Maharashtra is staring at a drought-like crisis in large parts of Marathwada and Vidarbha after a prolonged monsoon dry spell have left the kharif crop withering in the fields. The irony is that the state’s rainfall this monsoon is not uniformly bleak. Belying the El Niño weather pattern, Western Maharashtra has received reasonably adequate rain. But this has masked a severe and increasingly localised agricultural crisis in the other parts of the state. 20 of Maharashtra’s 36