Team Drona from IIT Bombay won a cash award of ₹1 lakh for their model for achieving a drought-free State at the Transform Maharashtra event at the National Sports Club of India in Worli.
The initiative is aimed at promoting the concept of inclusive governance in the State. The team, which comprises Water Resource Engineering and Ocean Engineering students, has proposed the use of drones to map fields and take measurements.
Money saver
At present, a government official needs to visit the drought-hit areas and map them. While taking manual measurements costs around ₹20,000 per square kilometre, the use of drones will bring down the cost to around ₹5,000 for mapping around 40 square kilometres. The drones are also capable of processing the data within 24 hours. Speaking to The Hindu, team member Parvathi Shrikumar said, “Maharashtra is dealing with the worst drought of the century, so we decided to provide a solution to this problem. All our research is related to watershed management.”
Team Drona’s project consists of three parts: creating a Special Decision Support System for water conservation; forming an entity to buy poorly graded farming loans and sell them in the market at a competitive rate by bundling them with valued assets such as government bonds; and providing a competent database.
According to the team members, the current database is under government control and can be easily tampered with by officials. They also highlighted the presence of a number of bureaucratic hurdles in order to access data. “I don’t know what the government is doing by withholding the data. What harm can come out of knowing how much rain fell in 2015?” said Shivam Mundir, a team member. Mr. Mundir said, “A transparent system can help in monitoring drought and provide students and NGOs with data, which can bring about better solutions.”
The team says government backing for the resale of poorly graded farming loans will help the market to be liquidated in the long run. The hope is the move will empower smaller banks to offer loans with significantly reduced risk. Mr. Mundir said, “The short-term solution today seems to be to waiving the existing farm loans.”
The team is confident that government agencies will adopt their model. “When the Chief Minister posed questions to us, we realised he had already gone through our work and looked at our proposal as a solution to the drought crisis,” said Mr. Mundir.
Technology to the rescue
Chief Minister Davendra Fadnavis said, “Development in technology is speeding up the pace of development. In the initial stage of technology, the things that used to take 15 years to achieve can now be achieved in just two years.” He said, “Today, 11,000 villages are no longer dependent on tankers for drinking water supply. Similarly, 29,000 villages across the State are connected with fibre optics to transform the conventional gram panchayats into smart gram panchayats.”
Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar who was present at the event said that government should set up mobile toilets at every 500 metres or 1 kilometre across Maharashtra. Mr. Kumar said, “It will support cleanliness. An app should enable people to locate the nearest mobile toilet.” Women in rural areas face a lot of difficulties as there are hardly any public toilets in villages, he said. (With PTI inputs)
