No getting away from water scarcity

With the arrival of summer every year, there are heartrending stories about the water woes of people, and innovative proposals are discussed to tide over the problem. However, all is forgotten as soon as the monsoon sets in. Can we afford to do this in light of our fast-depleting water resources?

The World Resources Institute (2015) estimates that about 54 per cent of India is water stressed with scarcity affecting every part of the country. A recent study by Mekonnen and Hoekstra (2016) of the University of Twente, Netherlands, warns that two-third of the global population lives with severe water scarcity for at least one month every year, and nearly half of those people live in India and China. More alarming is the estimate of the World Bank that by 2030 India’s per capita water availability may shrink to half from the 2010 level of 1,588 cubic metres per year, which will push the country from the ‘water scarce’ category to the ‘water stress’ category. The World Bank in its latest report (2016), High and Dry: Climate Change, Water and the Economy , has cautioned that countries that lack a sufficient amount of water could see their GDPs decline by as much as six per cent by 2050. Shouldn’t we take these warnings seriously?

India was in the grip of its worst hydrological crisis some two months back. The water level in the 91 major reservoirs of the country was alarmingly low. According to the reservoir storage bulletin of the Central Water Commission (CWC) dated July 21, 2016, the live storage available in the 91 reservoirs was 54.419 BCM, which is much less compared to last year’s storage position of 59.100 BCM. Perennial rivers such as the Ganga, Godavari and Krishna have dried up at various locations.

A recent scientific study (2015) came to the alarming conclusion that the water level in the Indus Basin is falling by 4-6 mm/year, while the Ganges-Brahmaputra Basin is falling by 15-20 mm/year. Given the fact that the country’s agriculture sector withdraws a considerable amount of water from these two giant groundwater aquifers, their rapid depletion is worrying. The Standing Committee on Water Resources (2012-13) — “Repair, Renovation and Restoration of Water Bodies” — underlined in its 16th report that small water bodies that help to capture, conserve and store whatever little rainfall the region receives, have been encroached upon mainly by municipalities and panchayats.

The storage position in existing dams is shrinking due to accumulation of silt for several years. The Watershed and Reservoir Sedimentation Directorate of Central Water Commission in its third edition of Compendium of Silting of Reservoirs in India (2015) underlined that the average dry density of deposited sediment was about 1191 kg/cu m in 21 reservoirs.

Severe drought was reported last year in various parts of the country and more than a quarter of country’s population, spread across 254 districts in 10 States, was affected. Western India particularly was turning bone dry with small and medium reservoirs in States such as Maharashtra and Gujarat having dried up completely. The situation was no less alarming in the southern states of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu which were declared drought-hit.

Such unprecedented drought forced the Government to take unconventional steps to address the problem. Railway wagons were deployed to transport about 500,000 litres of water a day across the Deccan plateau traversing more than 300 km to provide relief to the drought-stricken district of Latur in Maharashtra. The authorities in Latur invoked Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code that, in this case, barred the assembling of more than five persons near wells and water collecting sources to prevent problems.

The rapid growth in population, coupled with increasing economic activities, has been putting tremendous pressure on the available water resources. This is what was highlighted in the CWC’s report, Reassessment of Water Resources Potential of India (1993). Pathetically, 23 years later, the same man-made factors are held responsible for the ongoing water crisis. When reports of indiscriminate groundwater withdrawals for irrigating water guzzling crops pour in, why blame climate change alone?

India has reason to seriously worry about water scarcity more than any other country, as the Indian economy is heavily dependent on agriculture, which has a close nexus with water. Farmers across the country are reportedly struggling to manage their crop cycles due to non-availability of water. One of the main reasons for farm suicides, particularly in parts of Maharashtra, is unavailability of water.

Farmers from Marathwada are forced to migrate to other parts of the State in search of jobs. Let us not overlook the alarming revelation of Census 2011 that the number of farmers in India has decreased by about nine million in the past 10 years. This has far-reaching consequences: The country’s food security will be at stake with the subsequent decline in the area under cultivation and crop production.

Water needs to be looked at from the perspective of a shared resource; all the stakeholders must play their respective role that entails individual and collective responsibility. Stockholm Water Prize winner Rajendra Singh’s initiative of reviving the natural flow of both surface and underground water in Rajasthan which in turn made the villagers create their own ‘river parliaments’ to sustain water commons is remarkable and worthy of emulation.

There is an immediate need to secure the water supplies and improve the efficiency of water usage through reviving and renovating small water bodies, propagating rainwater harvesting and watershed management, and popularising more effective irrigation techniques. These should be propagated and practised even during the monsoon season.

Engineers and policymakers must get out of conventional ways of thinking to design and build dams with large storage capacity so as to combat climate change too. While it is not possible to totally avoid or stop siltation, one way is to carry out catchment area treatment (CAT) involving various techniques such as plantation and check dams in the degraded portions of the catchments so as to reduce the silt coming into the reservoirs. Immediate initiatives are also required to reduce leakage from poorly maintained canal systems and prohibit water-scarce States from growing water guzzling crops such as sugarcane.

These steps need to be taken at the earliest, before water-related conflict becomes the norm.

Narayanamoorthy is HoD of economics and rural development at Alagappa University, Tamil Nadu; Alli is HoD of social sciences, Vellore Institute Technology, Tamil Nadu