Amravati’s Water Crisis: A District Thirsting for Solutions

In Vidarbha's Amravati, the panic doesn’t arrive in a storm. It builds gradually, hiding in taps that hiss instead of flow, in borewells drilled closer and deeper, in ponds that dry up before the heat peaks.

The district’s water shortage isn’t new. What’s changed is the scale. What was once a seasonal worry is now a permanent disruption.

The Ground Slips Under Urban Feet

Amravati city has grown beyond the capabilities of its own backbone. Over the past few years, rapid urban expansion has far outpaced its infrastructure.

Piped water connections haven’t reached many of the newly developed colonies. Borewells have filled the gap, but only temporarily.

In areas with high-rise construction, borewells are being drilled merely 15 feet apart, an act of desperation rather than design.

The groundwater beneath the city is being consumed faster than it can replenish. If it were a bank account, the balance would be red.

The uneven water supply is a daily reality for residents. Some parts of the city get a relatively stable tap flow from the Upper Wardha Dam.

Others, just a few streets away, receive water every alternate day, if the electricity holds up.

Many homes have resorted to installing Tullu pumps, pulling water when the pressure is low. But these pumps not only disadvantage neighbours who don’t own them, they also put the entire municipal system under pressure.

Paying your water bill on time in Amravati doesn’t guarantee service. It only ensures frustration.

The municipal authority, known as Majipra, hasn’t introduced any significant reforms to address these concerns. There’s little progress on equitable distribution, no regulation of borewell spacing, and minimal response to complaints.

The result is a fractured system where water availability depends more on where you live than what you pay. As the city continues to stretch outward, new buildings arrive with no roadmap for basic water services. This expansion-without-support is no longer a risk. It's a crisis already in motion.

The strain doesn’t end with infrastructure. Power supply has become another bottleneck. As temperatures rise, the need for fans and coolers increases, putting stress on electricity grids.

Power cuts frequently coincide with scheduled water timings. When there's no electricity, pumps fail, taps stay dry, and households scramble. It’s a frustrating pattern of more heat, more demand, and failure.

In summer 2025, the Regional Meteorological Centre warned that the number of heatwave days in Vidarbha could increase by 50%.

February 2025 was the warmest in 124 years. Such temperature spikes accelerate evaporation, not only from reservoirs but also from soil, pipes, and tanks. Every degree rise in temperature pushes water a little further out of reach.

Tanker Economics and the Cost of Distance

Water Tanker Delivering Water in Amravati District

Rural Amravati lives a very different story. Tankers, not pipelines, deliver life here.

Since February 2025, prices for a 2,000-litre tanker have surged to ₹1,000–₹1,500, with higher rates for more remote areas. The cost alone makes daily survival a financial negotiation for many villages.

Delays are frequent. There are no guarantees. Some days, the tanker comes late. On others, it doesn’t arrive at all. This unpredictability pushes residents into dangerous alternatives.

In Melghat, one of the worst-hit talukas, the situation was especially grim in May 2024. In Mariampur village, villagers were seen digging into the muddy edges of a drying, contaminated pond.

With no tap water and no tanker, that pond was their only option for drinking, cooking, and washing.

The exposure to unclean water risks diseases and long-term consequences that affect the entire community. But when there's no alternative, the line between choice and compulsion disappears.

Rural infrastructure lags far behind demand. Where pipelines exist, they often don’t function. Where taps exist, they remain dry for weeks. In many places, the government’s presence is visible only in nameplates.

During peak summer, even functioning systems are overwhelmed. Wells dry up, ponds shrink, and community storage tanks sit empty.

The burden of this crisis falls unevenly. Women and girls, in particular, spend several hours each day fetching water, often walking long distances.

Before NGO interventions in certain areas, an average woman in rural Amravati carried nearly 150 litres daily.

The time lost in these chores means fewer hours for education, work, or rest.

Even when water arrives, quality is a serious concern. Groundwater contamination is common in saline patches of the Purna River basin.

Nitrate levels in some areas exceed safe drinking limits. In places where people already struggle to find water, being selective isn’t an option. They drink what’s available, regardless of its safety.

Parched Fields and a Growing Silence

Amravati’s farmers are no strangers to disappointment. But the last three years have seen an escalation of hardship even by the region’s difficult standards.

