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No Water For Cricket!

By Suraj Kumar Thube

19 April, 2016
Countercurrents.org

The Indian Premier League jamboree is back and the familiar sight of a sea of blue at the Wankhede stadium was evident in its inaugural match. However, this time around, the most popular image wasn't really about the jam packed stadium or the ever passionate crowd of Mumbai. It was about a few workers watering the outfield days before the match. Water had become the main bone of contention even before the start of the IPL as a PIL had been filed at the Bombay High court against the shifting of all the remaining matches outside the drought hit state of Maharashtra. It becomes imperative at this backdrop to view the merits of this move by the court now that the decision has to be implemented from next month. Will this "misuse" of water be of any significant help to the precarious drought conditions of the State? Is this water going to be used for watering the parched fields of Marathwada? Are the farmers really going to heave a sigh of relief after hearing this judgement? What purpose does the shifting of the games serve when 10 Indian states have been declared as drought prone states? And more importantly, isn't the water scarcity issue more of a problem because of the callous water management by the governments over the years than a particular sport accused of being a perpetual water guzzler?

Cricket has always been a convenient wiping boy of the sceptics especially when it comes to its pompousness in the midst of massive sufferings and hardships in the countryside. Without a shadow of doubt, the severe drought in the Marathwada region is the most serious issue that the state is currently facing. Drastic measures need to be taken to bring the situation under control. At the same time, to blame cricket for this current situation will be tantamount to grossly narrowing down of the enormity of the issue. The major issue in Maharashtra in recent years has not really been paucity of water but a lackadaisical administrative mechanism which has failed to make judicious use of water. Water mismanagement and not water scarcity or "misuse" of water is the reason behind our present water crisis. It is true that the state has witnessed a second consecutive drought but the genesis of the problem lies in the manner in which the existing resources have been used, unused and misused. A water crunch should not really be a grave problem for a state which is endowed with the maximum number of dams in the country. Barely 18% of the farmland in the state remains irrigated and less than 12% of the existing minor irrigation projects are functioning efficiently. The State in recent times had also seen a massive irrigation scam come to the fore only to dramatically dissipate from our visual media in no time. Other complimentary projects of desilting of ponds, underground water storage, water percolation tanks and a failure to inculcate a sense of water storage through technologies like drip irrigation are some of the incentives that just haven't seen the light of the day in large parts of this region.

Sugarcane is another convenient scapegoat for supposedly being the one which is at the root cause of this crisis. Where it is true that the crop requires more amount of water as compared to a large number of other food crops, certain facts need to be kept in perspective. As rural affairs expert Harish Damodaran recently argued, the duration of the period before harvesting is almost double the time taken by other food crops. Also, even the land under sugarcane cultivation is a miniscule proportion of the overall available arable land in the region. Along with many other such objective factors, it can be discerned that the governments over the years have merrily passed on the blame to the most flamboyant of the causes. In the process, the state administration manages to project itself as a hapless figure in this wantonly constructed crisis exacerbated by either "misguided" farmers or the cricket lovers who refuse to budge from their position. In fact, we have seen a surprising role reversal by some on social media who have sought to side with the farmers this time around than with the sporting spectacle. The empathy reached its zenith when the court finally shifted the remaining games and also with the overt displeasure shown with certain remarks by Rahul Dravid and Sunil Gavaskar who happened to voice their dissent regarding the decision.

The surprising chain of events wasn't just with the emotive reaction of a section of our society but also the manner in which the court handled the issue. It was the government who did not raise any objections for what looked like a case of judicial overreach but virtually played a hand in the dishing out of a verdict couched in the impetuous zeal of our much famed 'collective conscience'. Yet another incident where emotions and intuitions seem to have played the decisive role than reason and rationale. Prevention is better than cure they say. Unfortunately, we still haven't really learnt our lessons.

Suraj Kumar Thube is currently pursuing his MA in Political Science from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. He is interested in Indian politics and Indian political thought. He spends most of his time reading books, playing football and listening to Hindustani classical music.




 



 

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