MAHARASHTRA Social Basis of Sharing Irrigation Water Central Issue in Well-being of Poor M D Sathe MAHARASHTRA is split up in two segments, separate and unequal. One is Bombay-Pune industrial zone (35 per cent) and the other is the rest of rural Maharashtra (65 per cent). In the latter again since the Sixties a small island of prosperity has come up around the canal based flow irrigation coupled with sugarcane cultivation and sugar co-operatives. The entire politics of Maharashtra revolves around this institutionalised power axis and the rest of rural Maharashtra is really held as a hostage. Thus the nature of conflict is essentially rural and unrelated to the over-developed urban Bombay metropolis.