On September 26, the Maharashtra government announced drought in 265 of the state’s 358 talukas, with the perennially water-scarce Marathwada region being severely hit. The state faces a nearly 19 per cent deficit rain this year, with many districts in Marathwada receiving just half of their normal monsoon rain. Still, farmers of Masai village in Jalna district in Marathwada are unperturbed. “We have received low rainfall this year, and none in the past 10 days. But our farms are well irrigated due to the recharge structures we have built or renewed. We will not have a crop failure this kharif season,” says Bhagwan Munde, a 56-year-old farmer from Masai. In Dudhpuri village, some 10 km from Masai, residents have built similar water conservation structures.
Masai and Dudhpuri are two of 37 villages in three districts—Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (formerly Aurangabad), Jalna and Dharashiv—that have sufficient water to last till winter, and potentially till the next year’s monsoon. All the three districts are located in Marathwada and were part of the list of 315 districts in the country likely to face drought this year. The list was prepared by the Union Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare in June in preparation for a weak monsoon due to a super El Niño event in the Pacific Ocean. The phenomenon is generally associated with warmer-than-normal global average temperatures and change in rain pattern.
In May, Watershed Organisation Trust (WOTR), a Pune-based non-profit, with support from Unicef and All India Institute of Local Self Governance, conducted a campaign for El Niño awareness and actions in Maharashtra. It held six workshops of local leaders in different parts of the state. Residents offered shramdaan (voluntary labour) in 45 highly drought-prone villages to harvest more water. Eshwer Kale, lead in water policy and governance at WOTR Centre for Resilience Studies, says volunteers from the organisation reached out to village development committees …
This article was first published in the November 1-15, 2026 print edition of Down To Earth.