Early end to academic year to de-populate drought-hit town

Mumbai: Desperate times call for desperate measures. The district administration in drought-hit Latur town of Maharashtra has told schools and coaching classes to wind up their exams before schedule so that students go back to their homes, hoping it will ease demand on the town’s scarce water stock.

Students make up nearly 100,000 of Latur’s population of half a million. Of them, around 50,000 are what the district administration calls ‘floating population’—youngsters who from nearby villages.

“These are students from Class I to Class IX. If their final examinations finish before latest by the first week of April, they could go back to their native places and we would need to cater to 50,000 people fewer that we are now,” said Latur’s district collector Pandurang Pole.

He insisted that this was not a panic measure and that schools are not being forced to follow the instruction, but said it was important to “understand the difficult context” in which such measure are being taken.

Latur is the epicentre of the water crisis in the Marathwada region, which is made up of eight districts. On Tuesday, Maharashtra’s water supply minister Babanrao Lonikar told the legislative assembly that Latur’s water supply demand had fallen to 25 million litres per day during the drought from the normal 60 million litres per day.

“In per capita terms, the actual supply of water from all available sources has dropped to merely 20 litres per day per person from 100 litres during the normal times. This does not mean every resident of Latur gets at least 20 litres of water per day. The supply currently averages out to 20 litres per day,” said an engineer with Latur Municipal Corporation who requested anonymity.

Extreme scarcity has forced the district and municipal administration in Latur to implement measures aimed at reducing the number of people dependant on water. “Students are a big chunk of population in Latur and if we manage to reduce their number it would be a big help,” collector Pole said.

An education department official at Latur collectorate, who requested anonymity, said instructions were issued to schools in mid-March to wind up their academic sessions by early April. Similar instructions were given to around 60 private coaching classes which run tuitions for Class X and Class XII students.

“Normally their academic sessions and coaching classes run up to 1 May but we have asked them if they could finish by 6 April or 16 April. Some of them have expressed practical difficulties like courses not been completed and we are not forcing them to stop at the cost of education. But most have agreed to follow this instruction,” the education officer said.

Asked if this dispersal of population from Latur into the larger Marathwada region would really help since the entire region was facing water scarcity, this official said the shortage of drinking water was much more acute in towns than in villages. “In Latur town, we are trying to get as much water as possible from different sources like bore-wells, tube-wells, and mini-water supply schemes which cater to around 200 homes each in a locality. We are also fetching water from lakes around 50 to 60 km away from Latur,” the official said.

Aurangabad-based surface irrigation expert Pradeep Purandare agreed that the situation in towns was more critical than in villages since the sources of water supply were located at a distance. “Also, the water supply systems in towns are creaking and there has been little by way of hydraulic maintenance to clear the silt that has accumulated over the years in the supply systems,” Purandare said.

Schools are not the only sector hit by the drought in Latur. In a written reply to the legislative assembly, minister Lonikar said the government hospital in Latur town and primary health centres were being supplied water by tankers in February.

“Between 1-14 February, the government hospital had to postpone 61 scheduled operations as the regular source of water supply to the hospital had dried up and water was being supplied through tankers once every two days. But all these operations were carried out in the next three days after 14 February and currently the hospital as well as primary health centres in the district are running properly,” Lonikar said. The minister said in Latur, construction work, swimming pools and automobile wash centres had been closed.

“We have also asked the mineral water industry to make mineral water available at the location of their plants at subsidised rates and they have agreed,” the minister added.