In December 2023, due to a lack of moisture, the sowing area for Rabi crops shrank noticeably. When the crops did grow, unseasonal rains in early 2024 brought hailstorms that flattened entire fields across Amravati, Akola, Yavatmal, and Buldhana.

In this environment, adaptation is necessary but not always successful. Many farmers have switched to soybean, a crop that demands less water. But even that shift hasn’t yielded security.

Yields have declined, adding to financial pressure. The gamble hasn’t paid off.

These losses don’t stay in the fields.

In 2024, Amravati reported 143 farmer suicides in just 152 days, more than any other district in Maharashtra, including Yavatmal.

The numbers aren't just data points. Each one represents a person who couldn't see a way forward. Their families are left with debt, trauma, and no safety net.

The socio-economic effects stretch beyond agriculture. With less income, families pull their children out of school. Healthcare expenses are postponed or ignored. Food security declines. Households that once grew their own food now depend on markets they can barely afford.

Relief measures do exist, but they rarely close the gap. The Maharashtra government has introduced land tax waivers, loan restructuring, and electricity concessions for pumps. It has also offered financial compensation for crop loss.

However, the pace and reach of these interventions remain limited. In many cases, help arrives too late or not at all.

There are longer-term government schemes, like the Nanaji Deshmukh Krishi Sanjivani Yojana, aimed at building resilience in drought-prone areas.

However, in Amravati, the distance between planning and implementation is wide. Projects like the Lower Pedhi Major Irrigation Project have been under development for more than a decade but haven’t generated a single unit of irrigation potential.

The gap is filled, in part, by NGOs. The Amravati Water Initiative, run by Water For People India in collaboration with Colgate-Palmolive, has made real progress. Mini piped water schemes and rainwater harvesting structures have been implemented across villages.

In 2023 alone, this initiative reportedly saved women and girls a combined 1.47 lakh hours otherwise spent fetching water. The health benefits have also been notable.

Another effort, the Grow Billion Trees Foundation, promotes tree plantation as a means to aid water retention in the soil. While their work focuses primarily on the environment, its effects support water conservation indirectly.

But NGO efforts, however commendable, can’t cover the entire district. They remain localised, often concentrated in pilot zones. The crisis, on the other hand, is widespread.

A District on the Edge of the Map

Data from December 2023 shows that water stock in Maharashtra’s dams had fallen to 65% compared to 86% the previous year.

Amravati followed the same trend. Although a marginal recovery was observed in March 2024, with dam levels in the Amravati division rising to 66% from the previous year’s 57%, it wasn't enough to meet the rising demand.

This relative gain exists in a larger context of statewide depletion. By March 2024, dam levels across Maharashtra stood at just 44%.

The Upper Wardha dam, which supplies Amravati city, had only 44% of its capacity filled by June 2024, unchanged from the year before.

When infrastructure performance is stagnant despite population growth and rising temperatures, the trajectory becomes clear.

Government announcements and tenders continue. In 2022, the completion of the Amravati Water Supply Infrastructure Project was declared. Other tenders were released in 2023 and 2024 for upgrades. But these announcements often lack corresponding updates on outcomes.

Projects remain in progress, even as people wait for real water. The consequences are starting to show. People are migrating, quietly, in small groups, to nearby towns or cities where the water problem feels less urgent.

They leave behind empty homes and drying wells. For those who stay, it becomes a daily battle of resilience, budgeting, and compromise.

The people of Amravati aren't passive. They write petitions, stage protests, and speak at public forums. Their voices are clear. They want a reliable, fair, and clean water supply. But what they receive are promises, paperwork, and pipelines that never reach their doors.

Amravati’s water crisis is not an isolated failure. It’s a mirror. It reflects the wider risks India faces from climate variability, fragmented infrastructure planning, and under-prioritised rural needs. The story of this district is one where effort exists, but cohesion is missing.

Fixing this won’t happen with another borewell or tanker. It requires coordination between energy and water departments, better regulation of urban development, and investment in water-saving agriculture. Communities need to be part of the solution, not just passive recipients of schemes.

But none of that can wait. Because for Amravati, the taps are already dry. What runs now is time, and it’s running out.