts and flashflood events have occurred in Maharashtra on July 22 and July 23 this year, which is an alarming issue. My scientific observation and analysis results showed that drought-prone Marathwada  has now become a cloudbursts [flashfloods] region. Cloudbursts that previously occurred in August and September are now occurring as early as May in Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Kashmir and other northern states of India.”

But rejecting the ICAR study, Johare calls the global warming theory a hoax. “Global warming, global cooling and climate change-related terminologies are nonsensical in the scientific community as everything in the solar system is governed by the sun. Solar radiation and cosmic rays are impacting the earth’s atmosphere. India needs Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Assisted-Customised Real Time Weather Information and Alert System (AIMLA-CRTWIARS). I am working towards it. One hopes that by using it, the government will be able to provide information and real time alerts via mobile phone technology to help people fight the weather war.”

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No. of cities, including Mumbai, which could be under water by end of century. Top Indian scientist on UN panel says this is ‘within realm of possibility’. P08

2.5L hectare 
Crop area in several districts of Maharashtra destroyed by heavy rainfall and flooding in just July 2021

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