Flood-Hit Maharashtra Needs ₹20,000 Crore Relief: Half Must Come from Delhi
Maharashtra is reeling under one of its worst agricultural disasters in recent memory. Nearly 17.85 lakh hectares of farmland have been damaged, submerging about 44 lakh acres across 30 districts. Soyabean, cotton, maize, pulses, onions and vegetables — all gone. The damage isn’t limited to crops. Houses have collapsed, roads and canals have been washed away, livestock has perished, and the soil in many regions will need rehabilitation before farmers can even think of sowing again. In Solapur and Marathwada, farmer suicides have already been reported as despair sets in.
Against this devastation, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has announced a ₹2,215 crore package for farmers. On paper, it may sound substantial. On the ground, it translates to about ₹12,000 per hectare, when the actual input costs and expected returns hover closer to ₹50,000 per hectare. The government is offering barely one-fifth of what farmers have lost. For a sense of scale, one installment of the Ladki Bahin scheme costs the exchequer about the same as this entire flood relief package. Maharashtra is effectively saying to its farmers: take the equivalent of one month’s welfare installment and rebuild your entire life with it.
The correct compensation should look very different. Crops alone account for losses in the range of ₹9,000–₹11,000 crore. Housing, livestock, roads, canals, wells and soil rehabilitation will require an equivalent sum. Taken together, ₹20,000 crore is the bare minimum needed to restore livelihoods. Anything less is simply tokenism dressed as relief.
This is not a call for Maharashtra to wash its hands of responsibility. The state can meet the Centre halfway. The Ladki Bahin scheme costs nearly ₹3,800 crore a month, or ₹46,000 crore a year. If just three installments — about ₹11,500 crore — are temporarily diverted to flood relief, the state can fully cover the agricultural losses. That is the kind of sacrifice and reprioritization a crisis demands. But the rest must come from Delhi.
The Centre cannot stand aloof. Maharashtra is India’s highest tax-contributing state, generating nearly 40 percent of the country’s direct taxes. Like the southern states, it gets back disproportionately less in central transfers. Now, when Maharashtra is facing a calamity of unprecedented scale, it is only right that the Centre contribute at least ₹10,000 crore. Between the National Disaster Response Fund and the PM CARES Fund, which holds more than ₹6,000 crore as per the last disclosures, Delhi has the means. What is needed is political will.
Maharashtra feeds India and powers its industries. It fills Delhi’s coffers like no other state. When 17.85 lakh hectares of farmland are devastated, ₹2,215 crore is not relief — it is an insult. Farmers need ₹20,000 crore, half from Mumbai, half from Delhi. At this moment of crisis, Delhi must prove it values Maharashtra’s contribution to the Union, not with platitudes but with ₹10,000 crore in immediate relief. Anything less will be remembered not as charity denied, but as justice withheld.
