Spotlight
New
Delhi, 6 July 2018
Water Crisis
WORST IN INDIA’S HISTORY
By Moin Qazi
India
has long undervalued one of its most precious resources -- water. The country’s
chronic mismanagement of water is staring at it now. The nation breaks out in a cold sweat every time the
monsoon is delayed. Despite these alarming signals we continue to abuse
and use water so profligately.
Complex and capricious, the
South Asian monsoon –widely regarded as the most powerful seasonal climate system
on Earth, impacting nearly half the world’s population — has never been easy to
predict. With global warming skewing weather patterns, it’s not just the
scientists who are confounded. Farmers, whose families for generations have
used the Panchangam, the almanac that elaborates the movement of the Hindu
constellations and helps in understanding when the rains are due and thus when
to plant their crops, lament that their system no longer works reliably
The NITI Aayog’s recent report on the
composite water management index has said that India is suffering from the
worst water crisis in its history and millions of lives and livelihoods are
under threat. “At present, 600 million Indians face high to extreme water
stress and about two lakh people die every year due to inadequate access to
safe water,” it said, adding that the crisis is only going to get worse. These
water-stressed users rely on the monsoon to replenish
their water sources and the unpredictable nature of rain leaves them vulnerable.
The think tank ranked all States across nine
broad sectors with 28 different indicators covering various aspects of ground
water, drinking water restoration of water bodies, irrigation, farm practices
policy and governance.
India supports 15 per cent of the world’s
population but has only 4 per cent of the world’s water resources. World Bank
data shows that only 35 per cent of India’s agricultural land is irrigated.
This means that a huge slab, 65 per cent, of farming depends totally on rain.
It is India’s bad luck that while it has plenty of land, there is scant water to cultivate
it. There are stories of areas where people have waited for successive years
for rain that never arrived. In several
regions, the once green pastures have been scorched to dust as rainless years
left the land bone dry.
Successive Indian governments have done
little to conserve water for off-season use. Even after constructing 4,525
large and small dams, the country has managed to create per capita storage of
only 213 cubic meters — compared to 6,103 cubic m per capita in Russia, 4,733
in Australia, 1,964 in the United States, and 1,111 in China.
India’s water crisis stems from a thorny mix
of economic, geographic, and political factors. For one thing, it is highly
dependent on a few major river systems, especially the Ganges and its
tributaries, for its water supply. India also uses almost twice the amount of
water to grow crops as compared to China and the United States combined.
As traditional mixes of crops have been
replaced with high-yielding wheat, rice, sugarcane, and cotton, the consumption
of water has gone up. In addition, new artificially modified seeds may be
giving higher crop yields, but they are also thirstier than natural seeds.
Today, India’s agricultural sector accounts
for over 90 per cent of total water drawn, but contributes only around 15 per
cent to the country’s GDP. To use another metric, 89 per cent of India’s
extracted groundwater is used in the irrigation sector (for comparison,
household use is in second place at 9 per cent, with industrial use accounting
for 2 per cent of groundwater use).
Some classic examples of the skewed and
short-sighted agricultural priorities that upset India’s water balance are the
farming practices in some of its provincial States, particularly Maharashtra,
Punjab and Haryana.
The agricultural shift by profit-motivated
young farmers has made things worse. Farmers who once grew millet, sorghum and
other cereals have turned to sugarcane in Maharashtra, which fetches more money
but is a very thirsty crop. Likewise, farmers have taken to growing rice and
wheat in Punjab and Haryana, two parched States where the groundwater has sunk
even further.
Growing sugarcane in drought-prone areas is a
recipe for water famine. Yet the land area under sugarcane cultivation in
Maharashtra has gone up from 167,000 hectares in 1970-71 to 1,022,000 ha in
2011-12. Maharashtra is India’s second biggest producer of this water-intensive
crop, despite being one of the country’s drier States. Sugarcane now uses about
70 per cent of Marathwada’s irrigation water despite accounting for 4 per cent
of cultivated land.
A similar story is playing out in Punjab and
Haryana, but with rice taking the place of sugarcane. Rice covers 62 per cent
of Punjab’s area under cultivation, up from 10 per cent in 1970. The expansion
of rice has been similar in neighbouring Haryana. Though the droughts have hit
all crops, India still produces more rice, wheat and sugar than it consumes.
It is quite natural for farmers to plant rice
and cane when both power and water are almost free. In fact, government
policies encourage them to do so. The government buys sugar, wheat and rice at
remunerative prices, which assures economic justice to these farmers.
Without government intervention to reset the
revenue balance in favour of less water-intensive crops, experts warn the
sustained production of thirsty crops will further deplete scarce water resources.
The government currently asks farmers to shift to less water consuming crops,
but it does little to support such a change. Erratic prices for vegetables,
oilseeds, and pulses limit the incentives for farmers to plant them.
A recent European Commission report counted
more than 20 million boreholes in India, up from tens of thousands in the
1960s. The water table is falling on an average by 0.3 meters and by as much as
4 meters in some places. Some farmers in these parched States now need to dig
300 feet (91 meters) for water, compared to five feet (1.5 meters) in the
1960s, according to research by a local government scientist. They have been
drilling wells deep beneath the tilled soil into the volcanic rock — 700 feet,
800 feet, even 900 feet down. Lately, though, many farmers drill wells and find
nothing at all. In some severely affected areas, bore wells as deep as 500
meters (1,640 feet) have all gone dry. The underground water level has dropped
so much that there is no water at all.
Realising its predicament decades ago, Israel
studied the “water equation” and introduced revolutionary innovations to make
itself all but independent from Mother Nature. It took 70 years to solve its
water problem; India won’t need that long, as it can replicate Israeli
practices. It needs to summon the political will to act before water runs out.
Changing governance, raising money, and experimenting new ideas will all take
time and the climatic stresses are mounting fast. The time to act is now.---INFA
(Copyright, India
News & Feature Alliance)
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