In Pics: How Marathwada’s Water Scarcity Is as Bad as a Civil War

This is the fourth year of drought in Marathwada in the past five years. And the water shortage is killing people.

In the drought-hit Marathwada region of Maharashtra, water levels in dams have dropped to only 3 per cent of the total capacity, officials said on Monday. Eight of the region’s 11 major dams are at dead storage level, meaning water from these dams cannot flow out but has to be lifted out by other means.

This is the fourth year of drought in Marathwada in the past five years. Each of its 8,522 villages have been affected for at two consecutive years. As many as 2,745 water tankers are being used in the region compared to 939 this time last year.

The water crisis is so severe in some parts of the region that water is being delivered through a special “water train” filled at Miraj in western Maharashtra. A class five student – a girl – died of heatstroke on Tuesday in Marathwada’s Beed district, after collapsing near a hand-pump.

These photographs by Ameya Marathe, curated by Nikhil Inamdar, capture the haunting water crisis faced by people of the region, especially the agrarian communities, with many ending their lives as a last resort and several others migrating to bigger cities.