A tale of two CMs and two water crises

Devendra Fadnavis and Arvind Kejriwal took over as chief ministers almost at the same time. The priorities of Maharashtra Chief Minister has always been on point when it comes to infrastructure development, industrialization, agricultural development, drought mitigation whereas the National Chief Minister has been all about abusing the PM, looking for excuses to not work by getting himself indulged in activities such as the recent episode of hunger strike to gain media attention. Devendra Fadnavis has successfully overcome the water woes of his state while Arvind Kejriwal is only busy with his publicity dharna politics.

In January 2016, Devendra Fadnavis’ government launched Jalyukt Shivar Abhiyan with an aim to make Maharashtra a drought free state by 2019.The programme aims to make 5000 villages free of water scarcity every year and providing water to farmers in a decentralized manner. The project involves deepening and widening of streams, construction of cement and earthen stop dams, work on nullahs and digging of farm ponds.

Other measures taken by Devendra Fadnavis to mitigate drought includes providing solar feeder pumps and increase in the Chief Minister relief fund. Special attention has been paid to worst drought affected areas such as Vidarbha, Latur and Marathwada. Many NGOs such as Naam foundation and NGO Paani adopted villages and worked towards overcoming the water woes. Years of hard work and dedication of Devendra Fadnvis now finally paid off and the state of Maharashtra is on its way to become Tanker-Mukt .

A report published in Pune Mirror says, ” The official data from the government shows that since 2015, the number of tankers has come down steeply. In 2015, a total of 6,140 tankers were used, which went down to 1,379 in 2016, and further down to 366 in 2017. This year that number is 152 as per data from a week ago”.

It is often said the Third World War would happen because of water but now it seems Devendra Fadnavi is trying his level best to prevent this from occurring. But, on the other hand the way Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is managing the water related problems in Delhi, looks like the Third World War might start from Delhi itself. In fact due to water conflicts in Delhi people are losing their lives. News of murder over water in New Delhi’s Sangam Vihar shocked everyone. In Sangam Vihar, 48 year old Kishan was shot by a neighbour over water.

During his election campaign Kejriwal made big promises regarding solving the water crisis of Delhi but instead he exacerbated it even more. His water negotiations failed with other states such as Haryana and  Punjab.  Yamuna is the only river for water supply in Delhi and it is not sufficient enough for its people. As we all know how dirty the  Yamuna is but there has been no significant attempts made to clean the river. He promised to provide 20,000 liters of free water supply but where are those 20,000 litres of water, no one knows. Why people are dying in water fights if he is supplying sufficient water? Why no steps have been taken to eradicate jal mafia activity in many areas of Delhi. There were discussions about a major DJB scam but it still remains to be investigated. In fact, Delhi Water Minister Kapil Mishra was sacked just when he was about to submit his findings. Kapil Mishra who has turned a rebel has been accusing the AAP government of being hand-in-gloves with the tanker mafia. There were reports of fault water meters in Delhi and debilitated water relay infra that leads to massive wastage of water during transmission. Kejriwal should have been fixing these problems but instead he remained occupied in dharna politics.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal should take inspiration  from Devendra Fadnavis’s work and should start working towards overcoming the water crisis of Delhi. Despite being huge in size and population Devendra Fadnavis worked astutely in solving the water crisis problem of Maharashtra. Not just in solving water crisis, Devendra Fadnavis being a visionary CM has initiated developmental work in almost every area. He is doing infrastructure works at a phenomenal speed be it Nagpur Metro, Pune Metro or Nagpur-Mumbai Super Expressway (Samruddhi Mahamarg).  He has also brought lots of foreign investment into Maharashtra. He handled agriculture sector very well despite two years of back to back droughts in 2015 and 2016. His government allowed  farmers to sell their products in open market directly without getting involved into Agriculture Produce Marketing Committees (APMC), which has increased farmers income. In one of the most rightful and deserving reservation, Maharashtra government approved 1 % quota to orphans in government jobs and educational institutions. This proves Devendra Fadnavis is a very productive chief minister and has been diligently working towards fulfilling all his promises made to the people.