Political Diary
New
Delhi, 16 July 2019
India’s Water Woes
RUNNING OUT OF TIME
By Poonam I Kaushish
India’s
first major climate catastrophe is at our doorstep: Water. Groundwater levels
in 21 major cities, including Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad will dry up
completely by 2020 affecting 600 million people and 40% will have no access to
drinking water by 2030, according to a Niti Aayog report. Almost two-thirds of
our reservoirs are running below normal water levels and 200,000 die each year
from unsafe water supplies. A “water apartheid” where only the wealthy could
afford resources in the face of droughts and famine with tanker mafias ruling
who gets water and at what price!
Undeniably,
the search for water and its management has become the most harrowing task for
21st century India. Water-starved Chennai got some respite when a train with 50
wagons of 50,000 litres of water from Jolarpet arrived on Friday. The southern
metropolis has been grappling with an acute water crisis over four months with
a daily water deficit of over 200 million litres as the city’s four reservoirs
have run dry. People are forced to wash utensils in dirty water, saving clean water to cook food.
In
Capital Delhi’s blistering heat huddles of women with two buckets each wait in
various colonies for water tankers every alternate day as they need 20 litres
to sustain a family of four and farmers use toxic drain water to grow
vegetables. In Andhra, only 34 out of 116 municipalities get regular water for
an hour twice a week.
Maharashtra
is facing a water emergency. Strangled by years of drought, rivers’ have dried
up, water in dams and reservoirs has depleted and groundwater over-exploited. The
State Government has deployed 6,597 water tankers to meet the drinking water
needs of 5639 villages and 11,595 hamlets. Five other States too are on the
verge of drought.
Ominous
portends herald a future wherein clean drinking water runs out and people rely
on unsafe water resulting in disease and deaths, higher infant mortality and
mass migrations to already overpopulated
and under-resourced cities.
Thanks
to rampant unplanned urban development, deficient monsoon with lakes and inlets
lost to encroachment and environmental degradation, dumping of sewage,
industrial waste and construction debris and a shift from community-based
water-use system to individual-oriented groundwater scheme, a tale that courses
through the length and breadth of the country bringing it to its knees.
The
failure to preserve natural aquifers and catchments is most evident in the rate
of groundwater depletion. Confessed the Prime Minister only 8% of rainwater
gets saved in the country.
Shockingly,
11 river basins including Ganga will be water deficit by 2025, threatening over
a billion lives with the challenge getting graver by 2050 as demand will rise
to 1,180 million cubic metres, 1.65 times the current levels even as fresh
water resources dwindle. Think, India has 18% of the world's population but
only 4% usable water, wastes more than it produces and spends billions on inane
projects instead of focusing on water conservation.
The
brand new Water Ministry Jal Shakti has launched a water conservation drive
targeting over 250 of the most water-stressed districts, roughly a fourth of
the country’s landmass. But the powers-that-be lackadaisical attitude can be
gauged from the fact that a majority of Government buildings don’t have
rainwater harvesting systems, notwithstanding it being discussed forever in
Delhi’s policy corridors.
Worse, ten years ago North India was losing
groundwater at a rate of 54 billion cubic metres per year, roughly equivalent
to the water stored in the Alaskan glaciers. Ironically parts of India are in perpetual
drought to keep taps flowing in major cities. According to the Standing
Committee on Water Resources, the percentage of districts with overexploited
groundwater levels increasing from three in 1995 to 15 by 2011.
Where will India get its water in the coming
years and how the Government plans on providing piped water for every Indian by
2024, is anybody’s guess. As the Rs 4 trillion spent on dams and other
engineering-heavy solutions haven’t borne results. Neither has the Repair,
Renovation and Restoration of Water Bodies' scheme for improving and restoring traditional
water bodies like talaabs, nallas,
wells, catchment areas, tank storage capacity, ground water recharge increased water
availability.
Rued a conservationist, “Governments do not believe in
cost-effective, common sense solutions they are always looking at expensive
mega projects and engineering solutions. Since the 1960s they have totally
ignored and neglected lakhs of water bodies, the legacy of our ancestors.
Unless we capture rainwater during the monsoon season, we will always run out.”
A farmer in Rajasthan’s Alwar district has
shown the way forward. He restored water resources through construction of
small-scale water harvesting structures. This brought water back in 1,000
drought-hit villages, revived five rivers which had gone dry, increased farm
productivity by 20-80% and increased forest cover by 33%.
Two other success stories are in Uttarakhand
where naulas or water temples have
been revived and Kerala where horizontal wells surangas have been revitalized. Farmers need to look at growing
crops which are not water guzzlers. In Maharashtra, 60% of the water is used
for growing sugarcane when sugar is cheaper in the international market.
India could take a leaf from Jordan which has revived
traditional land management system ‘Hima’
whereby land is set aside to allow it to naturally regenerate itself, resulting
in increased economic growth through cultivation of indigenous plants and
conservation of natural resources in the Zarqa river basin.
A way forward is restoring water-bodies, replenishing our natural dams --- the
aquifers and catchment areas which would stop the reliance on distant water
sources along-with rainwater harvesting to sustain our surface and subsoil
water. There should be an annual audit on water, where it is coming from and
where is it going. The cropping pattern should be according to the availability
of water and how many litres are spent growing crops per acre.
The need of the hour is a pragmatic competence
and mission mode mindset wherein the long term focus should be on local water
management, restoring local wetlands and water bodies, water re-use through
systematic dual plumbing, decentralised waste water treatment plants supplying
it as non-potable water
and improving efficiency in
irrigation.
Time
now for the Centre to treat water as a national asset and go for durable long
term solutions which needs national planning geared for local solutions. Let us
keep our fingers crossed that the waters are not muddied further and our netas don’t leave us high and dry. Else,
India will face a severe water crisis soon and have no water for its growing
economy and people.
An out-of-the-box thinking whereby at least 50%
of the entire water-related budget is allotted to demand-side water management;
solid waste management to avoid contamination of resources by both biological
and industrial sources; incentives to promote water use efficiency including
tradable water permits and taking measures to prepare the Indian farming sector
for factors like climate change.
In sum we need to wake up as the problem is
deeper than just demand and supply of water, primarily it is about our broken
relationship with water and land. The time to hope and look skyward that Lord Indra will oblige is far gone. Zabaani jama khurch will not slake
India’s growing thirst! ---- INFA
(Copyright, India News & Feature Alliance)
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